michael franti and abuse of power

if you want to scare away the vampires, you simply guide them into the light

Last week, a musician named Victoria Canal shared online about her experience of being the victim of another artist’s sexual misconduct and grooming several years ago, with an account of the severe impact his abuse had on her life. Michael Franti was quickly identified by others as the perpetrator.

Victoria’s experience sounds somewhat similar to my own experience of knowing Michael Franti, although there are key differences. I was a (huge) fan; Victoria is a professional musician. I was thrilled when he gave me attention; she never wanted anything with him beyond their professional relationship. I willingly consented to physical contact; she demurred.

In Michael’s post, he denies any wrongdoing apart from cheating on his wife. But I believe Victoria, and I don’t want her to have to stand alone. Abuse thrives in darkness and fear, and it’s high time for things to change.

What follows is my recollection of the years I related with him (from 2008 to 2009 and from 2015 to 2017).

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I met Michael Franti at a KMTT radio event on September 12, 2008. The concert was later that night, and I’d been waiting months for it. Spearhead’s music meant so much to me. It would be hard to overstate how much I cared about the messages Michael sang about on his Stay Human, Everyone Deserves Music, and Yell Fire! albums.

In the meet and greet line at the radio station, I watched Michael engage with the fans ahead of me. He is charismatic, with a charm and presence even larger than his tall stature. When the line dwindled, I finally got to meet him. It was a dream come true; he was a hero to me.

I asked him to sign my journal and we chatted for a moment. Then I ended up walking with him and some people from the radio station up to the rooftop deck where there was an amazing view of Seattle. We took a photo there together wrapped in each other’s arms—unusually close, but that’s the kind of guy I thought he was: accessible, open, loving. It’s what he sings about. And naturally, I was excited to be near him.

A few minutes after Michael and his band left, the station’s Program Director came after me as I was leaving, literally yelling my name as the elevator doors were closing. He reached his arm through the doors at the last second. His hand was holding a cordless phone…the station’s landline.

The elevator doors reopened, and he said, “Michael Franti wants to talk to you.” He handed me the phone.

When I said, “Hello?” his tour manager said, “Please hold for Michael Franti,” who was no doubt sitting right next to him.

It was a subtle thing, but already he was positioning himself above me. He was a rockstar—lionized and revered—with people who made his calls for him.

While we were on the phone, he asked me to meet him for a yoga class that afternoon, and I did. We went to Sanctuary Yoga in Redmond (since closed). After class I followed him and his tour manager in their minivan back to the venue, where Michael invited me to join him on the tour bus.

I remember him leading me to the back of the bus, which was his bedroom. There, he promptly stripped off his clothes. He stood naked in front of me, continuing to make conversation, while I sat there trying not to look. It was an awkward thing to do; we had just met. I was overwhelmed.

After the concert, at the afterparty, he ignored me. I tried not to let it bother me, to show how cool and independent I was entertaining myself among the strangers gathered around him, but it hurt my feelings and confused me. Later, I felt rewarded when he danced with me in the aisle of the darkened bus, blue string lights glowing in the windows. He sang the lyrics to Life in the City into my ear. In my wildest dreams I couldn’t have come up with a more sublime fantasy.

I didn’t think of it as being groomed. Instead, I thought a dream was coming true. I thought I had manifested the experience through the sheer ardor and conviction I carried for his music and his causes.

The first crack I noticed in the façade was the next morning, in Portland, after spending the night together on his tour bus. As we stood along the sidewalk talking about getting food, some people rode by on Segway scooters. As I remember it, he said something about what dorks they were and used a homophobic slur—as discordant to my ears as an errant cymbal in the middle of a song. I hoped I had misheard. His comment was so at odds with who I believed him to be. I wanted to be wrong.

I chalked it up to an off-key sense of humor. I wanted—maybe even needed—him to be the amazing person I assumed him to be based on the way he presented himself publicly. What would it mean if I had been so deluded by someone I respected so much?

I never believed he would keep in touch after the night we spent together—I assumed it was a one time thing—but he began texting regularly and asked me to download Skype. Once I had Skype, he asked me to get a webcam. I was flattered that he wanted to see me. It quickly became clear that he wanted to see ALL of me.

I didn’t think of the webcam as an indication that I was being manipulated or groomed because I didn’t know anything about that. How can you recognize something you don’t have experience of or language for? I didn’t understand his true motives.

We continued to spend time in communication, and I noticed a pattern of hot-cold behavior. Michael would be complementary and then cutting, kind then indifferent. To believe the nice things he said, I resorted to discounting the ways he was distant or unkind. I made up excuses for his behavior: he was very busy, he had other female companions, he was stressed or preoccupied with work.

