Could that be because the owner of the abandoned 4-plex where the gang rape occurred is owned by (ironically) a CEO of a biomedical company who is developing the planned Tulane medical corridor? I find this interesting…
The location where the woman said she was raped is a rundown fourplex owned by Jim McNamara, president and CEO of BioDistrict New Orleans, the state agency charged with redeveloping portions of the Central Business District and Mid-City into a medical corridor. McNamara said police had not contacted him. In fact, he was unaware of the attack on his property until contacted by a reporter. His brother lives in the only occupied unit on the property and also was not aware that anything untoward had happened there, he said. The attack probably happened while his brother was at work, he said. “I’m sure if he would’ve been there he would’ve stopped it,” McNamara said.
The thing that strikes me is, how in the heck is one man going to intervene in a gang rape of a lone female by six adrenaline fueled men?
I think this echoes the pathetic state of the city of New Orleans, the utter breakdown of the moral fiber that can fuel such an incredibly heinous act, in 2012. And we are relegated to wringing our hands, expressing outrage and praying for the victim to recover both physically, mentally and spiritually.
The first thing that came to mind when I read this story, buried in the back pages mind you, was JoEllen Smith. Miss Smith was a student nurse who was making a house call in Algiers sometime in 1973, and was brutally raped and murdered while on a “mission of mercy”.
JoEllen Smith has been memorialized, having a hospital named in her honor and a memorial scholarship still actively bestowing funds to eligible people 39 years later. But it was quite unfortunate that she was killed while caring for the health of others. I am not comparing the two crimes, but instead I ask when will the lurid segment of mankind recognize the actions of those who serve a selfless mission to ease the suffering of others, without feeding their own deplorable, twisted need to commit vicious crimes against nature?
The Supreme Court is gearing up to hear challenges to The Affordable Care Act soon. Access to affordable healthcare is an issue that impacts virtually every person in this country and one we should all be concerned about, whether you’re … Continue reading →
Whether or not you agree with the politics of Occupy Wall Street you have to acknowledge it as a cultural phenomenom. The park has become a microcosm of activism spawning similar scenes in cities all over the world and I’m … Continue reading →
“A nuanced view of the city and its people, Flood Streets shows the changing landscape of New Orleans as it has never been seen before, dispelling the stereotypes about this tragic, defiant, joyful city.” — LaFilm.net
“Flood Streets is dotted with incidental wit and wry observations of life in the Big Easy, which isn’t always.” — Amy Biancolli/The Houston Chronicle
“A unique story of hope and despair, of determination and crazy-ass creativity, told bravely and told well.” — Harry Shearer
Helen Krieger
These are just three of the many positive comments I found while researching Helen Kriegers production of Flood Streets, her first film production. Helen and her husband Joseph Meissner, who directed and acts in the film, moved to New Orleans in 2001 and quickly fell into the eclectic, artsy community life in Bywater. They evacuated for Hurricane Katrina and were displaced, like so many New Orleanians, for six weeks of an enforced exile. The screenplay for Flood Streets is based on Helen’s book of short stories, In the Land of What Now, a fictionalized account of her experiences in post federal flood New Orleans.
Flood Streets‘ awards include:
Best Picture winner at the 2011 Action on Film Festival
Gold Remi winner at the 44th Annual WorldFest-Houston
Best Director, runner-up, at the White Sands Int’l Film Festival
Best Director, nominee, Action on Film Festival
I recently spoke with Helen about Flood Streets, life in New Orleans and the crafts of writing and film-making.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Helen, I understand Flood Streets is based on your book, In the Land of What Now, and is your first film production. What made you decide to produce a film with no previous film making experience and how do you think that impacted your film?
Although I had made a couple short films before Flood Streets, they were on a much smaller scale and were done basically as practice for this movie. Flood Streets was my first feature.
When my husband, Joseph, and I were evacuated for the storm, we didn’t know what we could come back to from our former lives. We didn’t know if the city was going to come back, so it was really like an early midlife crisis for both of us. For six weeks we sat at my parent’s house up in Wisconsin and started thinking about our lives and what we most wanted to do.
I realized I’d neglected my writing, and Joseph really wanted to get back into acting. We decided to put the two of these interests together to write a movie Joseph could act in. That’s really how I made the leap from fiction to film – it made so much sense for us to work together like that.
Once I got into script writing, I really enjoyed it, because one of my favorite things to write is dialogue. Also, I enjoyed the increased collaboration and input you get writing a screenplay. Everyone from the actor to the caterer has read your script so you get a wide variety of opinions and input. It’s really exciting. Having said that, I love writing short stories, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. Short stories are where I really connect with myself creatively and where I feel free to develop ideas.
Producing a movie for my first time could have been a disaster except that I had so much support from the community. I was mentored by two veteran New Orleans filmmakers, Glen Pitre and Michelle Benoit. They’ve been helping me with this project for the past three years. They helped me with the script, with getting everything ready to shoot, with editing, and now with publicity and the festival circuit. They’re really an amazing resource.
I also took a lot of classes at the New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC). I joke with people that NOVAC was my film school.
What was the first concrete step for you in learning how to produce a film?
I read a lot of books and took a lot of classes for the years preceding our shoot. I took a Film Accounting class at NOVAC that helped me put everything into perspective. The accountant is the one responsible for paying everyone else, so you get a good long view on what it takes to make a production happen. That was amazing experience.
I also had many meetings with Glen and Michelle where I just furiously scribbled down notes as they went over my budget and explained what I needed and how it would work. Then we were really fortunate to get an experienced indie line producer to work with us, Miceal Og O’Donnel. Once we had pulled our key team together, he helped us get everyone moving in the right direction.
We didn’t always know what we were doing, but we were fortunate enough to have a lot of people around us who did!
I read that Katrina and life post-K was a big influence on your decision to persue writing and film-making full-time. Do you think your life would have taken this turn if you hadn’t experienced the storm and life after?
That’s a great question. I think about that sometimes, and I just don’t know. I think eventually I would have gotten to this path because it’s something I’m so interested in, and it really suits me. But it may have taken a lot longer for me to get here.
Like I said, Katrina was an early midlife crisis, so without Katrina and that six-week hurrication of stress and soul searching, maybe my midlife crisis would still be some years away.
Oct 16 is the New Orleans premier of Flood Streets. How does it feel to be presenting your film about life in post-K New Orleans in New Orleans?
I’m so excited, because I’ve been working on this film for years, and so many people in the city have helped me and have been waiting to see it. We didn’t have a huge budget, but we wanted to create the best film we could, so we took our time editing, almost 15 months.
This spring we had our world premiere in Houston and that started a tour of film festivals across the country. We’ve had such great response, but audiences don’t get the inside jokes that New Orleanians will get. Also, the film shows a part of the city that often gets lost in post-Katrina films or documentaries – our sense of humor. When I tell people this is a film about Post Katrina New Orleans, I always have to add, “But it’s not a downer.” We wanted to show what there is that still draws us to this city and that draws all the people who have moved here since the storm.
It’s now over six years after the storm and I’m wondering if, when you talk about the subject of your film, you encounter any lingering “Katrina fatigue” or do people now get that it was the levees, not the storm, that really devastated New Orleans.
