CBS News is reporting, in an interview with her, that Green Party presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein has announced her choice for the party’s vice presidential candidate, to be approved at this week’s convention in Baltimore.  Cheri Honkala is the Stein campaign’s choice, a poor people’s advocate based in Philadelphia and the national coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.

There was some speculation that actress and comedian Roseanne Barr, who is also running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination, would be the vice presidential candidate.  However, Stein has opted instead for Honkala, saying in an announcement, “Compelled by her own experience as a homeless, single mom, Honkala has spent nearly three decades working directly alongside the poor to build the movement to end poverty, and has organized tens of thousands of people to take action via marches, demonstrations and tent cities.”

Honkala herself stated, “It’s immoral that children are hungry and homeless in the richest country in the world. It’s time for the 99% to stand united to serve our collective human needs instead of selfish, corporate greed. The Green Party is the only one standing up to Wall Street, and Jill Stein’s Green New Deal is the best plan for saving this sinking ship. I’m honored to fight beside her.”

For the time being, Honkala is also coordinating ballot access efforts for the Green Party of Pennsylvania, which is in the process of working to collect over 40,000 signatures by the end of July. Honkala joined the Green Party in 2011, when she ran for Sheriff of Philadelphia on a platform of turning the Sheriff’s office from the department that evicts people to a social service working to “keep families in their homes,” as well as establishing community land trusts so that people living near vacant and abandoned properties can control them.  Honkala ran for Sheriff after labor organizer Hugh Giordano reinvigorated the Green Party of Philadelphia with his strong run for state representative in 2010.  The campaign proposal of addressing blight and vacant lots is part of a Philadelphia-wide political effort to address vacant land in the city in recent years.  Honkala is also consistently involved in efforts to prevent individual families from losing their homes to foreclosure and other work ensuring the basic survival of some of the most economically oppressed in Philadelphia.  The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign also operates around the United States, and is part of various international poor peoples’ movements.

As mentioned earlier, Honkala has been an activist of one form or another, whether simply to ensure the survival of herself and her son in the Minnesota winter when she was homeless or organizing protests at the Republican National Convention in 2000, for decades.  Several documentaries have been made about her or her efforts, including “Poverty Outlaw,” and she was featured in the book The Myth of the Welfare Queen. Honkala has been named one of the 100 most powerful people in the region by Philadelphia magazine, as well as being named “Person of the Year” once by Philadelphia Weekly. Her son Mark Webber is an actor, director, and playwright who used his celebrity to help her campaign for Sheriff.  In that campaign, Cheri campaigned and organized in Philadelphia, as well as travelling the country to encourage progressives to leave the Democratic Party and encourage Greens to approach politics in a way that is more inclusive of and relevant to poor people.

A press conference was held today to make the announcment, which has been posted on Jill Stein’s campaign website.

Originally posted at IndependentPoliticalReport.com.

[Disclosure:  I was involved in Cheri Honkala's campaign for Sheriff on many levels and this summer I have been part of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, working on a farm they are organizing in the neighborhood where Honkala lives.  I am also a member of the Green Party of PA, was active in Hugh Giordano's campaign, and have been collecting signatures to get the Stein campaign on the ballot there.]

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org
http://www.cherihonkala.com
http://www.facebook.com/Cheri4Sheriff

WASHINGTON, DC — Cheri Honkala, candidate for Sheriff of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has emerged as the Green Party’s highest profile candidate in the 2011 election year.

Ms. Honkala’s campaign slogans, “Keeping Families in Their Homes,” “The People’s Sheriff,” and “Referendum on America,” reflect her pledge, if elected, to declare a moratorium on home evictions until the economic climate in Philadelphia changes.

“I’m running for Sheriff because something needs to be done to address the plague of home evictions being faced by too many poor and working families in Philadelphia,” said Ms. Honkala, who is using her campaign to help build the nation-wide movement to reverse the growing dominance of banks and other corporations over our government and local communities.

Cheri Honkala discussed her campaign and “zero evictions” platform at the Green Party’s 2011 Annual National Meeting in Alfred, New York, on August 5 (http://nygreenfest.org). Two videos of Ms. Honkala speaking at the meeting: http://vimeo.com/27355841 and http://vimeo.com/27415010

Ms. Honkala would be the first woman sheriff in Philadelphia. The city’s past sheriff, who resigned during a corruption investigation, cooperated with banks in evicting families from homes as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis, and Ms. Honkala’s Democratic and Republican competitors in the race intend to continue using the sheriff’s office as a tool for the financial industry.

The crisis was triggered when low- and middle-income working Americans were unable to refinance their homes after they were issued adjustable-rate mortgages. The subprime mortgage crisis, stemming from misleading lending practices by banks and other financial companies, touched off the 2008 economic meltdown.

“Our so-called political leaders don’t dare to do anything of substance against the banks,” said Jason Bosch, chief of staff for the Cheri Honkala campaign. “Cheri Honkala’s campaign is the most significant thing happening in this country to challenge these banks and the direction they are taking all of us. Philadelphia voters have the unique opportunity to do something that no other voters in America have — to change policy with one vote. If Cheri gets elected there will be no evictions. This will force banks to the table and expand the discourse around these issues to include the voices of people who are struggling just to survive and keep a roof over their heads. This is a campaign of national significance.”

The Honkala campaign supports the development of community-based land trusts. There are over 40,000 vacant properties in Philadelphia, and community-based ownership of these properties offers the means to house people in need of homes and to create more urban gardens and public spaces that will strengthen communities. Ms. Honkala sides with immigrants facing raids and deportations that tear apart families, affirming that she will stand with poor working class people of all nationalities and refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Cheri Honkala, a tireless advocate for the nation’s poor and homeless, founded the local Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the national Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, which works to help people who cannot get help through bureaucratic channels find solutions to their housing crises. She has organized numerous street demonstrations in Philadelphia, as well as efforts to reclaim and occupy vacant homes for poor families in need of housing.

Ms. Honkala was included in Philadelphia Magazine’s list of 100 Most Powerful Philadelphians and was named Philadelphia Weekly’s “Woman of the Year” in 1997.

David Cobb, the Green Party’s 2004 presidential nominee, called Cheri Honkala “a long-distance runner for social justice” and added, “I think Cheri’s campaign can become the ’signature’ national electoral campaign for progressives of all stripes in 2011.”

The Cheri Honkala campaign headquarters is located about 100 feet from the site where Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. Ms. Honkala has dedicated her campaign to forging a new independence — independence from the big banks and other corporations, which Jefferson himself warned about. “I hope we shall… crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.” (Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, November 12, 1816)