John Prendergast book

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Redemption through brotherhood

A waterfront breeze whips at John Prendergast and Michael Mattocks as they walk down to the Potomac River on a sunny spring afternoon. The wind plays decidedly more havoc with Prendergast — a tall white man with flowing, Fabio-class hair — than it does with Mattocks, a stocky African American with a shaved head and a tight inch of beard along the ridge of his jaw.

Prendergast, 48 and a former member of President Bill Clinton’s national security team, unconsciously rakes the tresses from his face every few seconds as he looks over the riverside where he and Mattocks used to fish.

Mattocks, 34 and a former drug dealer, squints in the sun, chin up, coolly watching a team of suburban high-schoolers trot their expensive fiberglass racing scull down the ramp at Thompson’s Boathouse.

Funny, they don’t look like brothers.

“You remember we was down here one day, and I laid my rod down with the hook in the water and zip, that thing was gone!” Mattocks says with a laugh, his eyes suddenly alight with a sweet memory from a sour childhood. He never made it to any high school, much less one that boasted a rowing team. Before he was kicked out of seventh grade, he used to skip lunch to sell crack cocaine on North Capitol Street.

“Oh, man,” says Prendergast, grasping Mattocks by the biceps. He speaks with quick touches and punching gestures. An athlete at fine high schools, Prendergast attended Georgetown University and went on to a career as a human rights advocate that would make him a companion of presidents and movie stars. But back then, when the rod and reel plunked into the river, “I’m sure I was just horrified I was going to have to buy some other [expletive] thing I had no money for.”

They don’t even look much like friends.

But Michael and J.P., denizens of two very different Washingtons, are at this favorite spot celebrating a relationship that has spanned 25 years and produced a harrowing record of violence, despair and, finally, redemption. After a chance meeting in a homeless shelter in 1984, an aimless 21-year-old activist and a homeless 7-year-old city kid effectively declared each other brothers for life. And then, life happened.

One would spend years, driven by a brutal family estrangement, living through a frantic, corrosive search for social justice that has stretched from the District to Darfur, leaving his psyche and a first marriage in tatters.

The other would find his footing in the mayhem of the crack epidemic that raged through urban Washington in the 1990s, becoming a dealer before he could drive and seeing multiple friends and family members dead on bloody sidewalks.

“I’ve been telling John for years that we ought to write a book,” says Mattocks, who finally renounced “the life” in 1999. He now lives in Gaithersburg with his wife and five sons and drives a shuttle bus between Shady Grove Metro and the King Farm development.

And now they have. Their twin memoir, “ Unlikely Brothers ,” written with help from magazine writer Dan Baum, is due out May 17.

It’s going to be a busy summer for both of them.

Prendergast — who has escorted the likes of Angelina Jolie and George Clooney through African war zones — is getting married next month up at Mia Farrow’s house in Connecticut.

Do you think Gee will attend the wedding?

I just finished John and Michael's fantastic book. Candid, courageous
and moving. Read it!

I have been looking for a book to read as nothing seems interesting, I think I just found it. Prendergast does sound interesting and Mattocks does too.

John is in Washington today...so I presume the wedding is next week...

Unlikely Brothers
In D.C. this weekend? Join John Prendergast at Politics and Prose.

Join John Prendergast at Politics and Prose
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Join John Prendergast at Politics and Prose in Washington, DC Discussing His New Book Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption

thanks

Top 10 (#4) John Prendergast: How A Homeless Boy Taught Him To Live

DC SPOTLIGHT MAGAZINE,FEATURED,LIMELIGHT,TOP 10 MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE 2011

As John Prendergast cautiously approaches a podium to speak at his many engagements, his uncertainty does not reflect his lack of confidence. Instead, Prendergast must time his approach to the podium to coincide with the end of the speaker’s roster. The roster is a list of his many accomplishments. The extensive list begins with his Enough Project, which he co-founded to end genocide and crimes against humanity.

Name-dropping is highly applauded in Prendergast’s case, because each name signifies a crucial person who has joined in the fight for human rights. Each name reflects the extent to which he has lobbied to help the neediest and most vulnerable people in the world obtain the rights to live healthy, full lives. In that laudable fight for human rights — particularly in Africa — Prendergast has worked with stalwarts such as former President Bill Clinton, actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, NBA star Tracy McGrady and other NBA players and is currently working with actor Ryan Gosling.

As a young boy, Prendergast would never have imagined the extent of his influence as a man in a world filled with atrocities. He recalls lamenting his teenage years as a dreadful period in his formative life. It wasn’t the abusive father and the extreme case of acne that distressed him most. It was the feeling that no one cared enough or thought him worthy enough to be loved. Those feelings were mirrored in the people and children he would later encounter at a local homeless shelter.

“I felt very unloved and very unlovable…I didn’t feel worthy…I just had that self-denigration that kids from abusive households often have, the feeling of lack of self-worth,” he remembers. “So here I am hanging around with these kids in that shelter that day and their faces and their approach…was one of total acceptance, was one of total connection in a way that made me feel really good about myself.”