We get some Katrina fatigue when we first tell people about the movie because they think they’ve seen it before, and that it’s going to be one of those very depressing stories about flood victims. But our story isn’t necessarily about Katrina and none of our characters consider themselves victims.
Flood Streets takes place 15 months after the storm, and we use that surreal backdrop in the movie a lot, but essentially the movie is about the characters and their struggles. These struggles are definitely heightened and changed in unexpected ways because of the storm, but ultimately I wanted to show how life goes on, no matter how surreal the backdrop. By picking up this story well after the initial shock of the storm has passed, we get to show that weird stage after a disaster when you realize you’re still essentially the same person with the same problems to deal with. Only now you can’t get mailed delivered to your house…
In terms of the people being educated about what devastated New Orleans… I don’t think that’s happened yet. There’s still this narrative out there that New Orleans is all below sea level, and it was only a matter of time. Very few people know about the complicated system of human decisions that resulted in the federal flooding of New Orleans. People like Harry Shearer have been doing a great job educating people. His documentary about the levees, “The Big Uneasy,” has been touring the country educating people, so I’m hoping people start to understand.
Do you think locals will be more critical of the film than outsiders?
Definitely, because it’s their story that we’re telling, but I’m pretty confident they’re going to enjoy it. One of the reasons we wanted to do an ensemble storyline with multiple characters is because we wanted to hint at the diversity of stories in the city. There is no one post Katrina story and no one way of reacting to the storm, so I hope locals will see themselves or people they know in the characters we’ve chosen.
I understand you show a diversity of the musical talent we have here in Nola instead of relying only on Jazz or Brass Bands as is seen in many film and TV productions. Was that a deliberate decision? How did you choose which genres and/or musicians to include?
That was a very deliberate decision. We love traditional New Orleans music, but we’re even more interested in how traditions continue to evolve with each new generation who takes them on. This is what makes New Orleans such an exciting place for musicians and artists to live. We didn’t want to portray a museum to jazz or funk; we wanted to shed light on the contradictions and collaborations at the edge of our ever-evolving culture.
We also wanted to put more of the musical focus on youth culture because this is where changes are often happening. When young musicians couldn’t get into mainline brass bands they formed their own. Influenced by hip hop as well as jazz, a new generation of second-lining was born. When indie rocker Clint Maedgen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, he brought a new voice to the most traditional band in New Orleans. The Zydepunks blend traditional and new to create a heart-pounding new style. The Panorama Jazz Band takes influences from jazz, klezmer and brass bands to pull together their unique sound.
This was the New Orleans music we really wanted to share, and audiences across the country are really excited to hear it. After screenings, people always comment on the music and say how surprised they are by the diversity of music in the city, so I guess we’re doing our job!
All but two of the actors and all of the crew were New Orleanians. Why do you think that was important for the telling of your story?
It was important to us to use locals on the cast and crew as much as possible. First, it’s just part of our mission as local filmmakers to showcase the talent we have here in the city.
Also, for the kind of story we were telling it was so important to have those authentic voices. This isn’t a crime story or an action adventure with lots of graphic effects. We’re telling a character based story about a very particular time and place, so it was so important for us to make sure we were getting that voice right, and it was nice to know we could rely on our actors.
Almost all our actors had been through the storm or the evacuation, and they felt we were giving an accurate portrayal of the city. Based on the script they trusted us to tell this complicated, nuanced story, and we in turn trusted them to tell us whenever something didn’t ring true. They brought costumes, props, they really went out of their way to help us do this right. And because they were from New Orleans they got that subversive sense of humor we have, even in disasters. They didn’t feel like they had to walk on eggshells about the material, because it was their story too.
I read in the press kit that your neighborhood rallied around you and the film became a real community effort. Tell us a little bit about that.
We filmed most of the movie in Bywater, in about 48 different locations, and almost all of them were donated by neighbors who wanted to see us make this film. Coffee shops, corner stores, shotgun apartments, warehouses, flooded houses in various stages of repair… people opened up all these spaces to us despite our meager budget.
In one case we were shooting a scene where a band places on the street. The band was Debauche, a young, local band that plays very energetic Russian music, and we needed to shoot this in front of a Bywater house. We knocked on doors up and down the street and let people know what was going to be going on, then when we got to the house we were going to be shooting in front of, we knocked and tentatively told the owner, “We’ve got this band, and we wanted to know if it’s okay if they play in front of your house…” It was an older guy, so we didn’t know how it would go over. “Who’s the band?” he said. I told him it was Debauche, and I figured he was too old, but he immediately started clapping his hands. It turned out he was a big fan! He told us to do whatever we needed to, to come into his house if we had to. He ended up dancing in his living room the whole time they were playing!
We also had so much luck getting background people in our film. As soon as a musician would start playing, people would come out of their homes or stop on their bikes and dance. A lot of people made it into the movie that way!
Are you working on any other projects you’d like to share with us?
Why yes, thank you! I’m working on the scripts for two projects right now.
The first is another feature film, this one set in the heart of an impoverished New Orleans neighborhood. A group of punk, DIY activists stage elaborate puppet shows and dangerous tall bike jousts in their communal-living warehouse, but when a pregnant friend arrives with nowhere else to go, it’s their chance to remake their social experiment into a true community. We’re excited to work with some of the amazing artists in New Orleans for this project.
The second is something totally different for me. I’m working on episodic writing, an original musical comedy series I’m creating for web or cable. Molly is a sex-starved, struggling writer who can’t get the attention of her indie rocker boyfriend, so she takes a job exploring New Orleans amorous underbelly. I’ve been describing it as “Sex in the City” meets “Flight of the Conchords”. It deals with journalism, art and sexual politics while featuring original music and a beautifully choreographed tribal bellydance sequence in each episode. I’ve gotten together with a composer, lyricist and choreographer, so I’m really excited to get working on this.
Where do you see yourself as an artist in five years? What are your goals?
The more I write, the more I realize I love writing, so my future plans all have to do with finding more ways to do that. I’m very interested in writing for TV or cable because story is really king in these mediums, and so the writers get a lot of control over their sets. From casting to choosing props and working with the directors, the writers are typically the head producers in charge of their series. Having had experience producing shorts and now a feature, I feel like this could be a good fit for me.
With episodic writing, you get more time to tell a story than you do in a 90-minute feature film. With shows like “The Wire” and “Mad Men,” TV writing has risen to the next level. By following multiple characters’ storylines throughout the season, episodic writing has become a modern version of a sweeping, 19th century novel. It’s become a place where some of the best writers go to tell their stories, and with original web content starting to get some serious viewership, it’s easier to get into this highly competitive field.
Plus, how fun would it be to put together a writers room where one of the most solitary tasks, coming up with storylines and characters, can become a group effort? I could definitely do that for the rest of my life.
But like I said before, I’ll never stop writing short stories and other kinds of fiction. It’s where I feel free to really play with an idea no matter how ridiculous. Short fiction was my first genre as a writer, and I think I’ll never truly get over my love for it.
