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Cheri Lynn HonkalaAccording to the State of Minnesota. Minnesota Birth Index, 1935-2002. Searchable at http://www.ancestry.com/ (; born January 12, 1963) is an American anti-poverty advocate, co-founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) and co-founder and National Coordinator of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, also called the Poor People's Army. She has been a noted advocate for human rights in the United States and internationally. She is the mother of actor Mark Webber.
She was featured prominently in the 1997 book Myth of the Welfare Queen by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Zucchino. In 2011, Honkala was the Green Party candidate for Sheriff of Philadelphia, running on the promise of refusing to eviction families from their homes. She was the Green Party's nominee for vice-president in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.
When Honkala was 17, her 19-year-old brother Mark, who suffered from mental health issues, died by suicide. Because he was uninsured, he could not afford to get the professional help he needed. At the time of Mark's suicide, Honkala was already a mother (with a son, Mark, named after her brother), living out of her car and going to high school. Despite her difficult upbringing, she managed to graduate.
After living in an apartment in Minnesota, Honkala and her young son were forced to move out and live out of their white Chevrolet Camaro. She and her son became homeless after the Camaro was demolished by a drunk driver. Honkala could not find a shelter that would allow them to remain together that winter. To stay together and keep from freezing, Honkala decided to move into an abandoned Housing and Urban Development (HUD) home. She would later comment, "I chose to live, and I chose to keep my son alive." She called a press conference, in which she said, "This is me, this is my nine-year-old son, and we're not leaving until somebody can tell us where we can live and not freeze to death."
From that time, the volunteers of the organization regularly (and illegally) took over HUD homes to provide accommodations for homeless families. To provide a support system to these families, the organization set up what they called an "'Underground Railroad,' a network of other poor people, students, social workers, doctors and lawyers." Said Honkala: "Stealing slaves out of captivity was against the law ... But it was right. Sometimes the law is wrong. Sometimes you have to appeal to a higher authority."
In the spring of 1994, the Quaker Lace factory (a manufacturer of lace tablecloths) in the Kensington area of Philadelphia burned down, leaving an empty lot. The following summer, Honkala and KWRU constructed a large tent city on the site. Because Philadelphia authorities could not produce documentation establishing who owned the property, it was unable to evict the residents. (Eventually, they were driven out by flooding.) This very public action resulted in a substantial increase in donations to KWRU.
In September 1995, while the tent city was still standing, Honkala staged a protest by camping out for 36 hours, with others from the tent city, on Independence Mall within sight of the Liberty Bell, to make the plight of Philadelphia's homeless visible to residents and tourists next to one of the city's most famous landmarks. Although she argued that she and the others were merely exercising their right to free speech and had not hurt the park, she was cited and later tried for "residing in a park area." She was sentenced to six months' probation and fined $250. In July 1997, she was involved with the Liberty Bell once more, when she led a group on the "March for Our Lives" from the Bell to the United Nations building in New York to protest so-called welfare reform as a violation of the human rights of the poor. This action led directly to the formation of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC).
In October 1996, Honkala, with KWRU, staged a sit-in on the floor of the rotunda of Harrisburg's capitol building. The organization created a makeshift "city" that it dubbed "Ridgeville" after Republican Governor Tom Ridge, who had slashed social service benefits. Part of the purpose of the protests was to point out to the homeless the opulence of Gov. Ridge's lifestyle, including the governor's mansion, supported at state expense. The protest was supported by legislators opposed to the cuts, who bought meals for the protesters.
In April 1997, Honkala was arrested on a charge of "defiant trespassing" for attempting to build shacks for homeless families in Philadelphia on an empty industrial lot, though at the time, the shelter system was full and people were living on the streets.
The organization's leaders maintained that "some U.S. laws, such as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which limits the amount of time a family can receive federal assistance, violate Articles 23, 25 and 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those articles guarantee, respectively, the right to work for a living wage under humane conditions; the right to adequate food, housing, medical care and social security; and the right to education."
Starting in June 1998, KWRU led the New Freedom Bus Tour, which traveled across the country, gathering stories of human rights violations to present as a petition to the United Nations. "Under the banner 'Freedom from Unemployment, Hunger and Homelessness,' the KWRU team collected additional evidence on the negative impact of welfare and held educational sessions teaching the poor about their economic rights." (A second such bus tour was organized by the PPEHRC in November–December 2002, which traveled to 27 cities to record human rights violations.)
This organization was formed in direct response to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 (also known as the Welfare Reform Act), signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, which she and her allies claim hurts recipients of welfare. The organization's mission statement reads, "The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is committed to uniting the poor across color lines as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty. We work to accomplish this through advancing economic human rights as named in the universal declaration of human rights — such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication and a living wage job."