“I think that having a difficult and at times abusive relationship between father and son can have any number of different impacts,” he says candidly. “I wish there was sort of a formula where everybody knows that if a father does this then …this is how the son will turn out. Then you can fix that, because you know it…There’s a thousand different ways you can react, and I was a really sensitive really sort of combative kid. So my reaction was one of very strong rejection of what I felt to be a very unfair situation between [him] and me.”

Prendergast says he marshaled those emotions over the years and channeled them toward causes like Darfur and people who were also victims of circumstance. “That unfairness, that [feeling] of unfairness, morphed,” he says. “It translated into a worldview, an outlook that raged against unfairness in the world wherever I saw it…It was a very early ingrained feeling, [an] embedded feeling that took form slowly but surely first in my work with kids who were down and out here in the U.S…then more broadly over time in Africa where I saw the biggest set of unfair circumstances.”

At an early age, Prendergast understood what he lacked and used that lack within himself to find others who often needed a hand up. In writing his latest book “Unlikely Brothers” (co-authored by Michael Mattocks), he recalls memories of his early life as a 20-year-old young man befriending a 7-year-old boy at a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C. That young boy, Michael Mattocks, who was living with his mother and brothers in the shelter, would become an integral part of Prendergast’s education about human rights in the U.S. Over time, despite the fact that Mattocks was poor and black and Prendergast was middle class and white, they would become “unlikely brothers” with both young men learning lifelong lessons about friendship, family, loyalty and respect. Those early days at the shelter with Mattocks provided fertile ground for the growth of the international human rights activists Prendergast would later become.

“I think there were small things at first,” he remembers. “I started going to homeless shelters and working with the folks that were living there and just spending time and trying to understand what left them in their situation and trying to work with the system to try to find some form of solution to the set of issues that had led them to the shelter in the first place,” he recalls. “I think those are basic human rights. So I go all the way to Africa to work on human rights…and I think there are so many issues here in the United States where people’s fundamental rights are being violated frequently and regularly. We have a lot of work to do here.”

He is often surprised and amazed at the masses of people in the U.S. who have taken the fight for human rights seriously and begun the journey with him in protecting the rights of others.

“It’s amazing how many thousands and thousands of people that I come across every month who are equally committed to making a difference outside our borders as they are inside our borders of the United States…I’m much more encouraged than if I [had] just stayed in Washington, D.C. in the beltway, I would probably think, America doesn’t care…especially with the political environment the way it is, especially going around the states and meeting with young people…Everywhere I’ve gone people are very excited to get involved.”

This outreach was overwhelmingly evident during the massive genocide of the people of Darfur in Africa.

“Because of the Darfur genocide in the earlier part of the last decade created a huge movement in the United States of people who were willing to get involved, go to rallies, write letters to their congress people,” he says. “Now we’ve had similar outpouring in the birth of the new nation of South Sudan.”

Today, as he travels with Mattocks around the U.S. discussing their book, Prendergast admits that he is on a new unfamiliar journey: marriage. As a 7-year-old, Mattocks once relied on Prendergast for guidance; however, the roles have reversed. Mattocks, a happily married father of five boys, is guiding and sharing life lessons with Prendergast as he embarks on his new marriage. Prendergast confides that throughout his life, he assumed that he would never be afforded the joys of marriage and family life – that he would have to be content as a man dedicated to work.

“By far the most important thing to me is that I just got married, so I have to spend time working and making that a success. So that’s my top priority.”

He says now his new relationship is the great work in progress, in addition to his fight for human rights.

Prendergast currently teaches at Yale University in Connecticut, works with his Enough Project and lives in both New York and Washington, D.C. equally. He is also working on a new book with actor Ryan Gosling.

Enough Project
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

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he is on a new unfamiliar journey: marriage. As a 7-year-old, Mattocks once relied on Prendergast for guidance; however, the roles have reversed. Mattocks, a happily married father of five boys, is guiding and sharing life lessons with Prendergast as he embarks on his new marriage. Prendergast confides that throughout his life, he assumed that he would never be afforded the joys of marriage and family life – that he would have to be content as a man dedicated to work.

“By far the most important thing to me is that I just got married, so I have to spend time working and making that a success. So that’s my top priority.”

He says now his new relationship is the great work in progress, in addition to his fight for human rights.

(Gosling? here too??)

The more I hear about this man, the more I love him!

Agree with you Melbert. By the way Melbert, did you catch the part he thought he would be a man dedicated to work? Maybe there is hope for George, uh?! hehe

Went online to buy book for my e-book reader. Disappointment, it's available in paperback and hardcover only. Bummer. Really sounds like an interesting read. Maybe it'll happen someday soon.

LL, don't hold your breath! None of George's other friends have "rubbed" off on him.