The New Orleans premiere of Flood Streets will be during the New Orleans Film Festival on Sunday, October 16 at 4:45 at Pyrtania Theatre. The trailer can be viewed below and up to the minute information can be found on their FaceBook page.
Today we’re profiling Katy Monnot of Bird On The Street blog.Katy describes herself as “a Metry Girl”. She attended St. Martin’s Espiscopal for elementary school and Dominican for High School. She went to LSU for college where she met her husband. He served in the Air Force for five years and they lived in Texas and Arkansas,moving back to the New Orleans area in 2007.Katy is a stay at home mom of infant twin boys and their older special needs brother.
Katy, when and why did you start blogging?
I started blogging in late 2005 on a whim. Shortly after, my husband deployed to the Middle East for four months. Blogging became an outlet for me to interact with others and share my experiences. After my son was born in 2007, I realized I needed blogs to give me a first-hand experience that couldn’t be found anywhere else.
Do you consider yourself a “mommy blogger”? And what does that label mean to you?
I do consider myself a “mommy blogger” even though I was blogging for a while before I became a mom. I prefer the term “parenting blogger” because I think that’s what I actually blog about: parenting, specifically, parenting a child with special needs. Mommy is job title and lots of moms blog and never mention their kids. So yeah, I’m a mom blogger, a parenting blogger, but also what some people call a memoir-style blogger.
Are you trying to connect with a specific demographic?
Yes and no. I consider my main audience to be people who are raising children with special needs. Specifically, I want to provide them with hope and a positive view of what that life can be. As my blog has grown, however, I have discovered that there is a second audience–people who wish to support those with special needs. So I find that I am also writing for them these days.
Why did you choose BlogHer as your blogging platform?
Well, Blogher is just my advertising network. I applied on whim and it was probably years before they contacted me about joining. I control the rest of the site myself.
What do you think are the benefits of utilizing BlogHer over an independent blog?
The greatest thing, from my perspective is the exposure. Once a week, my post’s title appears on other blogs in the Network. It’s a nice way to find new readers. Also, I don’t think I was ever going to solicit my own advertising for the site, and Blogher ads provide a (very) small about of revenue for essentially zero effort.
I know you are the creator of The Louisiana Bloggers Network. Tell us why you started it and what you hope to accomplish.
I’m so glad you asked! The Louisiana Bloggers Network is my attempt to promote, unify, and help bloggers in Louisiana. Right now it’s just getting started, but we’ve already had a Baton Rouge and New Orleans meetup, and we’ve put together a panel for the Rising Tide Conference. My ultimate goal is to have it become a hub of collaboration and assistance. Bloggers can share information, stories, goal. They can band together to seek advertising and sponsorship. They can plan road trips to conferences.
Mallory Whitfield organized Rising Tide’s new addition this year: Tech School. She asked me to participate as a representative of The Louisiana Bloggers Network. I was completely intrigued by RT, so I started attending the planning meetings. I wasn’t able to do as much as I would have liked since I had my twins in the middle of June, but I was able to organize a panel on Photography and Graphic Design for your blog. I also live-tweeted Tech School and made some vegan red beans and rice for vegan attendees. Next year I hope to do even more. Rising Tide was created and is organized by old-school bloggers: not people looking to make a buck, but people with something to say. That is still my favorite type of blogger, and I’ll do anything I can to keep that aspect of blogging alive. Don’t get me wrong, I think bloggers can and should make money for their time and energy, but I really love people who do it regardless.
Are you involved in any other online endeavors you’d like to share?
Nothing I can think of, but you never know what project I’ll be up to next!
“On St. Joseph’s Day a few years back, a man and a woman stumbled upon our celebrations at St. Augustine. I was serving food from our altar and asked them if they wanted any. They asked me what the cost was. I replied that there was no cost and began explaining to them the customs and traditions of St. Joseph’s Day. They were thrilled to be with locals and partake in our traditions but noted that if it weren’t for mere chance, they never would have found us.
I understood what they were saying. I am a world traveler and search out local culture when in a new place but find that tourist guides don’t do much to help me with that. Both before and after Katrina (but especially after), people from all over the world hunger to know New Orleans like locals do. I am a resourceful person, so I always end up getting the inside scoop but realize that many travelers don’t have the skills or time to research a place. 411 NOLA aims to remedy this for our visitors. I want to connect people to each other, to make travel about genuine communication between people and cultures.
Although the site is popular with people from out of town, many locals love it too. We are a city smitten with itself like no other. There is so much to do, so much local talent, so many hidden opportunities…people want a place where they can learn about it all. ” ~ Marcia Wall
__________
Marcia Wall is the creator and administrator of 411 NOLA, a local website dedicated to all things New Orleans for New Orleanians and visitors alike. This profile of Marcia is the first in a planned series about New Orleans bloggers: who they are, why they blog and what they talk about. The formats will be eclectic, including interviews by myself, interviews by others and profiles by guest bloggers like the one you’ll read today by Marcia’s former student turned friend, Jhae Dupart. The NOLA blogosphere has grown by leaps and bounds since I began blogging in 2005 and I discover new-to-me bloggers almost every week writing on a myriad of subjects from politics to fashion to lifestyle and everything in between. I hope you’ll enjoy this wonderful tribute to Marcia that Jhae has shared with us and I hope you all as readers will participate by making suggestions as to which bloggers you’d like to see profiled here.
~Charlotte, NOLAFemmes creator and administrator
__________
I met Marcia Wall in 2000. I was a sophomore at the University of New Orleans, and she was the instructor of the English course I took that summer. Her class centered on interactive discussion of taboo topics like gender and sexuality, making it a like no other I’ve ever had. But her innovative approach to education isn’t the only thing that makes her a standout. Marcia, a writer, educator, photographer, performer, activist, and founder of 411 NOLA, is a unique blend of talents that make her a welcome and integral presence in the NOLA community.
Marcia is originally from the South but grew up in California. After graduating from college in Santa Cruz, she moved to San Diego. But wanting to live some place that “oozed creativity,” she relocated to NOLA twelve years ago. She quickly fell in love with the culture – “[not] just festivals, good food, and good music, [but] the close-knit feeling of the city, its ethnic and religious diversity, its sense of pride and determination, and the way each neighborhood is almost a city unto itself.” As someone with both Southern and Sicilian Catholic heritage, Marcia found NOLA’s diverse community a perfect fit.
Her first job here was teaching English at UNO. Since then, her focus as an educator has taken many roles, like life coach and consultant for educational programs. To Marcia, education is about empowerment. In her words, “I can’t teach anyone anything. I can only help them to realize that they already know everything they need to know.” Likewise, as an activist, she strives to enable herself and others to have a positive impact in the world.
Marcia is a modern-day Renaissance woman. She always envisioned herself as a writer and, after school, as a photographer. She also developed a knack for performing, transitioning from reading her funny essays on stage to creating her own hilarious comedy routine, which she’s performed at venues across NOLA, San Diego, and Los Angeles. On top of all this, Marcia continues to dabble in other creative outlets – designing jewelry, making bath and beauty products, and experimenting in the kitchen. As she says, “Being an artist is about manifesting one’s vision and sharing that vision with the world. It’s about giving the world the gifts that the Creator gave you.”
