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Originally posted at IndependentPoliticalReport.com.
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.
[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.]
18 Comments
Excellent. Thanks for the update rossi. Recommended!
an excellent choice!
I will be delighted to vote for them.
Thank you, rossl (hope I got that right?). My initial response — good. I’ll try to expand on comments later. Like many, I sorta have a “full plate” right now…IMO, we need some of our good Philly firepups here to tell us what they think (or smell, heh).
Seems like a good pick. I read that the Green Party slate qualified for matching fed funds. It will be interesting to see whether they can get any kind of traction.
Pardon me if I don’t get excited. Stein will probably get my vote because I’m committed to avoiding voting for either uniparty candidate. That said, this is simply more evidence of the delusional nature of Green Party campaigns.
Couldn’t find anyone with even a tinge more credibility and experience? Not a single former officeholder anywhere?
This is one reason why Michael Cavlan and others were correct in suggesting that combining Stein and Rocky Anderson on the same ticket would be so effective.
But no, Jill and the Green Party diletanttes had to go out and get yet another person no one’s ever heard of with no experience in government.
Here’s a hypothetical for you: Honkala is the person you want in the
“heartbeat away from the Presidency” seat?
Someday somebody is going to organize a third party that wants to win, and I can’t wait.
To the extent that we are in a class war, she could be the candidate we need.
Personally, I think Rocky Anderson would be great. But did he want the vice-president nomination? Isn’t he running on his own?
Getting someone with officeholding experience who doesn’t come off as an opportunist running on a third-party ticket is difficult. Anderson’s views are well-established enough to rebut that image, but that is rare. Meanwhile, there really aren’t enough already elected Greens who have the kind of officeholding cred that would grab the public’s attention.
In otherwords, I think the Green Party’s choices are limited currently to either a pick based on party principals or a pick who is a sell-out former Dem or Rep. At least they made a pick on principal.
Flogging a Dead Horse
http://wp.me/p1hyep-2o7
I think you may find this article somewhat representative of your views. I’m considering importing it to MyFDL…
I am also very disappointed in this choice. There was an opportunity for a broadranging appeal across the board, and while the candidate for VP doesn’t have to be as much front and center as the candidate for president, one should be able to imagine them holding the office at the very least, and much as I admire the accomplishments of Ms. Honkala and enjoyed the interview with her and her son as she ran for Sheriff, I cannot imagine her doing so.
I can imagine her as an extremely effective member of a new administration’s cabinet, with someone more experienced on the front line, thus more of a campaign asset in general selected as VP candidate. Surely there were other candidates – I don’t buy that ‘the choices are limited’ when so many are currently disaffected with the duopoly. I would expect a presidential candidate to be strong enough in his/her own dominant qualities to choose the best and the brightest – and/or be willing to take second place for the good of the country, as in a Rocky/Jill combo. What a disappointment that did not happen.
I’m beginning to look at other options than party politics. As Jane has said, elections are not what is important, and this choice seems to illustrate that. It is too much like what has happened in the past, and does seem a signal of insularity, a decision to take a back seat rather than a bold move to generate universal appeal.
I read your article, aprescoup, and I disagree with it in the following sense. The disaffection with the duopoly has now proceeded beyond the ‘left/right’ exclusionary zones, and a third party candidacy needs to reflect universality, not, pardon my insult (but there will be worse) parochialism.
We have prominent frontline protestors now that are outspoken and experienced,( not to name anyone who might have been vetted and declined.) I can’t believe there’s not someone among these who would patriotically lend her/his charisma to the cause.
It does seem as if the Greens are choosing to take a back seat this time around. We really need them up front and in your face and not to be taken lightly. That’s not a matter of trauma from having been in the closet too long, that’s a matter of out there representing all the people who are sick and tired of the status quo in the most eloquent manner possible. Fire in the belly. The best of the best.
I hope that is what is going to happen, but there is precious little time left, and this is looking like a standin for the next go around, by which time Ms. Honkala will have honed her political skills and be a force to be reckoned with. Do we really have that kind of time?
