Unwelcome in America

With a backyard full of Republicans, Philadelphia poverty activist Cheri Honkala prepares for the fight of her life.

By Karen Abbott

Jul 31, 2000 | Two cops and two City Hall employees shuffle, almost timidly, into the Kensington Welfare Rights Union; by now, it's a familiar drill. The KWRU, as it's called, is headquartered in a row house not far from a North Philadelphia neighborhood infamously dubbed "The Badlands," which serves as a dependable junket stop for Ted Koppel and his "Nightline" crew whenever they want to report on the city's thriving heroin trade. The KWRU house would be indistinguishable from adjacent structures -- their tilting roofs and defaced facades forming a tawdry necklace against the city's skyline -- were it not for the large "UNWELCOME IN AMERICA" sign plastered across the front door.

It might be a familiar drill, but the cops and the City Hall reps are on Cheri Honkala's turf, and goddamn if she's going to let them forget it. Honkala, the 37-year-old director of KWRU, a woman whose diminutive frame and girly manicure belie her propensity for battle, gestures the cops to join her and a couple of KWRU volunteers at their conference table.

It's less than a week before the Republicans descend on this overwhelmingly Democratic city, and there is serious protest planning to do. Honkala's group -- easily the most high-profile and organized in Philadelphia -- has no shortage of civil disobedience in the works. Out-of-town media have already heard about Honkala's widely touted "reality tours," which bypass the Liberty Bell and other Apple Pie relics and focus instead on the city's sweatshops, unemployment offices and entire neighborhoods that are literally sinking into the ground.

There will also be a tent city, where homeless families will protest welfare reform and hold "poverty workshops." And on the first day of the Republican National Convention, Honkala is planning to march from City Hall to the First Union center, where the convention-sanctioned events will be in full effect. She expects 5,000 protesters to join her.

That the city denied her a permit for this last activity, which she's named the "March for Economic Human Rights," has only made Honkala all the more determined to pull it off -- and pull it off big. Protesters are coming in from all corners of the country, including celebrities such as former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten. (Honkala has no problem attracting celebrity support: Bonnie Raitt, Danny Glover, Steve Earle and Jackson Brown have all worked with her.) The whole thing, truth be told, has the Philadelphia police in a bit of a frenzy; the department's still smarting from the recent videotape that caught cops pummeling a suspected carjacker.

So the police have been summoned to Honkala's place as a sort of precautionary measure, an attempt to figure out the logistics of what will likely be their biggest headache during the convention. They don't like being there -- their discomfort is almost palpable -- but they will like it a hell of a lot less if there is a melee and mass arrest on Broad Street. But melees and mass arrests, for Honkala, are all part of a day's work.

The cops sit down and Honkala watches them from across the table. She drums her fingers; her long lilac nails make a staccato beat against the wood. The noise stops abruptly when she notices the two City Hall reps pulling out chairs and making to join her and the police.

"I believe," she says, "that we agreed to meet with two of you."

"What?" asks one of the cops, clearly irked. "The two ladies can't stay?"

"Noooooo," Honkala says. Her native Minnesota drawl curls the word so that it sounds almost like a question. "You can go now," she says, shooing them toward the door. "Go -- and have a good day."

The two City Hall reps leave, heads down.

"The city wants the poor and powerless to be invisible," Honkala says, her tone stentorian. "And we're not gonna be invisible."

The cops don't dare say a word.

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