PODCAST: Meet the Candidate- Belinda Davis (House District 70)
Every day this week and then occasionally throughout the next four months, I’ll be talking with candidates for legislative and statewide offices. If you or someone you know is running for election in Louisiana and would like to schedule a time to appear on Briefly Speaking, please don’t hesitate: Send me an email at lamar@bayoubrief.com.
Although, yes, I am a Louisiana Democrat, the Bayou Brief is no longer officially endorsing candidates, and we will be welcoming candidates across the political spectrum. Our mission, after all, is to tell the stories of the people of Louisiana.
I conducted my first round of interviews last Saturday at the True Blue Gala, the Louisiana Democratic Party’s annual dinner and fundraiser, so, not surprisingly, the first group you’ll hear from have at least one thing in common: They are all Democrats.
We are kicking things off with a conversation with Dr. Belinda Davis, a political science professor at LSU who is running for House District 70, the seat being vacated by Franklin Foil due to term limits. Foil is now running for state Senate, and later in the week, we will hear from one of his opponents, Dr. Beverly Brooks Thompson.
But since I recorded the discussion with Dr. Davis first, it seemed fair to lead off with her interview.
Briefly Speaking is also available on Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Google Podcasts, and at least four other streaming services. You can also find us on Twitter @BriefSpeakPod.
PODCAST: Jim Francis Discusses How LABI and the Industrial Tax Exemption Program Have Undermined Louisiana’s Economy
Also available via Apple Podcasts.
Deployment Penalty: How Big Auto Insurers Hike Premiums on Returning Vets
In what amounts to a deployment penalty, several large Louisiana car insurers raise rates, in some cases by nearly 30%, on National Guard members and other military personnel who re-enter the private insurance marketplace upon their return from a tour of duty, according to research conducted for the Bayou Brief by national insurance expert Douglas Heller.
Even with clean driving records, returning veterans who served on a tour of duty are charged more by some companies than those who those who had not been deployed.
State law mandates that active drivers maintain basic, monthly liability coverage, but coverage is not required when a person no longer drives. Insurance companies often justify penalizing drivers whose coverage has lapsed under the pretense of a government regulation, arguing that such penalties serve as a deterrence against those who continue to drive after their coverage lapses. In reality, though, only the state can legally enforce and collect financial penalties, and insurance companies commonly exploit the ambiguities about or the lack of enforcement as a profit center, regardless of whether or not a driver’s lapse in coverage was reasonable or justified.
Similar studies in other states have shown that individuals whose coverage lapsed due to an extended hospitalization or time spent in incarceration have also been penalized once they re-enter the marketplace, but the practice of penalizing members of the military strikes many as particularly egregious.
“It is frustrating to learn that deploying to uphold your military duty and serve your country, in turn, has a negative financial impact on your insurance and your family,” said Ben Armstrong, a Marine veteran and the commander of New Orleans Veterans of Foreign War Post 8973 (the NOLA VFW). “I don’t understand why there isn’t a law or policy governing insurance companies and how they interact with military in this situation who are sacrificing to serve us.”
The NOLA VFW is comprised of more than 300 veterans and active duty service-members who served in Iraq, Afganistan, the Persian Gulf, Vietnam, Korea, and World War II.
Heller found that GEICO, for example, imposes a 29% surcharge on the auto insurance premium of a driver who explains that he was previously uninsured because “I was deployed.”
A returning soldier who lives near Camp Beauregard, the Louisiana National Guard base in Pineville, or sixty miles away by Ft. Polk and the Joint Readiness Training Center (the country’s only U.S. Army installation that both trains and deploys combat units) faces $149 in extra premiums for his first six-months of basic auto insurance compared with a Louisianian not called to service, even he has a lifetime perfect driving record.
Allstate Insurance also asked if a driver was uninsured due to “returning from military deployment.” For that serviceman, however, there is no online quote available, despite his good driving record. Instead, the company presented him with an apology screen, suggesting there was a technical error and that the soldier should contact an agent.
