Cheri Honkala's March to the RNC

[American liberal]

Anybody following this brave group's progress? I encourage you to e-mail and call and write your local press to demand media coverage. It's the best means we have to keep them from getting beaten up by the police.

If nothing else, read the story (I think you have to be a paid subscriber. A friend sent it to me).

Peace,
AL

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Leading a feisty army of homeless people, fiery activist Cheri Honkala is about to descend on the Republican Convention.

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By Michelle Goldberg



Aug. 5, 2004 | On Aug. 30, the first day of the Republican National
Convention in New York, Cheri Honkala is going to march from the United Nations to Madison Square Garden with or without a protest permit. Behind her will be homeless women and their children, men furloughed from rehab centers, public housing tenants, wheelchair-bound people without healthcare and poor people hanging on to life by their fingernails. Arrayed against them will be walls of police in riot gear, armed with the latest in high-tech crowd-control devices and ready for mass arrests. For the past two weeks, Honkala and her followers have been marching across New Jersey, and undercover police have been videotaping and photographing them. Fearing violence, Honkala has put out a call for international human rights observers to watch over her group during the RNC.

Most of Honkala's group can't afford legal trouble or physical
confrontations. Yesenia Cruz, a 24-year-old mother of five, is more than eight months pregnant. Elizabeth Ortiz, a fiery, stick-thin mother of three, has a weak heart -- she had a triple bypass before she turned 40. Craig Tann is a drug addict and former dealer who once served three years in prison and doesn't want to go back. But they're going to march anyway, partly out of determination and partly out of dedication to Honkala. She's helped some off the streets. She's helped others find jobs or get disability payments. She's given all of them the dignity of belonging to a cause larger than themselves. Many of them seem like they would follow her anywhere.

from salon.com