The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign has a speaker's bureau. Our 40+ member organizations are available to speak about the campaign, human rights, poverty, the changing economy, organizing, and a wide range of other topics.

Email speakers@kwru.org for more information about speakers.

Cheri Honkala
As a single mother of two sons, Cheri has experienced raising a child while moving in and out of homelessness. She is a former history teacher and social worker with over 15 years of experience organizing poor people. In 1991, she started the Kensington Welfare Rights Union with a group of mothers on welfare and began leading poor Philadelphia families in the struggle for living wage jobs, health care, housing for everyone and daily survival. In the past decade, Cheri and the KWRU have secured housing for more than 500 families by taking over abandoned housing, pressuring city agencies to address people’s housing needs and building homeless encampments.

Cheri has spoken around the world about the struggle against poverty in the U.S. and about her personal contributions to this struggle. She has been arrested dozens of times for non-violent civil disobedience, attempts to prevent the poor from being “disappeared” in the richest country in the world. In addition to her work with the KWRU, Cheri helped found the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, a broad coalition that unites poor people across the country against economic injustice.

Cheri is the National Coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Founder and Former Executive Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Co-Chair of the National Welfare Rights Union and a Member of the Interim National Council of the Labor Party.

Willie Baptist
Formerly homeless father and downwardly mobile, Willie Baptist, is the education director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the Co-Coordinator of the University of the Poor. Coming out of the Watts uprising and the Black Student Movement, he has worked as an organizer and leader of the United Steelworkers Union and the National Union of the Homeless. With the National Union of the homeless he was involved in founding 16 chapters across the country and in the highly profiled national HUD takeover of 1991. He is the founder and program Coordinator of Annie Smart Leadership Development - a training institute created and run by poor and homeless people dedicated to the principle of the poor organizing the poor and training its own leadership.

Over the past ten years as education director for the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Willie has created powerful and effect models for building leadership amongst the ranks of the poor. Willie travels the country, offering Human Rights Schools, to emerging organizations of the poor to teach the basics of economics, human rights and organizing. Locally, he dedicates each day to the development of new KWRU members into strong and informed leaders in the movement to end poverty.

He is the author of many articles, including: "Which Way Welfare Rights?", "The Methods of Building Leadership and Organization, 5 Ingredients in the Poor Organizing the Poor," "The 6 Panther Ps, Tools for the Poor Organizing the Poor in the Fight to End Poverty Now," and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union Strategy Papers. Willie was recently published in the magazine Dollars and Sense and continues to write profusely of the lessons learned through struggle by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union.

Willie has been the recipient of the Spirit of Dignity Award, the Smart-Edward Award presented by the National Welfare Rights Union in 1995, the Community Organizer Award given by National Union of the Homeless in 1993, and Educating for Justice Award presented by the Bread and Roses Community Fund in 2002.

Willie continues to live in Kensington, struggling to make ends meet each month, while dedicating himself to the growing movement to end poverty and guarantee economic human rights for all.

Galen Tyler
Galen Tyler is the Director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. As a forrmerly homeless father of four, he organizes daily to obtain food, housing, and healthcare for families in the neighborhood of Kensington and across the state of PA. Along with other members of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign he was a leader of the March of the Americas, the March for Economic Human Rights on the opening day of the Republican National Convention, and the March for Our Lives on the Opening Day of the Winter Olympics.

Galen recently worked as an organizer for the New Freedom Bus Tour: Economic Human Rights For All, an effort to document economic human rights abuses in over forty cities around the United States and the Poor Peoples March for Economic Human Rights from Mississippi to Washington, DC.

Galen discusses his experience as an organizer of such historic marches, how he became homeless, and why he feels the struggle for a new America without poverty and inequality is so important.

Tara Colon

Tara is a formerly homeless mother, who has been a member of our organization for over seven years. She has lived in various different takeover houses, tent cities, and recently won housing through a KWRU housing campaign. She has organized in both Kensington and Puerto Rico and has spoken all over the United States and the Western Hemisphere about issues of economic human rights.

She is a member of the War Council and the International committee of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. Tara is particularly involved linking up different international organizations that are led by the poor around the issues of the FTAA and the global economy.

Tim Dowlin

Tim Dowlin began his career in theater as an actor at Philadelphia's High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where he studied with Mel Williams, and became one of the founding members of the Theater for a New Generation (TFANG). Dowlin has appeared in numerous TFANG productions; his first play, Corner Wars, premiered in Philadelphia at Temple University in December 2001, and in New York at the 47th Street Theater in January 2003. In writing Corner Wars, Dowlin wanted to provide the outside world with a view of life on the street that would feel real, and illustrate the criminalization of poverty. For both typical theater audiences and those that live in the midst of real-life corner wars, the play represents an attempt to break the cycle of poverty and violence. He also recently won the prestigious Oppenheimer ("Oppy") Award for Corner Wars.

While living in New York and pursuing a career in both film and theater, Dowlin has continued his social activism as a member of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union War Council. He has participated in several nation-wide KWRU events over the last seven years.