Honkala's followers know this, but they're ready to take the risk. To understand their zeal -- and their faith in Honkala -- consider the story of Elizabeth Ortiz, who's been a member of KWRU for eight years and has been arrested with the group eight times. A 44-year-old mother of three, in the early '90s Ortiz was a maid at a Philadelphia hotel, where, after five years, she earned $8.50 an hour. When new management took over, she says, much of the higher-paid staff was fired to make way for workers earning minimum wage. Ortiz went to the welfare office, but says she was told that it would be several months before she could get help.

Unable to pay her rent, Ortiz and her kids slept at friends' houses until their generosity ran out, and then moved into a women's and children's shelter, where she says her children's school supplies were stolen. There was an 8 p.m. curfew, and she had to keep her kids by her side at all times -- a difficult thing to do with restless teenagers. At the time, her eldest son was about to turn 18. Once a legal adult, he would have been barred from the shelter.

"They were going to separate this family," she says. Rather than let that happen, she left. They ended up sleeping in her car and in the park.

"No one told me about being homeless," she says. "I would look down on the homeless and think, 'Oh, they just want to be on the streets, they're on drugs.'" Many people in KWRU had similar preconceptions about homelessness until they ended up on the streets themselves.

Ortiz had nowhere else to turn when she called KWRU. Immediately, the union sent someone to pick her family up and take them to a supporter's house for the night. She doesn't remember whose place it was, but she remembers feeling safer there than at a shelter. "Everything's not peaches and cream, but you feel more secure," she says. "You think, 'Wow, a person who's a stranger will treat you better than someone whose job is to treat you right."

KWRU gave Ortiz a place to sleep in one of its Human Rights Houses and helped her find an apartment through Section 8, which she lives in today. Since her heart surgery in 1998, she gets disability payments from the government and works part time as a babysitter. Her oldest son works for UPS while going to college, and her daughter just graduated from high school.

Ortiz is making a statement by walking through New Jersey, but so far it's hard to tell what she's accomplishing. Eleven days after the march began, there's been little news coverage. Walking all day, being hassled by police, begging churches for a place to stay at night and often being turned away, it's all exhausting and humbling. Honkala, though, insists that what they're doing isn't futile.

During the civil rights movement, she says, "When 10 or 15 people were walking in pickets around Woolworth's, people would say, 'That's never going to have an impact.'" Honkala is completely convinced that her movement is akin to the civil rights movement, or even abolition. Any day now, she says, it will burst forth.

"We're sewing together a large social movement for when shit does come down," she says. "I think they know this has the potential to be very big at some point."

By "they," Honkala means the police, who she says have done everything they can to shut her down. This sounds paranoid, but spending time in Honkala's world induces paranoia.

In late July, as the march continued through New Jersey, cops dogged the group. On July 29, as they started marching through Newark, the police stopped them. "They told us, 'You can't march here, if you take another step, we're going to arrest you,'" said 24-year-old Natasha Enler, one of the marchers.

So they retreated, regrouped and tried the same route again on July 30. This time, Honkala warned everyone that there might be some arrests. Before they went, everyone stood in a circle and told the group about one thing they were thankful for. "I'm grateful for breakfast," said one woman. "I'm grateful for my children, that they didn't grow up to be selfish pigs," said Honkala. "I'm grateful for my mother," said Webber, and Honkala, obviously pleased, pretended to be embarrassed.

Then they started singing, a few of the women teaching the song to the others. "During the civil rights movement, they used to use music to unite together in dangerous situations," said Honkala. Their voices rang out:

"Well I went down to the rich man's house
I took back what he stole from me
I took back my dignity
I took back my humanity."

They kept singing and chanting as they marched. This time a documentary filmmaker was with them -- which probably explained why the police, when they arrived, were polite and accommodating. There were no arrests that day. Another small thing to be grateful for.

"Most of us got the worst sob stories; you could cry for five nights," Honkala said. "We have unfolding tragedies and gaping wounds, and we're just walking across New Jersey letting the rest of the world know that things don't have to be like this."

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