Part of the purpose of the organization is to make homelessness and the homeless visible, in order to force politicians to act. Honkala claims that the latter prefer that the homeless remain invisible, so they won't have to address the problem. In a speech, Honkala said: "That's what the are saying to: 'Go hide! Go be under a bridge, or ... hide under a bench, and we won't arrest you, we won't do anything to you, because you will be quiet!'" As Honkala declared, "When you have nothing, you still have your voice."
In October 1999, PPEHRC organized a month-long March of the Americas, from Washington, DC, to the United Nations in New York. Participants in the march included low-income families from the US, Canada and Latin America. The group "marched 15 miles a day for 32 days, sleeping in tent cities, churches and community centers at night, and holding press conferences and protests in local communities."
In July 2000, a PPEHRC march for the opening day of the Republican Party's National Convention in Philadelphia drew 10,000 homeless and poor people from around the country. (Of the several protest marches during that convention, this was the only one denied a permit by city authorities.)
In November 2000, at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan in New York City, the PPEHRC held a "Poor People's World Summit to End Poverty," consisting of several hundred activists from some 30 countries, to share "experiences and work to build an international movement for economic human rights drawing explicitly on international treaties."
On July 4, 2003, Philadelphia held a celebration for the opening of the National Constitution Center, a new facility housing the Liberty Bell. Poor and homeless families from the city held a peaceful protest to demand their economic rights. "As the demonstrators marched toward Constitution Center single-file, carrying their own mattresses and led by children, park rangers, federal guards, and city police formed lines to prevent the families from approaching. Singing 'We Shall Not Be Moved,' the demonstrators locked arms and refused to leave the sidewalk. Protest leaders Honkala and Galen Tyler had prepared a 'Declaration of Economic Human Rights' to present at the Center. As they moved toward the Center, police moved to stop them, threw them to the ground, handcuffed them, and placed them under arrest ... Honkala was charged with one first-degree felony and four other felony counts. Police officers claimed that Honkala had struck one of them in the chest. However, a video taken at the time clearly shows Honkala carrying a mattress and being struck by the officer ... all the charges were subsequently withdrawn by the District Attorney's office."
In August 2004, Honkala marched with the PPEHRC in New York City (without a permit) to protest President Bush and the Republican National Convention (RNC) and to publicly call for greater attention by the government to the needs of the poor and homeless.
As a publicity stunt, Honkala during the campaign rode a horse down Allegheny Avenue in Philadelphia while wearing a white hat resembling a Stetson, in imitation of the image of a Wild West sheriff. During her campaign, Honkala addressed the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan to express solidarity with the group's anti-foreclosure aims and to ask for help in "occupying Philadelphia" on election day.
She finished in third place with over 10,000 votes.
Stein and Honkala were officially nominated by the Green Party at its national convention in Baltimore on Saturday, July 14.
John Nichols, a commentator for The Nation magazine, compared the position of the Green Party candidates on this issue to the anti-banking rhetoric of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the New Deal.
She visited the PPEHRC encampment in Tampa, Florida, nicknamed "Romneyville," and strongly supported its plan to protest the 2012 Republican National Convention in that city, beginning on the convention's opening day in August.
On October 16, 2012, Honkala and Stein were arrested after they tried to enter the site of the second presidential debate at Hofstra University.
The four pillars of the Green New Deal, "the central platform of the Stein/Honkala ticket" are:
Honkala was endorsed by many progressives and organizations including Our Revolution, Progress for All, environmental activist Josh Fox, progressive entertainers Rosario Dawson and Tom Morello, former Director Emeritus of Philaposh (a labor organization) Jim Moran, former Philadelphia Health Commissioner Walter Tsou, the PEOPLE Committee of the AFSCME District Council 47, Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks, the Philadelphia chapter of Socialist Alternative, and other local clergy and leaders.
In March 2017, Honkala lost to Democratic write-in Emilio Vazquez. However, this election went under investigation by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and the Pennsylvania Attorney General. Honkala, alongside the Green Party of Pennsylvania, Lucinda Little (the Republican candidate), and the State and City Republican parties filed a lawsuit in United States District Court against Emilio Vazquez, the Philadelphia Democratic Committee, Philadelphia City Commissioners, PA Secretary of State Cortes, and the State's Bureau of Commissions, Elections, and Legislation. The lawsuit alleges widespread election fraud and voter intimidation on the part of Vazquez and the Philadelphia Democratic Committee, and failure to properly supervise the elections for the other defendants.
