Poverty activist Cheri Honkala plans stinky protest for Hillary Clinton’s DNC speech

At least one protest at the upcoming Democratic National Convention here in Philadelphia looks like it will be a real gas.

As TruthDig reports, local activist Cheri Honkala of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign is organizing "the world's largest 'fart-in'" to take place July 28 at the Wells Fargo Center for Hillary Clinton's expected nomination acceptance speech.

In order to fuel up for the protest, Honkala says that she will host a "massive bean supper" for supporters of Bernie Sanders in her Kensington home shortly before the planned protest — dubbed "Beans for Hillary" — begins.

"We are setting up a Clintonville there, modeled on the Hoovervilles of the 1930s where the poor and unemployed built shanty towns," Honkala told TruthDig. "The Sanders delegates, their bellies full of beans, will be able to return to the Wells Fargo Center and greet the rhetorical flatulence of Hillary Clinton with the real thing."

Honkala added that Sanders himself will be invited to join the supper, and that leftovers will be donated to the homeless. Those wishing to help the protest along can reportedly send canned beans to 1301 W. Porter Street, Philadelphia, PA 19148.

Honkala was recently denied a permit for a march on the opening day of the convention, but plans to continue with her demonstration. It will reportedly begin at 3 p.m. on July 25 on the south side of City Hall. The "Beans for Hillary" protest, for its part, will finish off three days of planned protests from the activist.

The "fart-in" concept, meanwhile, goes back to the 1970s, when community organizer Saul Alinsky first proposed the practice in an interview with Playboy magazine, as the American Mirror points out. In it, he suggested utilizing a "flatulent blitzkrieg" at the Rochester (N.Y.) Philharmonic in order to protest against Rochester rich and powerful.

"The concert would be over before the first movement — another Freudian slip — and Rochester would be immortalized as the site of the world's first fart-in," Alinsky told Playboy.

"Such tactics aren't just cute; they can be useful in driving your opponent up the wall," he added.

Clinton clinched the Democratic nomination earlier this month following the Washington, D.C., primary, which she won with 79 percent of the vote compared to Sanders' 21 percent. Overall, Clinton won more than 55 percent of the popular vote, with Sanders garnering just under 43 percent.

"We cannot afford more of the same," Honkala told Truthdig. "We are either going to build third party movements or an American Spring."