When Hefty bags are home

Amir-in-danza-gear-by-Tiny-1400x933, When Hefty bags are home, Culture Currents Local News & Views News & Views
Writer and Poverty Skola Amir Cornish in his danza gear. – Photo: Tiny Gray-Garcia

by Amir Cornish, Youth Poverty Skola, POOR Magazine

As a little kid, I never really cared about having a clean home. At least we had a roof over our head and we was always on the move.

When we used to open the big black Hefty bags, it was like looking into a mirror back into the past of my family history going through the generations.

I always had what we needed just in case we ever got kicked out onto the streets. I started to think to myself, and realized that the big black Hefty bag was a part of me.

Not really had a stable home, but, my home was them bags, and as a kid me and my older brother would play on them big plastic bags and I would imagine myself on mountains climbing the great walls.

For me, cleaning is not hard. What’s hard is just having a place to keep clean for a long time, but I could never fully grasp it. Like reading a book, you don’t get the answers quickly, you’re wrestling to fully understand it.

I feel like people shouldn’t be kicked out of their house just because they don’t know how to keep a place clean. For me, having a black bag was home. 

Postscript: Join us in the prayer circle to open Homefulness for houseless and poor mamaz and families in June. Email poormag@gmail.com for details.

Amir Cornish is an activist, journalist and youth poverty skola with POOR Magazine and Poor News Network. He is also a co-builder and resident of Homefulness and co-founder of the TAZ foundation. Amir can be reached via email at poormag@gmail.com. To learn more, visit www.poormagazine.org and www.racepovertymediajustice.org.