This purported “technical problem” occurred any time a researcher asked for a quote for a recently returning veteran, even while Allstate was able to provide a quote to a non-serving driver who had recently caused an accident. It is not clear if Allstate would sell the guardsman a policy at all, or if there would be a deployment penalty added to the premium.
“Punishing good drivers with higher auto insurance premiums or barriers to coverage because they were deployed abroad is astonishing and repulsive,” said auto insurance expert Douglas Heller. “The board members and corporate parents of these big companies should be asking serious questions about how they are pricing customers in Louisiana. And Louisianians should be asking why the Insurance Commissioner, Jim Donelon, is letting these companies treat service-members this way.”
Two other large Louisiana insurers – Progressive and GoAuto – both charged significantly higher rates to drivers who do not currently have auto insurance, but neither of those carriers specifically ask whether the reason for the lack of coverage was military service. GoAuto charged the guardsman who did not have prior coverage $112 (12%) more for six months than it charged a similar driver who already had insurance.
Progressive charged $351 more (a 47% increase) for being uninsured while out of the country. It is not clear whether the driver’s deployment might excuse him from Progressive’s penalty, as the company website has a disclaimer that customers can call if “you think you were not required to carry insurance.”
State Farm and Louisiana Farm Bureau, the other two companies tested, do not appear to impose penalties on service members who had a lapse in coverage during their deployment.
“It is obvious that insurance companies can sell an auto insurance policy without punishing Americans for their service, and insurance companies should not have to be scrutinized to make sure they treat soldiers fairly,” said Heller. “But, in Louisiana, the insurance companies seem to do just about whatever they want, and there is far too little oversight of their pricing practices. This should be an easy reform.”
Armstrong of the NOLA VFW agrees. “There are thousands of federal and state policies and executive orders that cover military educational benefits, employment and reemployment rights after deployment and various other things. Why is this not addressed? This really shouldn’t be a political issue. This should be about doing what is right.”
New Orleans Culture: Lost in the 21st Century?
The recent deaths of Chef Leah Chase and Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John, who I called Our Mac, have New Orleanians pondering the future of our culture. Social Media is agog with “whither New Orleans” thoughts as well as the occasional prayer for deliverance from the tourist hordes.
While the grief over the loss of these two giants is genuine, much of the handwringing is overwrought. The threat to New Orleans culture comes more from gentrification and economic issues than from deaths in the older generation. Dr. John was 77, and Chef Chase was 96; they’re irreplaceable, but nobody lives forever.
Before dusting off my crystal ball about the future, a few words in honor of the dearly departed. Both Dr. John and Chef Chase were more than just great at what they did, they were folk heroes.
Here’s what I said about Our Mac in my tribute to him at First Draft:
“Our Mac spoke his own language. It’s often described as “hipster patois” but I’m not fond of the term. It made him sound like a man-bun wearing Bywater dweller who was always looking for the next trend to hop on. Mac was a trend-setter, not a trend-hopper. My favorite Dr. John-ism was on the subject of Katrina and the Federal Flood, he said that we were “traumaticalized.” Yeah, you right, Mac.
The music is what mattered most to Mac. He had wide-ranging musical tastes and was open to new players and styles even in his Seventies. Be it funk, blues, jazz, rock, R&B, or standards, Mac translated the music and Dr. John-ized it. His gruff, husky, and heavily New Orleans accented voice was instantly recognizable even in jingles or Disney tunes. Eclectic thy name was Dr. John.”
While I’m quoting myself, here’s an excerpt from my tribute to Chef Leah Chase:
“A reminder: feeding an integrated group such as the freedom riders was against the law in the Jim Crow Era. Chef Leah did it anyway. After her death, Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry wrote a piece about Chef Leah’s role in the Civil Rights movement. She didn’t scare easily, not even when a bomb was thrown at her Orleans Avenue restaurant.
As she aged, Chef Leah was the smiling, welcoming face of this Treme institution but she never stopped cooking. In recent years, she was a sort of secular saint in our community; something most would find burdensome, but she wore it lightly.”
