photo, KWRU

Cheri Honkala was the last orator of the rally. One wouldn't expect a throaty, booming oration from her. Honkala is a short, slender woman in her early forties. She spent most of the bouncing her baby in her arms. But when it finally came her turn to speak, she put her child and her tender appearance aside and delivered a thundering little address. She leaned into the podium and delivered her lines in a quick succession of soft shouts. "Today we march past the U.N. for intervention for our brothers and sisters in all parts of the world… 18,000 dead from no health care! More than died in Iraq! More than died on 9/11!"

Honkala is the national coordinator of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a collection of poverty advocacy groups that demonstrated in midtown Manhattan on a balmy afternoon, August 31. The coalition of over 60 antipoverty organizations spans the nation. But the hub of this alliance is located in the gritty North Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. Located just minutes north of the luxury condos and fine dining of Old City, the neighborhood is a shell of what was once a center for industry and shipping. According to the Census Bureau, Kensington is in the poorest zip-code in Pennsylvania. It is a place of rock-bottom property values and hopes.

In the midst of this decay, Honkala founded the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) in 1991 while living as a homeless mother. "Every night my son and I would go into an abandoned building," she said over the phone, "and there was no room in the shelters so we would try to stay warm and hope that we wouldn't freeze to death come the next morning. It's those memories, it's the memories of having to figure out how to eat, of having to say 'no' to my little boy when I couldn't [afford] to buy him things for his birthday or the holidays. These are the kind of things that are the personal reasons why I always stay involved in this fight."

Over the past 13 years, Honkala has run an organization that benefits the poor through advocacy programs, support groups, lobbying, and public demonstration. Her most publicized exploit was in 2000 during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Philadelphia. That year, she led a march that drew national press attention. The "March for Economic Human Rights" did not have a permit from the city, but thousands of activists and union members nevertheless walked down Broad Street to the convention's doorstep at the First Union Center. For this year's Republican National Convention, Honkala was trying to duplicate that feat, but she feared that New York would not be as kind to her and her followers.

"We may be arrested, but God's on our side!" she says, wrapping up her speech. She had warned over the phone that she would march and, lacking a permit, would probably get arrested. Now, Honkala and the coterie of older activists on stage begin to file off the platform and through a gauntlet of policemen on the street. They are presumably headed toward a nearby police van where they will be cuffed and taken away. But, curiously, as they approach the van, it starts to move ahead of the marchers. The group proceeds down 47th Street, with Honkala standing front and center behind the lead banner.

The audience at the rally, meanwhile, doesn't know what to do. Only a few wear the KWRU t-shirts and most don't seem to be there for poverty at all. International A.N.S.W.E.R. is there with pamphlets on the war, as is the National Organization for Women and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, all looking to get in on the protest du jour. The satirists, "Billionaires for Bush," are there in tuxedos and top hats as are a group of women with red wigs wearing red bras outside their shirts. A local CBS reporter found all of this ostentation stale, and could be overheard saying with a shake of his head, "I've had my fill of political speech."

Eventually, the crowd warily begins to file behind Honkala and the leaders, spilling onto 47th Street. The police van never fills with protestors, but instead continues to move in front of Honkala and the leaders, threatening to scoop up anyone out of line. As the march starts down Second Avenue, police wall the crowd away from one side of the avenue, and the line of dissidents can be seen stretching back two blocks. It is a healthy crowd of a couple thousand congregated, but it is certainly not the 10,000 one KWRU organizer predicted would show up.

Throughout, the policemen are accommodating, but intimidating. Their leader, Captain John Codiglia, can be seen joking with reporters and checking in concernedly to see how the marchers in wheel chairs are doing. But the van always remains, and a helicopter is constantly buzzing by overhead. At one point, a man in a navy jacket with the letters "NYPD" and "TARU" (Technical Assistance Response Unit) emblazoned on the back can be seen photographing the crowd, and he draws stares.

