Chillin' Wit Green Party VP candidate Cheri Honkala

Chillin' Wit' is a regular feature of the Daily News spotlighting a name in the news away from the job.

SUNDAYS are for laundry in Cheri Honkala's Kensington rowhouse, but this Sunday she's sidetracked, sitting on a comfy red loveseat, chatting with some friends.

They're discussing how Honkala, 49, a well-known advocate for the poor and homeless, hopes to become one of the nation's most powerful people next month. She's the Green Party's vice-presidential candidate.

"I really need to do laundry," Honkala says, her cellphone ringing constantly.

It's one of Honkala's last days in Kensington for a few weeks, as she prepares to hit the campaign trail with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein this week.

Penciled in on calendars on a living-room wall are the states she plans to visit. With Halloween around the corner, decals of a mummy and of Dracula are on the window, and plastic bloody ears are on the coffee table.

"I'm sorry, my life is crazy right now," the one-time candidate for Philadelphia sheriff says, pausing to answer the phone.

With her in the living room are Philadelphians Tara Colon and Glenn Davis. They are advising her on the campaign and on her hectic schedule. Her precocious son, Guillermo Santos, 10, known in the house as "boy genius," is also part of the action.

"How many people on this block have hunger problems?" she asks him, pulling back his earphones as he plays on her MacBook.

"You asked the wrong question," he shoots back. "It's not how many people have hunger problems; it's how many don't have hunger problems. The answer is zero."

Honkala's platform with the Green Party dovetails with her passions: empowering the poor, implementing universal healthcare, ending the war on drugs and cutting back corporate America's influence on politics. Honkala is poor herself, she says, "sometimes" getting a salary from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, the nonprofit group she founded.

Being poor and being in a third party shouldn't exclude someone from the process, she says.

"We don't just think we're dreamers," she says. "We think we make changes."

- Jason Nark