Meet Samelys López, the ex-homeless candidate running for New York's most contested seat

The first time Samelys López stood up for an adult she was eight years old. She and her mother were waiting in the welfare office for food stamps when López overheard the case officer speaking down to her mother.

Their lives before they got there hadn’t been easy. Lópezand her mother moved from Puerto Rico when López was a baby, relocating to Williamsburg in New York. Back then, Williamsburg was the most densely populated city in the US: a by-word for poverty rather than trendy coffee shops and vintage boutiques as it is today. It was also host to a fierce sweatshop trade, and López’s family were privy to its harsh hours and low pay.

So López did not like the assumption that her mother was poor because she had not worked hard enough. “I said, you can’t speak to her like that – she is hard-working, she paid into this system,” says Lopez. It was an early lesson to her, that services for poor people can humiliate, rather than help.

That story was one of many that would lead López to where she is today – aged 40, pressed up slightly too close on a Zoom call, from her living room that now doubles up as a campaign office. She is running for Congress in the south Bronx and under usual circumstances, the numbers might be in her favor. The seat is a Democratic stronghold – securing a 94% vote for Hilary Clinton in 2016 – it is the most left-leaning seat in the country. And while López’s humble background might be out of step with many in Congress (she had to give up her own health insurance just to run for office) it is reflective of many lives in the south Bronx,the poorest congressional district in the country.With 98% of its residents being people of color and more than half under 35 – it is fertile ground for a progressive contender.

There’s just one problem: she is running against nine other contenders, many of them former elected officials.

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Growing up in New York’s homeless shelter system, López learned a lot. She learned how to dodge the bullies after school, who would follow her back to the shelter she lived in and laugh at her. She learned how to sit quietly in the back of the sweatshop while she did her homework – and as a byproduct of that, that her mother could work incredibly hard and still not be paid enough to afford a babysitter. She learned not