Cheri Honkala was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1963. Her father, Maynard Duane Honkala, was of Finnish ancestry, and her mother had Cheyenne Native American ancestry. She grew up watching her mother suffer from domestic violence. Honkala's mother quietly endured this abuse for fear of losing her kids.

Honkala has been a controversial figure throughout her career as a protester and organizer. Feather O. Houstoun, a former secretary of the (Pennsylvania) State Department of Public Welfare, said "She has not been working, rolling up her sleeves on issues like Community Legal Services does. She has never availed herself [of] that opportunity, while other groups have." John Kromer, a former director of the city's office of Housing and Community Development, faxed a five-page letter to KWRU, in which he claimed that the group was actually preventing its poor followers from obtaining housing through its tactic of breaking into vacant homes, rather than utilizing established organizations. He wrote: "No good can come of an organization-building strategy, which is based on misleading poor people or preventing them from obtaining access to available assistance and support." Honkala admits that the group failed to rehabilitate any of the homes illegally taken, but asserts that the group was instrumental in helping 500 formerly homeless people find housing through existing programs. Honkala added: "I get criticized on a regular basis for not being a team player. But I have no qualms about holding a protest tomorrow at anybody's offices if they are denying anybody the basic necessities of life. You're not supposed to do that in Philadelphia." She has been criticized for her confrontational tactics in dealing with the authorities. Author David Zucchino described Honkala's behavior at the first Liberty Bell protest as follows: Cheri loved to make people uncomfortable... She wanted people to squirm and recoil when they saw poor people. She was convinced that America sought desperately to keep its poor out of sight so as not to be reminded of the social policies she believed exacerbated poverty. If the country was going to turn its back on the poor, she was not going to let anyone feel ambivalent about it. She would assault people with her high-pitched nasal voice--in public demonstrations, in confrontations with elected officials, in media interviews, and in front of a ragged tent on Independence Mall. During the church takeover incident, William Parshall, the deputy city managing director, known as the Philadelphia "housing czar," was asked whether Honkala's in-your-face tactics "made his job difficult." Parshall replied that he was far more concerned with such pending problems as national and state welfare cuts. He added, "The question is, what are we going to do about it? That's the question Cheri should be asking." Zucchino in his book details many confrontations between Honkala and the authorities, but also instances in which she reached a mutually satisfactory compromise with them. For example, during the first Liberty Bell protest, she negotiated successfully with park authorities to leave the site without the necessity of admitting guilt or of enduring mass arrests. CANNOTANSWER

was she ever able to help anyone?

helping 500 formerly homeless people find housing through existing programs.