A word about language: I hate the term “culture-bearer” as it sounds pompous, pretentious. and a passel of other P words. I also dislike “icon” or “iconic.” Perhaps it comes from growing up Greek Orthodox, a faith in which icons are religious artifacts to be worshipped. As a writer, I’m a satirist, which makes me an iconoclast. If I see an icon, I want to smash it.
Yet that’s not my reaction to our local heroes. Dr. John and Chef Leah should be loved, respected, and admired, not worshipped. They were unpretentious people; let’s keep them that way after they’ve departed this mortal coil.
Back to the future, only without the DeLorean. While the deaths of two talented individuals, even ones as brilliant as Dr. John and Chef Chase, cannot kill off our idiosyncratic culture, economic factors threaten to do so.
The spread of short-term-rentals (STRs) across the city has dramatically reduced the affordable housing stock, which is vital to the continuation of our local culture. The most important New Orleans musicians have come from either working-class or poor families. The plague of STRs makes it harder for local artists to make it. Many of our earlier local musical heroes such as Louis Armstrong and Danny Barker were obliged to leave town because of racism and limited opportunities to make a living if they stayed. By the 1980’s the tide began to turn, and more local musicians were able to make a living operating out of New Orleans: the Neville Brothers, Kermit Ruffins, and the Radiators, to name a few.
The worm began to turn after Katrina and the Federal Flood. This time the culprit was the rising cost of living, which caused many economic boats to sink as opposed to rise. Call it the unintended consequences of the recovery. The good news is that there are still many talented young musicians in New Orleans from Tank and the Bangas to the Soul Rebels to Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes to Trombone Shorty. There’s also a flourishing hip-hop scene whose appeal eludes me, but, of course, they’re part of the culture too.
My friend Chef James Cullen made an excellent point about this on Twitter:
FYI: James attended the Dr. John second line and Chef Chase’s funeral. He took some marvelous picture of both. Click here, y’all.
One of the most interesting recent pieces about the future of New Orleans culture was written by Advocate food writer Ian McNulty. He reminds us that we’ve lost a series of greats in addition to Our Mac and Chef Leah: Ella Brennan, Allen Toussaint, Chef Paul Prudhomme, Pete Fountain, and Fats Domino. One of McNulty’s paragraphs has become an instant classic:
“Nostalgia and best wishes are not enough to keep a culture vital and fecund. It takes participation and curiosity and decisions about where we devote our time and money.”
In McNulty’s own area, things are as fecund as hell. To paraphrase Dutch Morial’s campaign slogan, chefs such as Susan Spicer, Michael Gulotta, and Nina Compton are keeping the drive alive. The local food scene is strong even if there are too many restaurants; some of which are too pricey for locals, which is worrisome.
The paucity of affordable housing also bites the restaurant industry in the ass: Their employees need a place to live. We’re all in the same boat, we must figure out how to row in the same direction. Unfortunately, there are outside interests who are eager to “disrupt” our culture with house flipping and STRs. I’m hesitant to call them carpetbaggers, but if the shoe fits, stop kicking us with it. The scalawags, led by the artist formerly known as the “Trashanova,” Sidney Torres, are even worse.
Never trust a dude with a man-bun.
My current cultural pet peeve is the whole “Let’s rename Lee Circle so and so circle” call and response that pops up on social media after the death of each local luminary. It’s become a macabre parlor game that allegedly honors the dead but strikes me as creepy and disrespectful.
Many of the same people who demanded that it become Toussaint Circle, after Allen’s death in 2015, now want it to be Leah Circle. As much as I love puns, I have reservations about that. I’m inclined to think that any monument to Chef Chase should be in her beloved Treme neighborhood.
Besides, there’s already a monument to Chef Leah: It’s called Dookie Chase’s, and it can be found at the corner of Orleans and North Miro.
I think that the state of New Orleans culture is surprisingly strong, but it’s threatened by the same forces that are menacing other great cities. Barcelona and San Francisco are confronting the same issues of gentrification coupled with too much tourism. We must decide whether we want our focus to be on using New Orleans culture as tourist bait or whether we should let it grow organically in a way that pleases locals as we have done for most of our history.