But we love him as he is, really. As I've said before - warts and all.

all
but not warts

Not real warts - just his little imperfections.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

ok

pattygirl wrote:But we love him as he is, really. As I've said before - warts and all.

Love him? me? nah...at this point, I hope he doesn't show up to NYFF and we don't cross paths there...

Gee, that's too bad, LL. He is still the same man he always was, it's too bad you've become disenchanted with him. The man is who he is. He lives life as he wants to. He is just a human being who has seemingly one "great" fault, no desire to marry or have children. We don't know why he feels this way, or why he is "sexually permiscuous"(for want of a better phrase). He is essentially a good man, has a good heart, is generous, caring, intelligent. He is a very good actor, and excellent director, and an astute producer. He cares about the trevails of the oppressed and tries to help change things.

Patty, not getting married and having kids is a choice in life that I respect. What I don't respect is the PR mess and types of girlfriends he chooses and how he chooses to present/introduce them "officially". it's just ridiculous. He is behaving like his is misogynist. As I said before, I have too much respect for women and for the performing arts to accept his sh*t.

I accept you opinion, but how has he changed. He's done these things and been this way for years and it is pretty well public knowledge. Those are his imperfections that I mentioned before. Essentially, we, who haven't changed our opinion "love" him for his acting, directing, producing, humanitarian efforts. You say you have too much respect for the performing arts, so I ask you where has he failed you there?

1. He gives these untalented women opportunities to work in a business where so many talented actors/actress only dream on getting a shot;
2. He uses his personal life to indirectly promotes his movies and pretends to want a private life when it suits him;
3- He usually brings his "new love" interest to the premiere of his movies, when he should be focusing on promoting the movie. How many times were commented more about his girlfriend cray cray at TIFF than how receptive ides of march was there?

Like you said, it's my opinion and thank you for understanding it. No, I did not follow his personal life until Eli so I had no idea how misogynist he was.

@ louislane
Agree!

There was a time when he didn't bring his latest honey on the red carpet for some reason he changed that. He needs to go back and start hitting the red carpet alone and I mean alone not send her in a side door then her come out again and pose so everyone knows she is there. At least try and make it look like you really want it to be private. The way they are playing it at the moment is what is seeming so silly. Either walk with her or keep her off the red carpet. Of course that probably wouldn't suit Stacy!

Dexterdidit wrote:There was a time when he didn't bring his latest honey on the red carpet for some reason he changed that.

Celine did all the red carpets, Lisa Snowdon did (and we all thought she might mean something to him because she was the first in a long time to go to one of his premieres AND with his parents, but no), Sarah Larson famously went to the Oscars with him, Betty went everywhere and now we have Stacy.

He doesn't bring his flings or one night stands out with - why should he? - but the ones he's dating [or the ones he wants us to believe he's dating] all get a whirl on the red carpet.

First time around Lisa didn't do the red carpets. He even went to award shows without her. It wasn't until the second time around she got to go on any with him. I remember everyone talking about it at the time George even won an award and didn't thank her. She was always back home in Britain doing the music show or something.

He is essentially a good man, has a good heart, is generous, caring, intelligent. He is a very good actor, and excellent director, and an astute producer. He cares about the trevails of the oppressed and tries to help change things.

I agree Patty

he is wit and funny too

LL, I have to disagree with your calling George a misogynist ( a person who hates, dislikes, mistrusts, or mistreats women). I think he is anything but. If he can be called anything, I think he is a philogynist (A lover or friend of women; one who esteems woman as the higher type of humanity ).
Dex, why would George thank Lisa when he won an award? What part would she have played in his achievement" Anyone who expected him to thank her was rather ridiculous, don't you think? Award winner who thank "everybody under the sun" for something he/she did is just trying to stay in limelight a bit longer. Yes, thank those who really helped achieve that particular award (director, cinematographer, writer of script, actors played to in that venue) not father, mother, sister, brother, etc. Maybe wife & kids for their tolerance. Definitely not latest f**king partner.

pattygirl wrote:I think he is a philogynist (A lover or friend of women; one who esteems woman as the higher type of humanity ).

Patty, I don't think anyone holds George in higher esteem than I do. He's a friend, a lover but thinking of women as the higher type of humanity is going a bit far. I know it's part of the definition, but you were kidding there, right?

Hesitated about that last part, however, as you said it was part of the def. Didn't want anybody thinking I was a censor of definitions.

I'm not sure, but hope that the love and respect he has for his female family members carries over to women in general.

I love this interview with John Prendergast! He seems so involved. It looks like he’s moving in a direction that should help his personal life immensely! If I was his friend, I’d tell him how proud I am of him! I hope George told him! I think I’ll have to get that book, too!

I'm sure George already gave him his highly appreciation

George is a NOSOLOGYNIST, which is halfway between a MISOgynist and a PHILOgynist. Get it? No solo??? I crack myself up some times!!!!

no solo one?