March
Continued from page C-3
With so many people associated with HRC dominating the MMOW executive board (Donna Red Wing was with HRC until she left for the Gill Foundation last year), Tyler says that "HRC was running the whole show." To Tyler's mind, both groups should be stepping up and taking full responsibility for the disaster that the Millennium Festival became.
The original idea for the festival was that it would be run by MMOW, with all of the proceeds split evenly between MMOW and Washington's Whitman-Walker Clinic. The festival was the brainchild of José Uclés, then an MMOW board member and an employee of Whitman-Walker (Uclés ran D.C.'s Capital Pride festival, which is underwritten by Whitman-Walker). However, the plan for a duel [sic] benefit fell through. Instead, Uclés left both MMOW and Whitman-Walker in order to establish Millennium Productions, LLC. This for-profit company agreed to give MMOW 65 percent of the profit and keep 35 percent for itself.
"I was surprised to see that happen," former board member Genie Cowan says. "It seemed to me that some people got on the board so that they could benefit from the march."
Like a fortuneteller, Tyler had foreseen Uclés' departure from the board and even prophesied the alleged robbery at the festival. But she's not a psychic: It came instead from years of experience as a producer of women's music festivals.
In a speech she gave to the board in September of last year, confirmed by two individuals who were at the board meeting, Tyler said to Uclés, "As a board member, it is not ethical, or even legal, for you to use this as a private venture. Even if you quit the board, unless MMOW controls the gate and the dollars, there is no way to guarantee that the money will not disappear."
She then turned to the rest of the board: "Since all of the permits are in the March on Washington's name, and this has the poten-
fae Golde 2000
tial of being the biggest fundraiser, you must not give the running of this business to someone on the board. I am an outdoor events producer, having produced 25 music and comedy festivals. Unless the gate is tightly controlled by bonded people, there is no way to ensure the cash not being stolen. It will turn around to bite you in the ass.'
""
And bite them in the ass it did. The festival sat on the bottom of the house of cards that MMOW built. And as the march came closer it grew ever more shaky. As Tyler notes, though HRC is trying to distance itself from MMOW, and though MMOW is trying to distance itself from the festival, looking at the events in the days leading up to the march it's more and more apparent that all of the groups often co-mingled on this entire affair. Millennium Productions may have been a private, for-profit company, but it shared the same office with MMOW. “It made things easier," says Michael Gallagher, MMOW's former financial director. "I was able to just, you know, walk down the hall, and people could know what was going on with one another." Gallagher wound up overseeing the finances of MMOW and Millennium Productions. The $400,000 loan (with a $100,000 repayment fee) to the festival from former MMOW board member and executive director Malcolm Lazin was brought in and overseen by Gallagher. And Millennium Productions did not take out insurance or use bonded staff to collect money at the festival.
director Elizabeth Birch made a pitch for those present to dig into their pockets. Within ten minutes, over $100,000 in donations was collected. Meanwhile, in the week before the march, gay businesses and individuals were approached for over $500,000 more in loans
"Unless the gate is tightly controlled by bonded
people, there is no way to
ensure the cash not being
stolen. It will turn around to bite you in the ass."
-Robin Tyler
(see the chart of the money trail).
In that frantic last week before the march, even these large loans, however, couldn't come in fast enough and bills had to be paid. In their roles as MMOW executive committee members and members of MMOW's finance committee, Margaret Conway and
Committee fumbles its way into debt Michael Armentrout went to HRC for a bridge
If the festival was having money woes, MMOW itself was in dire financial straits in the weeks preceding the march, and there was even talk of canceling the event, say several people associated with MMOW. Bills were outstanding, and threatening letters were coming from creditors. MMOW was already in debt to the tune of $250,000 to HRC, which had lent the money in previous months. Desperate pleas went out to individuals and businesses in the community.
MMOW's executive director Diane Hardy-Garcia went to a meeting of HRC's board of governors in March, where she gave a presentation after which HRC executive
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loan. It, of course, helped that Conway also happens to be the managing director of HRC-second in command after Birch herself-and that Armentrout also happens to be a board member of HRC.
Few would disagree that it was in HRC's best interests to do whatever it could to make sure the march came off; the Equality Rocks concert, which would bring over $700,000 to HRC, hinged on the march. And anyone who was present at the march saw HRC's master plan finally in operation, how it would use the march as a massive marketing and outreach tool-with HRC banners and logos everywhere—not to mention using it as a campaign rally for the candidate they'd backed and to whom they promised gay votes, Al Gore. Birch stumped for him from the stage in a show of support-live on CSPAN-for which he's certainly grateful.
A short-term loan until the other monies came through for MMOW—”in and out very quickly," as Birch told me was perhaps seen as harmless and worth it, if it meant the march would go on.
But a week later, on May 1, the house of cards was coming down, as the MMOW figured out the festival had been robbed. Suddenly, it was looking like nobody who loaned money to MMOW was going to be paid except HRC, which got its $110,000 bridge loan back.
HRC a step removed from the muck
HRC is not as thick in the muck over the
fall of the Millennium Festival as is MMOW, of course. HRC, after all, had its own benefit concert, which brought in over $700,000, and it benefited in other ways from the march. But the group is still out $250,000.
HRC also took a bruising through the two years march critics pummeled it, pointing to the dangers of a top-down corporate strategy. Now those same critics will be saying "I told you so," and HRC certainly doesn't want to field more attacks. Not to mention the crowds on the Mall who saw the banners and the speakers and thought this was HRC's march; now, seeing headlines in the media, some of those same people are bound to associate HRC with the FBI investigation.
For that reason, HRC, along with MMOW, is trying to control spin on this. After I broke the news of the FBI investigation, the MMOW issued a press release claiming Hardy-Garcia was in the meeting with the FBI, along with Conway and Armentrout, and not Michael Boucher, MMOW's counsel who had told me about the meeting. Birch expressed anger that I mentioned Conway and Armentrout's staff and board affiliation with HRC, as if those relationships were not relevant. Birch also insisted Hardy-Garcia was in the meeting. But according to Boucher and another source, Hardy-Garcia only shook the FBI agents' hands before leaving the room.
Why is it so important to Birch that I report that Hardy-Garcia was in the meeting (when Hardy-Garcia didn't mention it to me in an interview after the story appeared)?
"I'll tell you why," Birch says. "Because the executive director is responsible for running an entity and it's important to note that the board leadership and the executive director wanted to seek out law enforcement... We did not run the march. We haven't been near it."
HRC called this march, and it's ludicrous for Birch to try to distance HRC this way. To masses of folks who came to D.C. on April 30 from far and wide, and who got an HRC flag and bought an Equality Wear pullover at the HRC store, and who listened to HRC's Birch praise Al Gore in the name of everyone there, and who heard Birch take a swipe at all those nasty people who'd attacked her and the march in the months previous, HRC will always be remembered as having put on the march.
Sure, MMOW with all its flaws ran the march, but HRC staff, board and supporters were intimately involved in MMOW's affairs. And MMOW, by keeping power in only a few hands, allowed for questionable practices that ultimately led to the fall of the festival.
The march itself will now be remembered as the house of cards that came tumbling down. The FBI may find the missing cash and who allegedly stole it, but whether anyone learns any lessons about organizing from this fiasco remains to be seen.
Posted May 25 on gay.com.
You can find more work by Michelangelo Signorile on the Gay.com Network, http:// www.gay.com.
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