New Orleanians are tired of everything being done for tourists. We need to return to the notion that, while we’re willing to share our culture with the world, it’s ours to share. Enjoy it, then go home.
The last word goes to Dr. John with a classic New Orleans funeral dirge:
The Bayou Brief Tells the Stories of Louisiana. With Our New Brand, It Shows.
A Note from Lamar White, Jr., Publisher:
I.
Today, Thursday, June 13th, 2019, we have completed the rebranding of the Bayou Brief, with an all-new masthead and logo that confidently expresses our mission and affirms our commitment to the people, the land, and the history of Louisiana.
If you have followed the Bayou Brief from the beginning, you likely have read that description before, but I have only hinted at its inspiration. Five years ago, I interviewed with the BBC about the film adaptation of “12 Years A Slave,” Solomon Northup’s unbelievably true story of his dozen years in captivity, the majority of which were spent along the banks of the Bayou Bouef, a remote part of Central Louisiana where my paternal grandmother and her eleven siblings were born. Her eldest sister Sue Eakin had spent the majority of her life researching and eventually verifying the account of Northup’s book (as it turned out, I not only had studied writing in Northup’s native home of Saratoga Springs, New York, I was also a descendant of one of the families that had “owned” him).
After the interview, the BBC had asked me to take them to Sue’s headstone, and I wasn’t entirely sure of the location. So, I called her son (and my cousin Frank), and over the phone, he served as our GPS. It was the first time I’d ever seen her grave, and its inscription had a lasting and profound impact on me.
That was, to me, the most poignant summation of the life of someone I had known, words that I imagine many of us could only hope to be remembered as our legacy.
Sue and her sister Manie Culbertson had written the textbook that generations of school children used in their Louisiana history classes. They had quietly dedicated their lives to telling the stories of Louisiana, and they were both remarkably progressive women, far ahead of their times, and too often overshadowed by their much less impressive male colleagues.
These extraordinary women- their passion for the truth about our state, for their sense of moral justice and their beliefs in civil rights and fearlessness in tackling our greatest challenges and confronting and debunking a romanticized version of our history- were both inspirations and aspirations.
When I first considered the idea of launching a new publication, I already knew what words I’d select to express its mission:
The problem was finding a way of expressing the vernacular of Louisiana on an online platform. I found it nearly impossible to articulate my vision to web designers and developers unfamiliar with the Louisiana aesthetic. That is not their fault. It’s challenging to explain how to communicate what a pastiche of the entire state could look like, and from the very beginning, I knew that would be what the Bayou Brief would be about: the whole state.
So, as a matter of convenience and in an effort to expedite the publication, my board and I agreed on something simple: A distinctive, blue pelican we eventually named “Clippy” (both because he looked like a paper clip and clip art) became our brand. None of us were in love with it, but for a while, it sufficed. Still, it missed something fundamental about the identity we were hoping to project. To be sure, some readers really liked Clippy, and if you look closely at the new logo, he hasn’t been killed off completely, but whenever I’d hear from a friend or a critic who didn’t care for the design, I’d have to admit: I agreed.
Today, thanks to the artistry, talent, and intuition of Brooke Cailloutte of Ace High Printing Company in New Orleans, we have now have a cover that matches the book.
I will explain in detail what the new masthead and, especially, the new logo represent, but I think first, it is worth reflecting on why I decided to launch the Bayou Brief and to better explain what this project is and has always been about.
II.
Two years ago, before the lights turned on at the Bayou Brief, I had spent the previous eleven years- the halcyon days of blogging- writing a personal website that had been largely focused on my own commentary about Louisiana politics. At some point, though, as the state news media dwindled and local media outlets struggled to adapt to the internet, the blogosphere took on increased significance, and with that, added responsibility, at least for those who had cultivated an audience.