It is her relationship with the Creator that sparked the inspiration for her most recent venture – the 411 NOLA website. “One day, after I had finished doing a big consulting job for an educational program for developmentally challenged adults, I prayed to God and asked what I should do next. In an instant, the whole idea for 411 NOLA unfolded before me. I saw in my mind’s eye what the site would be like.”
411 NOLA is a rich info source for all things NOLA for visitors and residents alike. Since coming online, the site has evolved to include articles, guides, recommendations, links, lists, photos, as well as an events calendar, a visitor’s guide, slide shows, products, contests, freebies, and opportunities for writers and artists. Marcia attributes the success of 411 NOLA to faith and hard work. When I asked how she feels about the site’s progress, she responded simply, “So far so good. Thanks J.C.!”
Marcia, ever the visionary, is already looking to expand the features available on 411 NOLA. “We would like to create a 411 NOLA video channel that highlights up and coming NOLA performers (of all kinds). We are trying to develop a program that will allow users to send postcards of their adventures in NOLA directly from the site. Later on, we hope to offer more merchandise and to host live chats and performances with NOLA writers, artists, personalities, musicians and the like.” As the site evolves, she will continue to follow her inspiration from God.
I can’t help but be inspired by the breadth of Marcia’s talent and character. She embodies the diversity of spirit and delightful quirkiness that makes NOLA one of a kind. In all that she does, she continues to make NOLA a richer, more vibrant city.
—
Marcia Wall lives in the French Quarter with her two cats, Gracie and Boo. When she’s not working on 411 NOLA, she enjoys traveling, cooking, exercising, and Sunday services at St. Augustine Church. To find out more about her photography, see her photography website at See It My Way Photo. To find out about her upcoming performances, “like” Cia’s Comedy Corner on Facebook. Follow 411 NOLA on Twitter.
Amy Winehouse died today, and you can read all about it on the righteous Huffington Post obituary that reminds us her demise was just a “slo-mo car crash.”
Her death is not altogether shocking, but it is disturbing nonetheless.
In a sense, her artistic marketability stemmed from a bad-girlification of 1960s soul music. She was a skinny, tatted-up tough girl from working-class London, with big hair and a voice to match. Her struggles with (or seeming acceptance of) drug addiction only enhanced her reputation as a true entertainer, one with moxie, attitude, and presence.
Fans relished her bad behavior, cheering lyrics like “You love blow and I love puff” (“Back to Black”) and “I told you I was trouble / You know that I’m no good” (“You Know That I’m No Good”). Her refusal to go to rehab was celebrated in a Grammy-winning song (“Rehab”), in which Winehouse admits to suffering from addiction and depression.
This glorification of mental illness and self-destructive behavior sends mixed messages to those who also struggle with these issues. Winehouse’s drug use was not only acceptable but legitimized by her celebrity status. This was a double validation: Her drug use fed into her being perceived as a rock star, and her being a rock star forgave her drug use. And now she’s dead, and no one’s surprised.
So what does it take to remove the idolatry from substance abuse? The wasted talents of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and many others including Amy Winehouse now, have all developed into a tragic mythos of “forever young,” without acknowledgement of what really ripped these creative beings from our midst. The real scourge is untreated illness, the exaltation of which prevents honesty, recovery, and true grit from being communicated to a public sold on the dangerous cheapness of entertainment.
I recently discovered Lindsay Rae Spurlock and her music when Emilie mentioned her in her Bragalicious post here. I listened to Lindsay’s tune “As For Now” and was blown away by it. I thought “I have to find out more and share her with our readers!” So……here she is, our newest Femme Fatale Friday.
Are you a native Louisianan?
Yep! I was born in Lafayette, moved around with my dad while he worked in radio (a radio brat, so to speak), then moved back to Louisiana (Baton Rouge) from Middle school through college (LSU)… spent lots of time in Nola. Then after I graduated I moved to Atlanta, GA, then NYC, then Austin, now Los Angeles… all in pursuit of this music career. I will always consider Louisiana home!
Did you write all of the tunes on “Heart On”?
Yes.
How long have you been performing and what is your earliest memory of performing before a group ?
I have been performing my own tunes live for about 12 years. I performed/acted in musicals and plays throughout my schooling years. I started writing my own songs with guitar when I was 16 years old. I was driving by a pub in Baton Rouge, LA called Tony’s Tavern and noticed a large ” open mic night tonight!” sign in the window. So I turned around, went in, barely old enough to enter this joint, but confidently inquired about the process to sign up.Then came back later that night, invited tons of friends, and it was the most exhilarating rush being on that stage performing my own material. This was the first time I played my own music, solo, before a group.
Tell us about some of the television shows that have featured your music and how that came about.
Some of the television shows include; MTV’s Real World (3 different seasons)-My tune “November” played at the season finale of the Brooklyn season as everyone was saying their goodbyes….you know when they say the goodbye and act sad and cry, but are secretly glad because all they did was talk about each other anyway behind their backs… My tune “You Have My Heart” played on this same season, as well. “November” played on another episode in the Washington DC Season. NBC’s sitcom novella “Watch Over Me”- Tune: “November” played at the season finale of this show as well as a final sort of emotional goodbye, when a husbands new wife dies from being poisoned by the “bad guy”… touching. hehe Also the latest placement was on the 3rd season premiere of Adult Swim’s “Children’s Hospital” with my tune “As For Now” playing in the end credits. Super good placement! Got a lot of momentum from this one. I have an upcoming placement in Felicity too! I’ve had some placements in the show Bad Girls Club and also overseas, in different foreign films and such. My tunes play in various stores across the nation too: Barney’s, Neimen Marcus, Aeropostale, Bonefish Grill, (Bonefish did a compilation with my tune “You Have My Heart” and mailed it out with promo and coupons across the nation) Outback Steakhouse, Charlotte Russe, etc…
How this came about: music soups (music supervisors) found me online or through people and contacted me. Also how I got signed now with a music placement company based out of the UK called AG Sync, who now has offices here in Hollywood and New York.
What inspires you as a songwriter?
Life.
Tell us a little about your writing process. Do you have any rituals, a special place where you write, does the melody or the lyrics come first…..etc.
The melody and lyrics usually come at the same time. I sit down at the piano and just start. Usually whatever is on my mind will just start manifesting itself into song.
What kind of music do you listen to? Who are some of your faves?
I like all kinds of music. Love music with good melodic lines, both vocally and instrumentally driven.
I grew up listening to a lot of queen with my dad. Love queen. I think Freddie Mercury’s voice is the best male vocalist I’ve heard.
I really admire musicians who can pull it off live, sans any pitch correction on the vocals.
Love electronic stuff! Love Bjork. Love Animal Collective (in fact my producer did Animal Collective’s “Post Meriwhether Pavillion” album. and Gnarls Barkley’s “St Elsewhere” album….maybe i mentioned this. love his work)
Loved the cranberries
Love Death Cab
Love Aphex Twin’s instrumental pieces “Rhubarb” and “Lichen”…..these are my favorite synth pad pieces and evoke lots of emotion. lots.
