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    2011 - 01.03

    After the first couple of years of walking the streets to hand lunches out the folks started to post a person on the street corner to watch for my van. As I drove down Yesler, a cry would go up and by the time I turned the corner, 400 people would be lined up waiting for me on Occidental. There were so many of them that I barely had a moment to look up at them to see their faces. As I hurriedly handed of the sacks one day someone grabbed my hands. It caused me to stop and look up. A middle aged Hispanic man with a kind and gentle face looked me in the eyes and said “Lunch Lady, you save our lives”. That was the day I realized that everyone I was serving had a face, a name, and a story…They also had voices that were seldom heard…I knew I had to join my voice with theirs and began to tell their stories…It was how I learned that there isn’t a “them” and “me”… There is simply “us”…All of us… As my friend Tom Walker says in his song, “If one of us is homeless, none of us is home”…

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