What I realize now is that he probably never meant the sweet or complimentary things he said to me. He only said what he needed to to keep me in thrall so I would remain available when he wanted to use me.

When I saw him for a second weekend over New Years in Vancouver B.C., he acted very similarly to the way he’d been the first time we met—distant except for an occasional breadcrumb. It was confusing, especially after I told him I was moving to his city, about which I thought he’d express at least a little enthusiasm.

I wasn’t moving to be with him—I didn’t think he was available, or even that we had a legitimate relationship. But I was ready for a change and it was exciting to be around him. I wanted to maintain my orbit of him, and probably harbored a hope that we’d grow closer.

After I moved, we did grow closer, in a sense: I ended up working for him and his former partner, Carla Swanson, as a rep for their clothing line and retreat center, which was under construction in Bali. At the time, both endeavors were called Stay Human.

But the proximity to Michael wasn’t what I hoped for as his behavior made it more and more difficult to believe in the socially conscious movement I thought I had become a part of.

For example, I thought it was weird when he showed up at Harmony Festival in June of 2009 wearing jeans with a hole in the crotch and no underwear. I was standing in the booth selling his children’s book to families and there he was, signing the books with his penis plainly visible to anyone who cared to look. It seemed impossible he would do something so brazen in the light of day, in front of his fans, including children. Did he really not realize there was a hole right there in his lap? I was grossed out, but wondered if I was overreacting.

And this might be the most dangerous aspect of dynamics like the one between me and Michael: when a person holds that much power over someone else, they have a capacity to distort or even annihilate that person’s sense of reality, and their sense of self, causing the less powerful person to second guess their inner knowing and reject what is plainly obvious.

Flashing your penis in public isn’t a normal thing for anyone to do, but his power and prestige blinded me to the obviousness of this misconduct.

During one of the weekends we shared, he asked me if I’d lost weight. I thought he was appreciative, that he had noticed I was becoming more fit (I was enrolled in a yoga teacher training at the time). When I acknowledged that I probably had lost weight, he asked disapprovingly if I did it for him.

I didn’t know how to answer that. No, I hadn’t done it for him; it was a result of so much yoga practice, and likely also the high I got from our communication, which made me less hungry and more focused.

In truth, I felt amazing in my body during that time. But his strangely disparaging tone instantly set me at odds to it. Instead of feeling affirmed and sexy under his admiring eye, I felt small and pathetic. This was his effect on me. His words could make me soar or shrink.

I gave up my pursuit of his approval for awhile, after I settled down with the man who would become my husband. But when I went to a show in 2015 after several years of no contact, things kicked off again in a big way. We were both married by then—or, he was about to be. Nonetheless, he texted me after the show, around 2AM. It was a picture of me that his photographer had taken that afternoon, with the message Mmmmm. That led to a vigorous sexting session in the wee hours, after which he asked me to delete the evidence (I exported them all). We continued messaging infrequently for months after that.

Michael Franti and the author. Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, 8/22/15.

The last time Michael and I were together was in Maui on Mother’s Day, May 14, 2017. I had been hoping for in person time with him for two years since we’d reconnected—so much so that I planned our family vacation around the opportunity to see him. But that night, when I turned up at his hotel after their show at the MACC, Michael treated me terribly. He ignored me at first. Then, after we had sex, he mocked me. I felt so humiliated.

I had extreme stomach pain for weeks afterward that no doctor could diagnose, which I now attribute to stress. I simply could not reconcile the person preaching love and positivity and good vibes at his shows night after night with the Michael I had gotten to know personally, who could be so cold and even cruel.

Looking back, it’s apparent how vulnerable I was where he was concerned, and how much power he had over me. Because even after that horrible experience, I still didn’t stop seeking him out. Instead, over the year that followed, I went to a couple more shows—at Red Rocks and McMenamins Edgefield—still striving for his attention, hoping to make right what had become so desperately wrong.

Eventually, I realized without a doubt that he wasn’t my friend. He didn’t care about me in the slightest. I gave up any hope of redeeming whatever may have been between us in the past and finally let it go.

There is a lot of grey area when it comes to issues of sex and power. Because the misconduct generally happens behind closed doors, others may not see what’s going on—or they pretend they don’t. And the perpetrator will make up for his violations with lavish attention and words of affirmation after the fact, gaslighting behavior that makes a victim question whether what she felt was real.

It’s clear to me that the way Michael mistreated me conforms to a pattern of behavior that Victoria and other women who are coming forward have described: unconscionable at best, and something far more serious at worst.

We are each accountable for the choices we make and for our treatment of others. And while it’s painful to come to terms with a reality that none of us wants to be true, the only way to stop men like this from abusing their power—from abusing others for their selfish gains—is to call them out for their choices and the violence they perpetuate.

We must be willing to let our heroes fall.