Miller Genuine Draft: The Messiah Complex At Work, Part III

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, New York City, Pop Culture, Work

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"Personal Jesus", Academy for Educational Development, Bipolar Disorder, De-funding, Depeche Mode, Depression, Ford Foundation, Human Rights and International Cooperation, Manic Depression, Messiah Complex, MGD, Miller Genuine Draft, New Voices, New Voices Fellowship Program, The Ford Foundation

This is the third in a series of posts I’ve done about my experiences with a former supervisor during my years with the New Voices Fellowship Program at the Academy for Educational Development (see my earlier posts, “The Messiah Complex At Work, Part I” and “Breakdown: The Messiah Complex At Work, Part II” for more). This one is a bit out-of-order, but it’s also both funny and sad at the same time.

It was the last Friday in March ’03 that the powers that were at the Ford Foundation had requested a meeting with Ken about the program up in New York. Not me and Ken, not “Driving Miss Daisy” Sandra and Ken, and not Yvonne and Ken. Just Ken. I knew immediately that this was a bad sign when I learned of the meeting. But Ken said, “No, no, this could be good. We’ve done everything they’ve asked of us.”

With Alan Jenkins now the head of the Human Rights and International Cooperation unit — Anthony Romero having left more than a year before for the ACLU — and with Yvonne about to retire, there really wasn’t anyone on either side of the AED-Ford Foundation relationship that would ensure the continuing, intact funding of our little program. If I could figure this out, I figured anyone could. At least, anyone with any experience working with foundations.

So around 5:30 on March 28, as I was cleaning up my office and preparing for the much-needed weekend with my five-months’ pregnant wife, my phone rang. I half-expected it to be Angelia making some requests for stuff to pick up from CVS or the grocery store on my way from the Silver Spring Metro, so I left the music running, which happened to be Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus.”

As soon as I picked up and said my name and “New Voices,” Ken began to talk. He asked me,”Are you sitting down?,” and then continued about the main event at 320 East 43rd. Despite the efforts of Ken, me and the rest of the staff to attract new kinds of fellows to New Voices, the various successes of those Fellows and their organizations, that a couple of program officers were unhappy with the amount of investment it took to attract these highly qualified individuals. That, and an overall change in priorities — which could have been seen from Mount Everest looking down on New York once Ford had launched its International Fellowship program at the end of ’01 — meant that there was a decreasing interest in New Voices.

Two things occurred at this meeting. One, the Human Rights and International Cooperation unit would now only renew funding for New Voices on an annual basis — it was funded in two-year chunks up until that day. And two, starting in ’04, Ford would reduce their overall funding effort by fifteen percent across all aspects of the New Voices budget.

“Well, at least they didn’t cancel the program,” I thought. Ken, though, seemed distraught. Then I noticed

Depressed Forty Year Old Man Drinking Alone, May 6, 2010. (http://istockphoto.com).

that he was slurring his words, a bunch of voices, and the clinking of glasses.

“Ken, where are you?,” I asked.

“Oh, I’m at a bar, drinking a Miller Genuine Draft,” he said.

“Really, you’re drinking?,” I responded, with a gasp as a substitute for laughter.

“I have to drown my sorrows somehow,” Ken said.

“Oh geez,” I thought. He continued talking about the good fight, about parts of the program that we’d have to curtail immediately, about looking for new funding streams for New Voices (the last one I had suggested two years earlier).

“Given where you are, I don’t think that this is a good time or place for us to discuss these issues. Plus, I can barely hear you,” I said.

“You’re right. Well, have a good weekend,” Ken said with his worried, crazy laugh.

I got off the telephone, and turned off the music from my computer’s Windows Media system. Two songs had played since Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” but it was pounding in my head. It was now mixed up with the image of Ken looking disheveled post-Ford meeting, downing a bottle of Miller Genuine Draft while sitting on a bar stool, then ordering another. All by himself. All the while, everyone else around Park Avenue and Grand Central having themselves a good time. I realized at that moment that I wouldn’t see or hear “Personal Jesus” the same way again.

I felt sorry for him, but knowing what I’d gone through with Ken two years earlier, I couldn’t trust his judgment either (see my “Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear” post from June ’11). It was the first evening of the end of my time at New Voices, as well as the first day of Ken’s ten-month spiral that led to Georgetown University Hospital’s psychiatric ward. Apparently, a bottle of MGD’s hardly strong enough to take the weight of mental illness off. Nor did it make Ken wise enough to recognize that when a messiah has failed to deliver, that it would be a good time to rethink how one sees himself and the world.