Claims in the federal lawsuit include electioneering inside the polling place, money exchange between Democratic poll workers and election officials, a ballot box being at Vazquez's "victory" party, tables set up outside by Democratic poll works made to look like voter sign-in tables, election workers asking people who they are voting for, Democratic ward leaders handling the voting machines, Vazquez meeting with election officials on election day inside of the polling place, and other claims. Despite the investigation, Vazquez was officially sworn in as a member of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives on April 5, 2017.
She has been criticized for her confrontational tactics in dealing with the authorities. Author David Zucchino described Honkala's behavior at the first Liberty Bell protest as follows:
Cheri loved to make people uncomfortable ... She wanted people to squirm and recoil when they saw poor people. She was convinced that America sought desperately to keep its poor out of sight so as not to be reminded of the social policies she believed exacerbated poverty. If the country was going to turn its back on the poor, she was not going to let anyone feel ambivalent about it. She would assault people with her high-pitched nasal voice—in public demonstrations, in confrontations with elected officials, in media interviews, and in front of a ragged tent on Independence Mall.
During the church takeover incident, William Parshall, the deputy city managing director, known as the Philadelphia "housing czar," was asked whether Honkala's in-your-face tactics "made his job difficult." Parshall replied that he was far more concerned with such pending problems as national and state welfare cuts. He added, "The question is, what are we going to do about it? That's the question Cheri should be asking."
Zucchino in his book details many confrontations between Honkala and the authorities, but also instances in which she reached a mutually satisfactory compromise with them. For example, during the first Liberty Bell protest, she negotiated successfully with park authorities to leave the site without the necessity of admitting guilt or of enduring mass arrests.
She was the subject of Chapter 6, "Using Economic Human Rights in the Movement to End Poverty: The Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the Poor People's Economic Human Right Campaign" by Mary Bricker-Jenkins, Carrie Young and Honkala, in the book Challenges in Human Rights: A Social Work Perspective, edited by Elizabeth Reichert (2007). She was also briefly profiled in Katherine Martin's book Women of Courage: Inspiring Stories from the Women who Lived Them (1999).
Since the mid-1990s Honkala has been extensively documented by photographer Harvey Finkle. A YouTube video was created consisting of many of Finkle's photos of Honkala and of other poor people. She also wrote the introduction to Finkle's book of photographs of the urban poor, Urban Nomads: A Poor People's Movement (1997). One of the last photos taken by the late photographer Richard Avedon (1923–2004) was a portrait of Honkala for the series Democracy 2004, which appeared in an October 2004 issue of The New Yorker magazine.
Interviews and articles on Honkala have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including The Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly, Yes! magazine, Salon, Truthdig Shut Down the Democratic National Convention . Chris Hedges for Truthdig. June 5, 2016. Retrieved June 7, 2016. and The Nation.
In the 1990s, the Television Trust for the Environment, as part of its "Life" series, broadcast on BBC World News a short documentary on Honkala and the KWRU called The Philadelphia Story. In the profile, Honkala talks about gated communities and her complex feelings about the state of the country.
The independent film, August in the Empire State, directed by Keefe Murren and Gabriel Rhodes, profiles several persons during the 2004 Republican National Convention, including Honkala, who is depicted leading her PPEHRC march against the RNC. In the film, Honkala discusses her commitment to the principle of Gandhism.
In February 2008, on its flagship public affairs program, People & Power, Al Jazeera English ran a video profile of Honkala entitled "Homeless Hero," depicting a campaign by the Nashville Homeless Power Project, which had invited Honkala to that city to organize "the first major homeless action in the history of Tennessee." The video shows the construction of an encampment to confront Nashville's mayor, during his budget address, with the issue of homelessness. (The mayor never appeared.)
On September 7, 2012, Honkala was a guest of Bill Moyers for the program Moyers & Company, "Challenging Power, Changing Politics", along with her Green Party Presidential running mate, Jill Stein, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
In addition, the organization Honkala co-founded, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, was a 1999 co-winner (with Dr. Juan Garcés) of the prestigious Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, given by the Institute for Policy Studies.
In January 2004, Honkala was invited to speak at the annual World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India on the subject of the "War against the Homeless." In 2006, Honkala again addressed the WSF, this time in Caracas, Venezuela, to discuss poverty and homelessness in the United States, information that many of her listeners do not often receive from mainstream U.S. media sources.
Honkala is the mother of the actor and director Mark Webber (born 1980). Webber has supported his mother's causes in a number of ways, including holding benefit events, such as art auctions, on her behalf.
Honkala is also the mother of Guillermo Santos (born 2002).
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