There are more… listed on my myspace/FB pages.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Conquering a greater portion of the world with my music. Playing bigger stages!
__________________________________________________________________
I have no doubt Lindsay’s going to be kickin it for years to come. For more scoop on what she’s up to, check out these links:
When I moved here from New York, I was so excited about making a new home for myself I gave very little thought to what “home” actually meant. It took exactly one week for me to start missing things: first bagels, then pizza, then more substantive things, like walkable sidewalks and meetings starting on time.
I tried to create a comfortable space in my house that would bring me daily reminders of what I love about New York, like subway maps and photos of my family. Yet there was always an unsettled quality about this space, and it wasn’t for a while that I realized it was because I had no books.
I had left all of them in New York, thinking that it wasn’t worth the schlep (meaning “haul”; Yiddish aphorisms are another thing I miss about New York)for an indeterminate time of staying in New Orleans. But their absence weighed on me, so I had to take action.
I went to the Alvar Street branch of the New Orleans Public Library, where I was assisted by an elderly seersucker-clad man with an impressively loud “indoor voice.” Apparently, the only document they need from potential patrons is proof of residency, which in my case was the envelope from my latest bank statement. I could also, the desk attendant stage-whispered conspiratorially, have addressed and mailed an envelope to myself.
But I was not out for such tricky business, and armed with my new card I set about exploring the stacks. I found some curious organizational methodology to the shelves at the Alvar Street branch: In the nonfiction section was the King James Bible alongside the Frommer’s Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States and an exposé on Mao Tsedung as the mastermind of the Cold War. This was not exactly the Dewey Decimal System of my youth.
I decided to see what the DVD section had to offer, and boy were there some gems.
Nestled between a documentary on Mardi Gras Indians and a collection of Pedro Almodóvar’s films, and below the greatest hits of Ravi Shankar, was a German film called Absurdistan. Billed as “Fellini-esque” and “lusty,” the movie called out to my sleazy arthouse impulse.
I checked it out, in addition to some short story anthologies and that documentary on Mardi Gras Indians.
Absurdistan turned out to be a bizarre Russian-language romantic dramedy that parodies the classic Aritstophanes play “Lysistrata.” That work was of course the one in which the women of Athens persuade the men to end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sex until they call a truce with Sparta.
In Absurdistan, an Eastern European village of the title name is threatened by a broken water pipe that has left the citizens unbathed and unable to tend properly to their industries, which appear mainly to be baking, shoemaking, and bee-keeping. The only people who can fix the water pipe are the men of the village, who are so lazy they make time only for drinking tea and having sex. According to the film’s narrators, “the men maintained that their virility was famed all the way to Samarkand…The men busied themselves with proving their reputation” while “the women tried to stop the village from going to the dogs.”
The film’s protagonist is a young woman named Aya, who, despite her lust for her boyfriend, Temelko, convinces the other women of the village to withhold sex from their husbands until the water pipe is repaired. Eventually (spoiler alert!), of course, it is, as the men simply cannot survive without sex.
The film suggests that women hold the power in the village of Absurdistan, as they do in life, because men are so thoroughly motivated by female sexuality. However, this power is situated within an overly simplistic gendered paradigm that actually disempowers women in relation to their own sex lives.
Firstly, in Lysistrata, the women clearly suffer from abstinence. They constantly remind each other why they are imposing celibacy upon themselves, in order to prevent women from defecting from the cause.
The women of Absurdistan show little compunction about their decision to withhold sex, and only a scene depicting an orgiastic performance betrays any untapped physical desire on their part (with the exception of a shot in which the women snuggle with each other as they fall asleep, a behavior not unlike the communal bathing the women did before the ban on sex was enacted). This performance is later shown to have been a trap for the men of the village, and therefore not trustworthy as a reflection of the women’s experience of celibacy.
Absurdistan’s women are in this way denied sexual agency. Yes, they choose not to have sex with men. But their sexual pleasure is deprioritized to almost a non-issue in this film. Sex is clearly for the benefit of the men.
This dynamic is exemplified within the relationship between Aya and Temelko, who are virgins. As adolescents, they call upon the spiritual advice of Aya’s grandmother, who forbids them from sexual contact until the stars align appropriately. They must wait over four years for this event, which ends up coinciding with the sex ban.
Although these two characters are presented as outliers in the film – Aya is the gutsy ringleader of the other women and Temelko is the only man who returns to the village after attending school in the city – their actions are consistent with those of the other characters. Despite her grandmother’s promise of cosmic (and orgasmic) euphoria for the lovebirds, Aya withholds sex from the agitated Temelko, subjugating her own romantic and physical desires at the expense of the male libido.
In a somewhat convoluted plot twist, Aya becomes troubled when a traveling showgirl tries to seduce Temelko. Time with the girl in her bedroom is the prize for a carnival shooting game, which Temelko wins.
The girl barely talks at all, and is featured only giggling, posing provocatively, and undressing. Her value is in her physicality and what bodily pleasures she might provide for the sex-starved men of the village.
Indeed, the reason she is in the village at all is due to the enterprising game-owner, who believes rightly that he will profit from the conditions of the village. The showgirl’s sexuality is commodified and sold in this way; her body is exchanged for the few coins it costs to play the game.
What is truly disturbing about this character is how little she seems to care. Sex is assigned a high value in the village, where the men cannot seem to survive without it. Yet for the showgirl and her traveling companion, it is something given away casually as a carnival prize, like a giant teddy bear.
It is possible that the way sex is treated in this circumstance is not so different than the way it is between the husbands and wives of Absurdistan. Sex has a transactive quality in both, only with the showgirl it is more explicit. In the village, the women also use sex as a bartering tool, specifically to get the men to fix the water pipe.
However, this interpretation does not really complicate the question of female power. The women are still giving up something in exchange for getting something else. In fact, the only arena in which female power is unquestionable has to do with Aya’s grandmother. Her directive for Aya and Temelko to wait until having sex is obeyed. This is truly an example of power: How many teenage boys do you know who would agree to wait four years until the “stars are in order” to lose their virginity?
Also, the premise that the women are unable to fix the water pipe themselves is itself problematic. They are able to do everything else that village governance requires, yet the men are mysteriously more competent in this regard. Additionally, girls do not appear to attend school in the distant city; this privilege is extended exclusively to the boys of the village.
So at the end of the day, the library gave me a lot to think about, and I can’t wait to share the other weird shit I find there. For now, I am scheming how to get my family to ship me some good New York bagels. Because it’s really not home without books or bagels.
________________________________________
You can read more from Arielle on her blog, Shtetl Chic.
Why this is personal; I stand with Planned Parenthood!
Congressional leaders and President Obama headed off a shutdown of the government with less than two hours to spare Friday night under a tentative budget deal that would cut $38 billion from federal spending this year. I am grateful that they figured out a way to avert government shutdown and not hurt Planned Parenthood in the process. But I AM REALISTIC; this battle is not over; this was simply the first skirmish in the war on women’s health. So I ask you to please support Planned Parenthood and women’s health issues; it has never been so needed especially in a time where there is an all out assault on women’s health. Please read the post that follows; it was written yesterday and it is my personal story on why this matters!
