Me and my sister tried to kill each other, LITERALLY. Her name is Bryanna and we are 18 months apart. On T.V you see siblings fight of course, but not like we did. Siblings on T.V (girls especially) fight about makeup and borrowing each others things without asking. I can kinda see what had started the fighting; It was jealousy. My mom had me at a young age and ended up leaving my life when I was two so it was just me and my dad for a while until my sister was born. I didn’t like the fact that she had both parents and I didn’t. But my sister was jealous of the fact that I mainly had our dad’s attention because he was my only parent he wanted to give me as much attention as she got from both parents combined. I can only remember but so much. Here’s the first incident that I remember. “Push her” my conscious said.

“NO!” I tried fighting back.

“Just do it, you know you want to and it will be funny.”

“NO! I’ll get in so much trouble”

“Push her now!” Splash! Is all you heard when I pushed her in. It was hilarious to my six year old self.

“Imani!” My big cousin screamed. I turned around so quick and she was right in front of me, I knew I was in a lot of trouble. “I can not believe you just pushed your sister in the well!” my cousin said in anger as she tried to retrieve my sister from the deep water.

“I didn’t mean to, I promise. I tripped.” I tried to cover my ass.

“No she didn’t she pushed me!” Bryanna said as she was sobbing. I gave her a dirty look and started faking concern for her.

“Bree are you ok? I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“Yes you did, you’re a liar!”

“Hey!” My big cousin said to her because that’s a word that we were told not to use. I was able to get out of trouble that day. I always wondered how I got myself out of that one. I knew my sister would retaliate so I kept my guard up, even at six and four/five we were pretty smart. I would always watch her around my food and I’d wait till she fell asleep to go to sleep. I knew she wakes up before me so I even tried to wake up before her. It wasn’t that I was scared of her, I just wanted to make sure she couldn’t get to me. A few weeks after the well incident, she got me back. She got me back real good. I was on the floor playing with my DS, and my dad was ironing his clothes. He walked out of the room to grab his shirt from his room to also iron.

“AHHHHHHHHHHH” I screamed in pain when the hot iron hit my chest. I got up and I saw my dad running back in to see why I was screaming. I jumped up and down crying and yelling at my sister. I couldn’t believe she went that far. For once, she actually got in trouble. -- but not because she pushed it on me, because he told us not to go near the iron. After that we went in. I mean we really tried killing each other. “What’s this dad?”

“Boot cleaner put it down it’s not a toy.”

“OK!”  The night of the ear spraying incident my family had a little get together. Of course it was a no kids allowed thing so me and my sister stayed upstairs in our parents room. It was bigger and because it wasn’t our room we loved to be in there. I was such a night owl so of course my sister fell asleep before I did. I began to mess with her, she was a heavy sleeper. I started pulling her hair and trying to push her off the bed. I got bored with doing after a while. I saw the boot spray again. I wasn’t gonna do it because I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to ease my way out of it. I ended up doing it anyways. She woke up when I did it and she went right back to sleep. I didn’t expect her to wake up screaming a few mins later but she did. My dad her mom ran up the steps to see what happened and why she was screaming. I threw the boot cleaner across the room so they would think that she was just screaming. She fully woke up and told our parents what had happened. I tried to lie but come on I couldn’t ease my way out of this one. She got special treatment the whole time I was on punishment. She was able to pick the food she wanted to eat and go to the store as much as she wanted. I hated it. The special treatment did not last for long though. It was about a week after I got off punishment and we were upstairs playing. Our parents then soon told that it was time to go to bed. We had made the stan that held the T.V. up wobbly. We didn’t say anything to our parents simply because we did it on purpose. When she was laying in bed I was getting my night clothes out from the dresser that was attached to the stand. She started to kick the stand and the leg finally snapped and the T.V. fell on my head. I screamed in pain. I had blood coming from the top of my head but I didn’t feel it till it got in my eyes. I screamed some more. My dad came flying into the room to see what I was screaming. He saw how much blood was coming from my head and rushed me to the hospital in his house coat. He didn’t ask questions so when the doctor asked what happened I had to explain. I ended up getting 4 stitches that night. My dad was instructed to keep me up for four hours because I had a concussion. I didn’t go to school the next day and he stayed home with me because I was up all night. My sister and I had done many other things to each other that if I went into details I would be writing a twenty page essay. As we got older our fighting turned into little bickering that you would see t.v. siblings fight over. For a few years after the trying to kill each other stage was over we didn’t really feel like sisters. We wouldn’t talk to each other much unless we had to. It did upset me knowing that my little sister didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t really want to be bothered with her. Around the age of 13 and she was 11 my grandmother sat us down and told us that we need to start acting like sisters because at the end of the day family is what will always be here for each other. We really did listen to our grandmother and started acting like sisters should act. Now at the age of 17 and 15 we are inseparable. Our parents ended up splitting up and she now lives with her mom and I am with my dad. We go out and talk on the phone all the time now. I love her to death and it’s vice versa with her. I don’t think that I would change our past relationship because we both reminisce about all the things that we did. I can say that my grandmother’s words of wisdom really shaped a great relationship between the two of us.

