It is my 3L spring semester. I am in a car with my supervisor at the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC). We are driving some residents of a homeless encampment to the Berkeley City Council meeting, so they can speak out against continued evictions by the California Department of Transportation. A young homeless woman tells us stories about her life on the streets. She pauses mid-sentence. She asks us, “Why don’t you hate us? Everyone else does.”
In my head, I am 17 again. I am watching the rain from under the bridge, in a similar homeless encampment, across the country in Pittsburgh. I escaped from one violent home into another. We have a small campfire, and we are going to eat beans from a can and stale French fries someone found in the trash.