The KWRU marchers, bussed up from Philadelphia, are located toward the front of the line forming a protective barrier around their children and the disabled marchers. An older woman, Esther Ortiz, is there to "let them know that I'm a woman with cancer and lung problems and my cards don't cover my medications," adding, "My story needs to be heard." Heather, a young social worker, echoes that same refrain about visibility. "I need my family and the rest of the world to know we're not going away."

The idea of visibility comes up repeatedly with Honkala and the other marchers. Visibility is the inherent in most protests; communicating with the public in a democracy can sway voters and get things done. But visibility is a particularly poignant issue for the KWRU and the poor. The politics of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty," with programs like Medicaid targeted directly at the indigent, is ancient history. Anti-poverty policy and rhetoric have lost the spotlight amidst the "Reagan Revolution" and the Clinton "Third Way" presidency. Mainstream Democratic Party politics today reach out to the poor, certainly. But the programs that benefit the poor are also targeted at a broad swath of the middle class. On John Kerry's website the page on poverty lists remedies such as job creation and expanded health care coverage, proposals the impact a huge chunk of America. Programs expressly targeted toward the poor are few and far between.

Honkala feels let down by the Democratic Party. "I don't think Democrats are any better because it was under a Democratic president that we produced welfare reform," she says. Still, the economic policies of the Bush administration have her particularly irked. "Four years ago, we organized a massive march in Philadelphia because we weren't surviving what was happening in the country. Now the situation is ten times worse." Indeed recent surveys have shown that the poverty rate, descending for decades from around 20 percent to 11 percent has climbed to nearly 13 percent in recent years.

According to the Census Bureau, the number of Americans living in poverty or lacking health insurance rose for the third straight year in 2003. The national poverty rate, measured by the bureau in August, is 12.5 percent, reflecting a job market that has failed to match otherwise strong economic growth. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (USBLS) reports that as of September, the unemployment rate, although down from its national ten-year high of 6.3 percent in June of 2003, is now at 5.4 percent, the decline occurring almost completely during the second half of last year. There are still 35.9 million jobless people, says the Census Bureau, which reports that the hardest hit by poverty have been women, who for the first time since 1999, saw their earnings decline, and children. By December of 2003, 12.9 million children lived in poverty. As of August, the number of people without health insurance grew during 2003, to 45 million, reflecting an increase to 15.6 percent from 15.2 percent since 2002. While the median household income remained stagnant at $43,318, the rate of poverty also rose .4 percent since that time.

Amidst a campaign focused on Iraq and middle class job losses, anti-poverty groups may have little choice but to hit the streets to get their message out. In terms of visibility, the march was a partial success. It got plenty of coverage in liberal media, including a favorable profile in the online magazine Salon. But overall, the march was drowned out by the convention speeches in Madison Square Garden. Moreover, an incident at the end of the march largely blunted the protest's message.

After the marchers had proceeded peacefully all the way down to 23rd Street, and then back uptown toward the Garden at 34th Street, a scuffle broke out at the end of the demonstration between a plain clothed cop on a motorcycle and a protestor. Officer William Sample was knocked off his scooter and beaten unconscious on camera. His attacker slipped away unidentified, and the mystery of his identity dominated local news coverage of the rally. The name of the alleged attacker is Jamal Holiday of East Harlem. He was caught the next day, in the same clothes he had worn the night before.

As the fight was breaking outside, inside the RNC the there was no mention of poverty as John McCain and Rudolf Guliani harped on 9/11 and Iraq. Nevertheless, Honkala marched, and she never betrayed a hint of desperation. Near the end of her speech, standing in the shadow of the Trump World Tower, she sounded bold. "We feel that it's up to us, those being impacted in this country. We have to get in the fight for our own survival. We need to begin a movement calling for an end to unemployment hunger and homelessness. And then we're going to see some changes in this country, when we have millions and millions of people saying that they will no longer tolerate Democrats and Republicans abandoning the majority of people that live in the country."

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