January 3, 2020
Dear AJLA Stakeholders:
I have been fortunate to work at Advancing Justice Los Angeles for the last 17 years. As I depart, I wanted to share some observations and words of encouragement with staff and stakeholders.
To begin, this letter is not accusatory in nature: I believe most folks were doing the best they could with the tools, skills, and information at their disposal. I know, for myself, there were many missteps I made during my time at AJLA in terms of personal interactions and self-righteousness. Using this letter as a cudgel misses the point: this letter is an invitation to clarify some details and also for all us all to do better (myself included) moving forward.
The crisis Advancing Justice Los Angeles is going through was completely foreseeable. What was not foreseeable was the extent of the crisis and how the response to the crisis on all sides devalued people who should have leveraged the crisis as an opportunity to find life affirming solutions. Instead, it has left the organization in a state of financial ruin and interpersonal acrimony. It was unforeseeable that an interim executive director wreak the havoc they did (both interpersonally as well as professionally). I have more to share but that’s a subsequent conversation.
To staff, I would encourage you to dig deep inside and find the historic and undeniable power of being a worker in struggle. It pained me to see non-AJLA folks protesting Gavin Newsom at the AJLA annual dinner willing to push harder than you and your laid off comrades. If you’re going to fight, please fight with all you have and a diversity of tactics. Build principled and meaningful alliances; don’t allow yourselves to be led by neoliberals who only want change that benefits them. Also, please examine the classism and racism that is very present in the organizing model you are using. You can win if you dare.
To fellow senior directors and managers, while the current process doesn’t leverage the brilliance and dedication of folks at this level, please keep trying to infuse your knowledge of and direct experience in programmatic work in long-term planning conversations. Nobody knows the programmatic work like you do. Don’t let folks own your truth or muddy your work. At the end of the day, you’re the ones who make sure which pieces of work move forward. Like staff, you also have an enormous amount of unrealized and unexercised power. Resist the urge to get along and become a sycophant. I encourage you to continue using your minds and hearts to protect your staff and the services your teams provide. Support the new in-house leadership unless they betray you. Let’s make sure to hold the right people accountable.
To former senior directors and managers, supporting employee struggles does not mean gaslighting. Many former senior directors and managers spent AJLA money as if there was no tomorrow and now publicly wring their hands as if they didn’t see the financial catastrophe coming. Beware of folks who blame the current leadership team for a problem that was more than a decade in the making. While former Vice Presidents hold the brunt of the blame for the crisis, anybody who touched budgets knew or should have known that AJLA was a house of cards financially.
To current management, I appreciate the work that you are doing but beg that you identify a theory of change for AJLA and remember that the most important resource you have are staff. Lately, both in terms of language (e.g. “human capital”) and actions, I’m seeing AJLA drift away from being a place where racial justice and interpersonal relations are valued. It takes less effort to value staff than to replace them; and without a racial justice analysis, there’s no reason why AJLA should exist. I understand you are responding to a crisis but, to me, it’s important to use a values centered approach that is rooted in more than financial wellbeing. No healing can happen while folks who were complicit in enabling the recent violence towards staff sit at the leadership table.
To the board, I’m grateful that you have shown up in this moment of crisis; that said, this was a crisis over a decade in the making. I wish there was a way to identify the board members who were complicit by their inattention or dereliction of board duty for creating the crisis. These board members deserve to be named because their inattention resulted in a 24% involuntary reduction in force (layoffs) as well as a mass exodus of staff (such as mine). The rush to fix things seems to have missed many learning opportunities and has not been strategic in nature. This lack of strategy is to be expected as you are “fixing” things that took a long time to break. This is a hallmark of disaster capitalism. I encourage you to pause and see if the measures you’ve identified are short term patches or long-term solutions. The interim executive director you hired created harm and you never checked-in with long-term staff...you took the word of someone with no connection to the organization instead. I would encourage you to tap the knowledge and experience of middle management/directors as you attempt to right this ship. For a mission-driven organization, there has to be a deeper and shared strategy that extends beyond getting out of a $2M deficit.
To James, Angelique, Michi, Janet G and other unsung heroes on the admin side of the house. I see you; I value you. Any organization would be lucky to have you and I hope you feel valued. I hope I have made you feel valued and I apologize if my urgency with my work made you feel less valued. It’s a tragedy that nonprofits tend to underinvest in folks like you who, at the end of the day, make sure the lights are on and that our work can move forward. An organization without infrastructure is an organization with limited resiliency and incomplete strategy. Beware of outsourced infrastructure.
Finally, funders. This is also your fault. Too many organizations are trapped chasing money and altering programs to become eligible for these monies. Too many funders have short funding cycles where the impact of programmatic work is not given adequate time to take shape or have an impact. Too many of your programs don’t come with uniform reporting tools and metrics. Give organizations the tools to succeed: fund leadership development in a way that doesn’t make managers choose between meeting deliverables and being trained; provide funding for infrastructure; don’t make organizations invest substantial time for small pots of money. Also, end your inside track, invite only, boy’s club practices. You can be a catalyst for resilient organizations doing amazing and life affirming work by supporting smaller and femme-led organizations instead of larger formations. Please set organizations up to succeed, not to struggle.
I’m thankful for all I learned during my time at AJLA: It continues to be an organization with promise. I hope it finds its soul sooner rather than later. I encourage all stakeholders to find a common and principled ground at this time of emboldened white supremacy. In the end, all we have is each other. Remember that.
Wishing you tenderness towards each other, renewed faith in a better world, and with apologies for any offense this communication may cause. --ken