Working At AED: Alternate Sources of Fear

28 Tuesday Jun 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, New York City, race, Work

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Academy for Educational Development, ACLU, AED, Alan Jenkins, Amtrak, Anthony Romero, Bipolar Disorder, Driving Miss Daisy, Fear, Ford Foundation, Funding, Grant Making, Grant-seeking, Grantmaking, Ken Williams, Micromanagement, Micromanaging, New Voices, New Voices Fellowship Program, New York City, Sources of Funding, Supervisors, The Ford Foundation, The Opportunity Agenda, Worry

AED’s DC Office, circa 2008, before the sign came down. Source: http://www.glassdoor.com

It was ten years ago on this date that I began to think seriously about quitting New Voices and AED, the Academy for Educational Development, the subcontractor for USAID and the State Department in trouble these days (see my “USAID suspends District-based nonprofit AED from contracts amid investigation” post from December ’10). In the end, I probably should’ve on this date. I realized that most of the people I worked for and with cared more about money than Wall Street investment bankers, and had an addiction to fear greater than a junkie’s addiction to heroin. And, most sadly, I began to see signs of what my former immediate supervisor would admit two and a half years later, his bipolar disorder.

I’d seen signs of Ken’s mental illness as early as February ’01, but the first time I realized that I worked in an organization that thrived on fear was after me and my wife returned from our honeymoon in Seattle, at the end of May that year. All during the month of June, as I did site visits in Tulsa, Jackson, Mississippi, Fairbanks, Alaska and Durham, North Carolina, and visited my maternal grandparents in Arkansas, all fear was breaking loose in the New Voices offices at AED. Our funder, the Human Rights and International Cooperation unit at the Ford Foundation in New York, had called for a meeting to discuss the progress of the New Voices Fellowship Program to date.

I didn’t think all that much of it at the time, with me doing site visits almost every week and having done presentations for funders and academicians, including the Spencer Foundation, what was now the Gates Foundation, and a few corporate foundations over the previous five years. But as soon as I returned to the office that last Monday in June ’01, I realized that nearly everyone I worked with directly was on pins and needles about our Thursday afternoon meeting on East 43rd Street in Manhattan. Ken was on a higher level of worry than the rest of the staff, but it wasn’t a good worry. He had our program assistant and associate printing new copies of memos and other meeting materials every time he came up with a new sentence, found an error or realized he wanted orange paper for program statistics instead of lavender.

Jessica Tandy as Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy Screen Shot (though Sandra wasn’t as aged, her attitudes definitely were), 1989. Source: http://heraldsun.com.au

What made this even worse was that on Tuesday, Ken’s boss Sandra — whom I regularly called “Driving Miss Daisy” because of her bigoted semi-liberal ways — called an additional meeting to emphasize how crucial this meeting was to the future of New Voices. After ten minutes, Ken, the program assistant and associate all looked like Bush 43 and former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson did on September 15, ’08, when the US financial markets melted down. When I politely pointed out that “we need to be ready, but not scared” in presenting our results to date to the folks at Ford, another meeting was called.

Except this Wednesday afternoon meeting was just between me and Driving Miss Daisy. She called me out on the carpet for “disrespecting” her. She told me, “if you don’t like it here, you can leave,” and that she’ll be at AED “longer than [me].” It made me feel as if I had to worry about my job for doing my job. Meanwhile, Ken was going over word for word what each of us would have to say the following afternoon in New York, as if one bad choice of words would cost us $2.25 million, money we’d already received from Ford.

After a rough night of sleep before an early Amtrak from DC to New York, I arrived at Penn Station refreshed and glad that I didn’t ride the same train with the rest of the Nervous Nellies. They were already at Houlihan’s, eating an early lunch, with Ken obviously more relaxed from whatever he had to drink by the time I arrived.

The Ford Foundation, 320 East 43rd Street, New York City, November 19, 2007. Source: Stakhanov (permission granted)

The meeting itself was where something kicked in for Ken, what appeared to be a natural high at first. After Sandra and Yvonne (Ken’s actual immediate supervisor, even though Ken never listened to her) did the introductions, Ken took over the two-hour meeting. He talked over me, the program assistant and associate, even the program officers in the spartan meeting room. Ken’s euphoric fear was so strong that he didn’t trust us to speak on behalf of New Voices, meaning that it was a waste of time and money for anyone other than Ken to be there.

Or was is? The imam-suit-wearing program officers from Anthony Romero (who was within a few months had moved on to become the Executive Director of the ACLU) to Alan Jenkins (now co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda), who had sat silently through Ken’s soliloquy, finally spoke in the final fifteen minutes of the meeting. Romero said, “Maybe it’s time for AED to consider looking for alternate sources of funding” for New Voices “over the next couple of years.” That was my take-away from the whole ordeal.

But it wasn’t for Ken. He was on one of his blue-crystal-meth-like highs again, giddy like a kid getting a ten-speed bike for Christmas. Yvonne looked ready to go, while Sandra the wise-one was just happy it was over. I wondered, out loud to the group, if the not-so-veiled hint provided by Romero meant that the unit and foundation’s priorities were changing. I, of course, was accused of worrying too much. Too bad none of the senior staff understood the definition of irony.