I agree with what you’ve written as far as the Green Party goes. I was going to vote for Jill Stein, and still might, but I am drawn to the Socialist Equality Party. Jerry White is running for President and Phyllis Scherrer is runnig for Vice-President.
http://socialequality.com/
Scroll down and read what the Socialist Equality Party has to say about Obama’s “Health Care” Act:
http://socialequality.com/story/supreme-court-ruling-obama%E2%80%99s-health-care-overhaul
The SEP is enthusiastic, intelligent, and committed. I don’t know why more people aren’t getting behind it.
I actually think Cheri has the potential to really broaden the Green Party’s appeal. Or at least begin to do so. She’s started doing it incredibly well in Philadelphia, and the group that she brings into the party is poor people. In Philly, we’ve gotten new candidates and neighborhood leaders in the party (not to mention, new members) in the inner city neighborhood where Cheri lives, a neighborhood we’ve never had a base in before. (just see this article for an outsider’s perspective: http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phillynow/2012/07/11/activists-collect-signatures-as-cheri-honkala-is-chosen-as-green-party-vp-candidate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=activists-collect-signatures-as-cheri-honkala-is-chosen-as-green-party-vp-candidate ) I think Cheri has the potential to start creating some very powerful political coalitions between what is more her constituency, the poor and people of color, and the more affluent, white people that tend to populate the Green Party.
So Cheri might not be building the party in a way that always grabs headlines, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the best way to build political coalitions anyway.
Poor people, as we know, are demonized by the right and, except for some we’ll-cut-food-stamps-less-than-they-will posturing, largely ignored by the D’s. Ending poverty and homelessness, or even halting the downward spiral, were never going to be part of the duopoly campaign or platform. The Green New Deal as it’s presented on Stein’s website starts out, after a few introductory remarks, with talking about poverty.
I think bringing poverty and homelessness into the campaign in such a direct way by this VP selection is a good idea. It seems to mean that the campaign will be about all of us.
(For the record, I personally don’t see electoral politics, including third party politics, as the sole path forward in the short term. I do see the 2012 Green campaign (and probably others, though I’m less informed about the status) as party building and movement building that needs to be done along with other aspects of building a broad based movement. So, my opinion on specific details like candidate selection would be influenced by that.)
For what it’s worth, the NY Times has an article out on Stein and the Green Party today.
I tend to agree. While I am sure that Honkala is a wonderful person with tremendous life experience I think someone more familiar with the DC environ would have been a better pick. Whoever wins they will still have to deal with Congress and their academic hubris. Honkala sounds more like a HUD cabinet position(and I’d love to see more people in DC that have had one on one experience with dealing with the mess that politicians have made of programs initially created to help people) than a person that would be capable of filling Stein’s shoes should something happen.
That being said, I think Stein/Honkala is a better ticket than Obama/Biden or Romney/anyone.
Poverty is demonized by both sides. It’s a real problem. However, it isn’t the ONLY problem our country faces. It sounds like Cheri has good and practical knowledge with how poorly our social safety nets work for those born on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. However, I have to wonder if someone who has spent so much time and passion struggling to fix those nets is going to be as versed in foreign policy.
She sounds like she’d be better suited to a cabinet position.
And other than Rocky who didn’t want a Green Party affilliation, do you have another suggestion?
2 things. It’s a VP pick and as such not typically well known even in the mainstream parties. Secondly, even if the Jill picked Roseanne or oh, I don’t know, Ben Stiller, they would still not get pass the Dems or repubs. IMO, the party would only look like a party not to be taken seriously by grabbing some celebrity.
It will take many years before the Greens or any other 3rd party can take any office in national spotlight. The 2 corrupt parties are not going to make this easy.
I don’t dispute that what you’re saying is a valid argument. But our current political class, who may or may not understand foreign policy, doesn’t understand or care about homelessness, hunger, poverty, or day to day need to earn a living or get health care, and this leaves a big vacuum in the debate that keeps getting filled with right wing talking points. Maybe this campaign can put something else into that vacuum.