====================================
Friday April 8, 2011; Today I received emails from Planned Parenthood that actually make me sick; due to the stupid GOP who have decided that Planned Parenthood is a bad thing, so they plan to shut down the government and hold the Democrats and all women hostage in order to prove their point because they have decided that Planned Parenthood is ONLY about abortion. The truth could not be farther from this!
I will cite articles, but what I want to do is to relate my own experience with abortion and a woman’s right to choose. The beautiful girl that you see below in the photo is my sister Brenda; I lost her when she was twenty seven years old and the world lost a great crusader for the underdog. It is because I was lucky enough to have her in my life, that I have the strength to speak out against what the GOP is doing; it is fundamentally wrong and it has to be overturned. Here is her story (and mine.)
When Brenda was 25, she found out that she was pregnant. It should have been a moment that most women who are in love and engaged to be married would cherish; the chance to have a child with the man that they love. Instead it was a time of terror for Brenda; you see, Brenda had severe epilepsy, and she could not be taken off of the medicines that kept her safe, in order to carry a child to term, and the medicines that already caused her significant side effects would have caused severe side effects to a child. If she was taken off the anti-convulsive medicines, it was highly probable that she would have died from a seizure.
Additionally, she had a hard time taking birth control, since the pill caused her to have seizures. So after much heartache, pain, and discussion with her fiance to make her decision, she chose to have an abortion, and asked me to accompany her to Planned Parenthood in Santa Clara, California. The year was 1982, and thank goodness, we had good facilities at that time that performed safe abortions. This had NOT always been the case as I was growing up, and indeed many deaths were attributed to back street abortion clinics. When they called her back for the procedure, they had her talk to several counselors before taking her back to the room. She explained over and over why she had no choice and I could see she was getting more and more upset; why couldn’t they just understand was written across her face. Finally they began the procedure; it seemed an interminably long time, though in reality, it probably was over in less than a half hour. BUT not before, my beloved sister suffered a Grand Mal seizure; I stayed with her, never leaving her side and I tried to protect her from the seizure, and to simply be there for her. She was terrified, as she always was when she had a seizure, and once the procedure was finally over, I took her home and put her to bed where she slept for 14 hours straight. She often felt guilt about that act, but I know in my heart that she would not have survived pregnancy, and that she had made the right decision. If the GOP gets their way, the Brenda’s of the world, will have no where to turn. Please do not let this happen!
To finish my story, about two summers later, Brenda married her sweetheart in June of 1984. They began their married life together, but it was to be short-lived. On October 4, 1984, my sister had a Grand Mal seizure while driving and was killed instantly when her car ran into the piling for an overpass on Highway 101 in Santa Clara, CA.
The one thing that I know about my sister Brenda, is that she would not mind me telling you this story; indeed knowing Brenda, she would be on the picket lines in DC marching with Planned Parenthood. Please do not force women to go back to a terrible time where contraception, family planning, and abortions are difficult to obtain. Please stand with Brenda and me; we support and stand with Planned Parenthood and we believe in the rights of all women to get the medical help they need, no matter their financial situation.
From the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-planned-parenthood-a… “Though the fight over Planned Parenthood might be about abortion, Planned Parenthood itself isn’t about abortion. It’s primarily about contraception and reproductive health. And if Planned Parenthood loses funding, what will mainly happen is that cancer screenings and contraception and STD testing will become less available to poorer people. Folks with more money, of course, have many other ways to receive all these services, and tend to get them elsewhere already. The fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money. It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children. The same goes for preventable cancers and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS.”
Shutdown Near, No Sign of Compromise; After the nightlong negotiations that ended before dawn on Friday yielded no agreement, Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader, went on the offensive. He told reporters and said on the Senate floor that Mr. Boehner, the Senate Democrats and President Obama had essentially settled on $38 billion in cuts from current spending. But he said that Republicans were refusing to abandon a policy provision that would withhold federal financing for family planning and other health services for poor women from Planned Parenthood and other providers.“This is indefensible, and everyone should be outraged,” Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. “The Republican House leadership have only a couple of hours to look in the mirror, snap out of it and realize how truly shameful they have been.”
______________________________
Laura Bergerol is a professional photographer in New Orleans and blogs on Posterous and at Time Captured.net. Laura also was a major contributor to our Katrina Photo Project for the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. This essay was cross-posted from her personal blog.
I read the following essay on Dawn Allison’s blog, Dawn Breaks, and I thought, “I have to share this with my NOLAFemmes readers!” It is such a beautiful and powerful essay on body image and how, with experience and (dare I say it) age, we tend to make peace with our self image and embrace just how amazing our bodies really are.
Dawn’s great-grandfather was a Louisiana native and relatives from both paternal and maternal sides of her family were transplants to New Orleans. Her father introduced her to the city when she was 15 years old and she’s had an ongoing love affair with the city for 32 years now.
She’s the mother of 4 and grandmother of two. Dawn was a contributer to “Louisiana In Words” which was published in 2007. She describes that experience as “incredibly humbling because there were so many “real” writers who contributed”. Hey, Dawn, I’ve got news for you. You’re a “real” writer too.
This is different… a bit weird, really. But I’ve written a letter to my body after reading Kate’s who was inspired by Andrea whom she found at Plus Size Models Unite. As awkward as it is, it really is a wonderful idea.
Dear Physique,
I’ve been so hard on you. You didn’t do one thing to deserve all of those hateful, negative feelings I had toward you. I apologize for that.
In the beginning, you and I were fine. We spent so much time outside doing fun things. I was so excited to take you places—sometimes I would forget to dress you but a neighbor lady would call to let my mother know that I was playing outside in my birthday suit. I was only two years old so I hope you understand.
You did great things before I learned about fear. When my uncle wanted to show me off to his new bride, he took me to the golf course and asked me to do back-hand-springs. I asked him how many. “As many as you want,” he said. You flipped on command. I stopped when I felt dizzy. My uncle smiled and said, “I counted 14.” I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate you letting me do those cool tricks when I was 8 years old.
The day I fell out of a tree and broke your arm was the day I quit being fearless. My world became a more cautious place at age ten. At age 12, it became a very self-conscious place. I put limitations on you. I didn’t even like looking at you.
I know you overheard so much of what was said about you…about your size, your weight, your shape. You would have preferred that my mind hadn’t bought into all of that but like a wimp, I did. You never wanted to do anything wimpy. That was all me.
I tried to force change on you. I looked at glossy magazines covers and wished your bones poked out like the beautiful, hungry models. I did exercises I learned in a book titled “Thin Thighs in Thirty Days” hoping you would cooperate.
But you didn’t want to be thin. You wanted to be strong.
I finally understood that around the time I turned twenty-five. I’m sorry it took me so long. I quit wishing your legs would grow longer and thinner because for whatever reason, God designed you to be strong. I let that settled into my soul one day and realized that you could carry people out of burning buildings if necessary. It made me feel like I had purpose. It made me smile.