Imani Murray

Sweatshops are some worst working environments there are. They violate labor laws and basic human rights.  The workers have to endure unfair pay, long unreasonable hours, and child labor. Despite these problems, Sweatshops are used by many clothing companies that are very popular, including  Forever 21, H&M and Urban Outfitters..Even though these practices are known to the public, these companies continue to be popular among shoppers because of their less expensive prices.

According to an article published in Businessweek “Sweatshops are work environments that possess three major characteristics—long hours, low pay, and unsafe or unhealthy working conditions. Sweatshops may also have policies that severely restrict workers' freedoms, including limiting bathroom breaks and even conversations with fellow workers. At its worst, violence is used”  Sweatshops are mainly located in places like South America, Asia, China, India. These people are desperate to work, due to living conditions and many other specific reasons. In most cases if these workers from other countries, are stripped of their passports. These leaves them trapped in the country and the sweatshops, because if seen they would be sent back from where they came from.Although these people make less than 64 cent an hour, they would much rather endure these hardships than return home  empty handed. The ages of their workers can start as young as five years old. H&M feel comfortable with doing this because no matter what they feel like people are going to buy their clothes.  People can pass out from a lot but the most common things that people in sweatshops pass out from is : prolonged working hours, very hot places, exhaustion, and hunger. According to “The Sun” website “Almost 8,000 Cambodian workers have reportedly collapsed since 2010 while making stock for H&M.” H&M has had problems with the way they have their sweatshops are set up for many years. They have made statements saying that they are going to do better with the working conditions that they have their workers in but still haven’t. They work people until they can’t work anymore. Once before H&M has been exploited for their sweatshops and yet they didn’t lose money or hear about it on the news. Only little websites talked about it. So therefore H&M feels like they are undefeated

Sweatshop workers get paid less than minimum wage. Minimum wage isn’t even enough to pay rent and feed your family if your job is following the labor laws. Coming across an article published by the website “The World Counts” they talked about the pay that sweatshop workers get paid. “Sweatshop workers wages can be as low as 1 US cent per hour, and they work up to 100 hours a week in conditions of poor air quality and extreme heat.” Out of the 168 hours there are in a week, they are working 100 of them. On top of that there are workers that can make only a penny every hour they work.  that is only a dollar a week, that isn’t nearly enough to support a family or even just themselves. Companies like H&M, NIke, and Forever 21 use these sweatshops so that they don’t have to pay that much for people to make their clothes. Not only are they make a huge profit but they are also making money off those workers that work for so little.

Sweatshops are going to continue to be around and stay in the conditions that they are in if people don’t do anything to make them better and stop buying clothes because they are less expensive if they are treating their workers like animals. They will still have underpaid and overworked people making clothes. If people would think while they are shopping where the clothes that they are purchasing came from they could help change the conditions that people are working in.  Companies using these cheap alternatives are an ongoing trend that needs to be stopped.

Works CIted

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1851851/hm-in-factory-horror-as-workers-endure-outrageous-sweatshop-conditions-making-clothes-which-include-beyonces-own-line/

http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/labor/sweatshops

Mi Vida

Me llamo Imani murray

Yo tengo quince ano

nacida en la década de dos mil

Hablamos Inglés

Estoy en 9th grado

Soy de los ghettos de south philly

Yo vivo con mi padre y dios

Yo tengo una hermana y

Tres hermanos

Soy la mayor

Mi Familia es muy grande

los amo

Mi abuela is mi madre

Disfruto oliendo mi abuela’s cocina

Soy una mezcla de Negro, Dominicano, y blanco

Disfruto música

Yo escucho Rihanna, Beyonce, y J.Cole

el baile es mi pasión

soy trabajador

Tengo un futuro

Tengo una meta

voy a lograr

eso

I just made it about me I knew everything about me and I knew what things were interesting and what things weren’t interesting. I took things people did know and what people didn’t know. I just wanted my slide to explain to you guys what I like who I am and what you should know about me. I am not like other people and no one is so I just thought it would be best to put everything that people would want to know and what people are curious about. I am funny, cool, out going, and serious. I don’t care about what people think about me and how people perceive me because regardless of what people think I am going to be me. The reason why I put the pictures is to give you a visualization of who I am and what I mean when I say certain things. I made things bigger than others because I would want someone to know this thing before this other thing. I just wanted to show you how I stand out as me. I didn’t just make it about my identity but also about what I like to do.