Thank you for being so fertile and carrying all those babies. I don’t fully understand why you had to suffer Hyperemesis Gravidarum and take me along for that ungodly ride…but you survived it. We both did. Charlotte Bronte did not. As difficult as it was growing babies, you birthed them like an athlete. If birthing babies was an Olympic Event, you would definitely have qualified. You produced plenty of milk to nurture babies. I never once woke in the night to prepare a bottle, thanks to you. You allowed me to snuggle and feed and sleep, all at the same time. For nine years total. My kids benefited from your goodness.
I wish I had been as good to you as you were to me. The body-image thing haunted me for far too many years and you took the punishment for it. The year I turned 40, my mind finally saw things your way. Something about my granddaughter coming into the world reversed all of that negativity. One day she caught a glimpse of my behind and said, “I see your hiney. It’s beautiful!” And that was all it took.
In a world filled with heartache and stress where people eat Lexapro, Zoloft, and Prozac like candy, you’ve allowed me to thrive on nothing but chocolate and a great endorphin rush to help combat the blues. You’ve allowed me keep doing cartwheels after ACL Reconstruction on both knees, not to mention the Lumbar Discectomy and Laminectomy. If I had been successful at making your thighs thinner, you wouldn’t have bounced back from these things like you did because studies show that strong quads give us more God-given pain relief. You must have known I’d need it someday.
It amazes me that you still want to run and play and ride mountain bikes after all of that. You keep things interesting. I really do love you. You’ve been so very good to me.
I finally learned to listen to you and discovered that you prefer a workout called Leg Hell over the Thinner Thighs thing. You crave intensity no matter what your size. Today I am sore from the work-out you did yesterday. As we speak, you are repairing all those micro-tears in the muscle fibers. I made sure to feed you plenty of good food to help the process because if I’m lucky, I’ve still got half a lifetime with you.
It’s late and I’m tired and about to go to bed but first I’m posting this photo and a link to a piece on Sociological Images, Women’s Media Visibility in Egypt’s Protests.
Have you, like me, wondered why we aren’t seeing women in the recent protests in Egypt? Find out.
Here’s another excellent piece on Women’s Voices For Change.
Two months ago I started reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, the seminal book on spiritual healing for the creative force in all of us. I found myself blocked, frustrated, and constantly nursing this place of fear inside of me when it came to sitting down with any piece of fiction I wrote. This fear manifested in physical symptoms—clenched stomach, quickened heartbeat, an icky feeling in my chest—that encouraged me even more to abandon writing and pursue other avenues of satisfaction (shopping online for boots anyone?).
The Artist’s Way speaks directly to this kind of creative atrophy and anxiety. Even when I found myself outwardly rolling my eyes at all that Great-Creator-Within business, inwardly I nodded along as she talked about nurturing the inner self before outward production. This made tremendous sense to me. So, without my usual trepidation or excuse-making I dove right into one of Cameron’s two prescriptions for the creative soul: Morning Pages. Her other exercise required a weekly excursion, called an Artist’s Date, that you made with yourself to try something new each week. I didn’t prove so diligent here.
For some reason, Morning Pages clicked with me. Each morning, (okay, most mornings) I wake up, brew a pot of coffee, and load a Pages document—password protected, of course—and write three pages of whatever pops into my head. Sometimes I write about my daily tasks ahead. Other times I write about something bothering me too newly formed or personal to disclose to anyone else. I’ve even written about having nothing to write. What I write isn’t the point though. I just need to show up to something, every day. A commitment, a practice, some continual thread in my life, a constant I can look to and learn to count on.
I can’t point to anything in my life two months later and attribute some change directly to this practice of Morning Pages. But I can testify to a daily sense of satisfaction and accomplishment with the completion of those pages, and that something in me has changed. Cameron says in her book that it’s almost impossible to write about something every single day and not eventually be forced to make a change. I’ve found that to be true, and some of these changes have happened almost unconsciously. I discovered that my attitude has changed completely when I went back this morning and read my very first week of Morning Pages. Two months ago I was pessimistic, depressed, angry and overly critical of the people around me. My Morning Pages for the month of January look nothing like this at all.
Dedicating your mornings to this kind of daily practice can give you a sense of accumulation and allow you to discover meaning in your daily life. It also creates an almost effortless record—of your moods, your worries, your daily life. I was surprised when I read about an unusually pleasant dinner I hadn’t thought of since that night. Those pages can serve as reinforcement of the positive, reminders of the small experiences that make life worth living but also become overshadowed by the larger and more emotionally taxing events of our lives. There is also an immense satisfaction in the act of building. Over the past two months, I’ve built a document over 30,000 words and almost 100 pages long.
Every morning, the best you can.
Notice up above I conceded *almost* every day. I seem to operate at about 70% of the time. I’m terrible about the weekends and not as dedicated midweek. Set a goal of every morning, five mornings a week, or just every Sunday. Whatever your goal, try to reach it. My Morning Pages don’t take me long at all, but I’m a super typer. (Thanks should now be given to my cruel high school typing teacher who would bark out the letters and slap a ruler on her desk to beat time. This gesture also subtly conveyed to her sophomore typing class that if we missed a single letter, she just might beat time on our knuckles. I was scared to death of that woman and even hated the class, but there is no denying 80 WPM.)
How to—
Write in whatever medium you feel comfortable. I’ve gotten out of the habit of longhand writing, but Cameron recommends this way in order to allow your brain time to slow down and think. If you write comfortably this way, do it. If you like to type on an old Remington despite the key jams and ink blotches, then that’s the best way for you. Do whatever way you find most comfortable and know that this is the right way. But, if you decide to write longhand make sure you find a place to keep it so that you feel safe writing. Nothing kills this whole self-reflection process like a deep fear of prying eyes.
Nothing to write about. Not.
Although I’ve written a couple times that I couldn’t think of anything to write, most of the times I can. Our brains are wheel hamsters on steroids, constantly whirring with all kinds of thoughts. There is always something to write about. In the beginning, write about how pissed off you are, how your partner leaves the effing milk out to let it spoil, how the bank overdrew your account, or how you got a bad haircut. Think of these mornings as dumps for all those negative feelings. By getting all of these thoughts cleared out of the way, you open your mind up for something more positive. If you share space with others, password-protect these pages so that you are the only eyes that ever see them.
Eventually rev up your engine and get ready to drive
I got a little tired of my own whining even though I never went back to read it. I knew it was there, front-loaded all over my then 60 page document. So I decided to change directions. I started writing about my goals, my dreams, the things I wanted. Attainable things like a house with an office that gets tons of sunlight. Completely unrealistic things like a Pulitzer prize. Everything in between. The act of wanting is incredibly powerful. When we don’t name the things we want, we are almost sure never to receive them. Plus, it’s just fun to daydream sometimes. Put me in a way better mood than talking about how pissy I was. Start pushing your Morning Pages to talk about the way you want your life to be and see what happens. I credit this more than anything else with changing my perspective.
Just like that old adage about life, this is a journey not a destination
Seriously. Don’t look for some direct means of measuring the success of your Morning Pages. Don’t even think of them in terms of success. (By doing so, you unconsciously signal to your little dude within that you will measure this in success or failure, opening up an outcome you will label failure.) Writing these every day is about growth, but also about dedicating yourself to something. One of the greatest unintended consequences of these things for me has been just proving that I can stick with something. That’s worth my 30 minutes every day no matter what.
Repealing the Affordable Care Act will Hurt Women in Louisiana January 2011
The Affordable Care Act makes important advances for women’s health. The new law protects women in Louisiana from discriminatory health insurance practices, makes health coverage more affordable and easier for them to obtain, and improves access to many of the health services they need. Repealing this important law will hurt women in Louisiana by returning to the days of a health care system that did not work for women.
Insurance Industry Practices that are Harmful to Women Would Continue
In addition to the prohibition on sex discrimination in health care, the new health care law explicitly prohibits discriminatory insurance practices. These important protections will prohibit insurers from treating women like a pre-existing condition. Here are a few of the important insurance protections women will lose if the law is repealed:
A ban on gender rating for individuals and small businesses. Under the new law, by 2014 (at the latest) insurers in Louisiana would no longer be allowed to charge individual women and small employers with a predominately-female workforce more for coverage.
Prohibitions on coverage denials and exclusions for women with “pre-existing conditions” such as pregnancy; having had a C-section, breast, or cervical cancer; or having received medical treatment for domestic or sexual violence. By 2014 (at the latest) insurers in Louisiana will be required to accept all applicants for coverage regardless of their medical history, and will no longer be able to issue coverage with pre-existing condition exclusions. For children, the prohibition on pre-existing condition exclusions began in September 2010.
Uninsured women in Louisiana who were uninsured due to a pre-existing condition will lose access to coverage through the pre-existing condition insurance plan – or “high-risk pool” – that is available on a temporary basis, until the new insurance rules are in effect in 2014.
A ban on lifetime and annual limits, which prohibits health plans from placing dollar limits on covered services, giving women the security of knowing that their plan benefits won’t run out when they need them the most. Lifetime limits were banned for all health plans starting in September 2010. Annual limits are also strictly regulated and will be banned entirely for all new health plans and existing group plans in 2014.
Obtaining Insurance will be Harder and More Expensive if the Affordable Care Act is Repealed.
Women in Louisiana are poorer (on average) than men and have more trouble affording health care. For instance, nearly a quarter of all women in the state report not visiting a doctor due to high costs.1 The new health care law would expand access to affordable coverage in several ways by 2014, but if the law is repealed women will lose opportunities to obtain the affordable coverage they need. For example: Up to 97,500 uninsured, low-income women in Louisiana would not become eligible for Medicaid, which by 2014 would be expanded to those up to 133% of the federal poverty level (FPL), or roughly $29,000 a year for a family of four. 2
Women would not see the benefits of a new Health Insurance Exchange that would be established in Louisiana to serve as an easy-to-use “insurance shopping center” where women can compare and choose the high-quality health plan that best fits their needs.
Approximately 176,000 women in Louisiana would not receive health insurance subsidies to help towards premiums and out-of-pocket costs of Exchange-based health plans; subsidies would be available to those with family incomes up to 400% of the FPL, or roughly $88,000 a year for a family of four. 3 Women Would Lose Coverage of Many of the Important Health Care Services They Need.
All new health plans issued on or after September 23, 2010 are required to cover recommended preventive care at no cost. Repealing the new law would mean women would lose no-cost access to important preventive screenings such as mammograms and pap smears.
Starting in 2014, health plans sold to individuals and small businesses must cover a broad range of health services. If the law is repealed, plans will not be federally required to cover many services important to women including maternity care, prescription drugs and mental health care.
There Are Many Additional Provisions of the New Law That Will Improve the Health and Well-Being of Louisiana Women and Their Families- Which Women Will Lose with Repeal.
Additional benefits of the new health care law that women will lose with repeal include (but are certainly not limited to):
Tax Credits for Small Business: Women are more likely than men to work for small businesses that don’t offer health insurance, and will benefit from the new tax credits to help small businesses provide coverage to their employees (available for the 2010 tax year), as well as unprecedented access to affordable small group health coverage through the Exchanges.
Coverage for Young Women Up to Age 26: Young women—who are more likely to be uninsured than women in any other age group—will benefit from a new rule that took effect September 2010 which allows young adults to remain on their parents’ health insurance policy as a dependent until age 26. 4
Closing the Medicare Drug Coverage Gap: Older women will benefit from a provision which closes the Medicare Part D “donut hole,” or the coverage gap that currently requires seniors to spend a considerable amount out-of-pocket for prescription drugs. In 2007, 64% of the Medicare beneficiaries that were affected by the “donut hole” were women.5
New Long Term Care Insurance Options: A new national, voluntary insurance program known as CLASS will be established as early as 2011 to provide long-term services and supports to individuals with functional limitations. This program will alleviate burdens on family caregivers, who are most often women.6
Time for Nursing Moms to Express Breast Milk at Work: Nursing mothers and their infants will gain from a requirement that employers provide a reasonable break time and location to express breast milk (effective immediately).7,8
“Direct Access” to Obstetrical and Gynecological Care: As of September 2010, all new health plans are prohibited from requiring authorization or prior approval when women seek this type of health care.9
For more detailed information on how women will benefit from Affordable Care Act, visit the National Women’s Law Center website: www.nwlc.org/reformmatters
________________________________________________
1 Kaiser Family Foundation, Putting Women’s Health Disparities on the Map (2009), http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemapreport.jsp?rep=31&cat=15
2 National Women’s Law Center calculations based on health insurance data for women ages 18-64 from the Current Population Survey’s 2008 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, using CPS Table Creator, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstc/cps_table_creator.html
3 Ibid. Includes an estimated 102,000 uninsured women and 51,000 women who currently purchase coverage from the individual health insurance market.
4 At least thirty states already have laws that extend dependent coverage to young adult children, regardless of enrollment in school. Many of these state laws are more restrictive than the new federal law, and none apply to self-insured or ERISA plans (as the federal law does). The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) provides a list of states’ dependent coverage laws at: http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=14497
5 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Strengthening the Health Insurance System: How Health Insurance Reform Will Help America’s Older and Senior Women, http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/seniorwomen/index.html, Last Accessed on April 26, 2010.
6 Kaiser Family Foundation, Women and Health Care: A National Profile (July 2005), http://www.kff.org/womenshealth/upload/Women-and-Health-Care-A-National-Profile-Key-Findings-from-the-Kaiser-Women-s-Health-Survey.pdf
7 This provision applies to all employers, though employers with fewer than 50 employees may be exempt if they demonstrate that the requirements impose an “undue hardship” on their business.
8 At least twenty-four states already have laws related to expressing breast milk in the workplace. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) provides a list of these states and summaries of their laws at: http://www.ncsl.org/IssuesResearch/Health/BreastfeedingLaws/tabid/14389/Default.aspx
9 Thirty-six states and DC already have direct access laws that managed care companies and group health plans must comply with. However, the new health reform law is broader in scope, since it requires all new health plans (i.e. for individuals and groups of all sizes, including self-insured health plans) to comply. The Kaiser Family Foundation provides a list of existing direct access laws at: http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparemaptable.jsp?ind=493&cat=10