There was nothing unique about what had occurred to the press here in Louisiana, though we were hit harder than most. Gannett gobbled up nearly all of the newspapers in Louisiana’s mid-sized markets, spending a fortune at almost the exact moment the traditional model began to crumble. In my hometown of Alexandria, for example, by 2011, my blog, CenLamar, regularly received more daily online readers than The Town Talk, an institution of Central Louisiana since 1883.
The Town Talk became a shell of its former self after its publisher, Joe D. Smith, sold it for an astonishing $62 million in 1996 to a company that quickly unloaded it to Gannett. By the time I had moved back after college, I referred to the paper, like many others, as the Clown Talk. It was unfair to the hardworking and professional journalists, but privately, even then, they would acknowledge the once-proud, once-robust paper was being gutted by white men from the East Coast with Ivy League degrees and no clue whatsoever.
Again, throughout the state and the country, this was the rule, not the exception, and in the vacuum created by corporate consolidation, writers like me were able to find opportunity. I could be nimble and not beholden to the corporate agendas of advertisers, enjoying the kind of flexibility and a fearlessness that journalism schools and self-professed, highly-paid experts in the First Amendment had neutered.
The corporate consolidation of the state media had another, arguably more insidious effect, which was particularly pronounced in small and mid-sized markets like Louisiana. The desire (let’s not call it a need; it was a desire) to reduce costs and maximize profits meant that experienced, better-paid reporters were usually considered a financial liability and not an asset. Newsrooms were gutted. Editors and publishers were given deployments like members of the military.
I worked for the mayor of Alexandria for five years and never once met or even saw the man who had been in charge of The Town Talk, Paul V. Carty. Before he arrived in Alexandria, he’d spent a few years running the editorial page of the paper in State College, Pennsylvania, followed by a three-year stint as a business editor in Bradenton, Florida, and then another three years as a managing editor of a paper in Elmira, New York. The man knew nearly nothing about Louisiana, and in my opinion at least, he didn’t seem curious to learn about it either.
For me, although it may come across to some as idealistic or naive or even arrogant, the experience of watching the slow-motion self-immolation of The Town Talk was antithetical to everything I had believed about the virtues of a free press. It had become led by people who weren’t bad at their jobs because they were simply incompetent; they were bad because they were lazy and disinterested.
And there were tangible, real-world consequences to their ineptitude. I experienced it first-hand as my hometown’s paper of record failed to even grasp the quotidian drama of city government or the need to push back against racism and prejudice whenever it manifested.
Good people lost their jobs. In Louisiana, the layoffs were staggering. And all of those layoffs meant that suddenly there was a dangerous lack of institutional knowledge.
Fake news is a real and persistent problem, but not for any of the reasons Donald Trump asserts. For him, the news is fake when it rejects his propaganda, and Americans who live in places like Louisiana are especially vulnerable to that message- one in which the press is “the enemy of the people.” If you doubt my characterization, watch the new documentary about Steve Bannon, “The Brink.”
For many of us, it was infuriating- it still is infuriating- to see the ways in which our politics and, therefore, the laws that govern our daily lives are being infected, even poisoned, by a corporate press that either deliberately acts in bad faith or is too lazy or too disinterested to care.
Sure, there are notable exceptions: The Times-Picayune tried their damndest to survive despite corporate negligence, and John Georges, despite his quixotic bids for public office, has built a Pulitzer Prize-winning news team at The Advocate. That is commendable, and as an avid consumer of the news in Louisiana, I appreciate Georges for his willingness to endure years of financial losses in order to preserve some important and critical institutions.
But I also cannot help but be disappointed by the ways in which Georges, who is personally worth well in excess of $350 million, represents a disturbing trend in the industry, a paradoxical truism my late father often observed: “You have to have money to make money.” And when Georges recently compared himself (a man who is immensely proud of his Greek heritage) to Alexander the Great (a Macedonian; for the record, I have too many Macedonian friends in my life to dare say otherwise), it was just slightly less as unhelpful to his empire as the majority of his editorial staff has been to the credibility of his newsroom. We also cannot overlook or excuse the manner in which he rolled out the purchase of the Times-Picayune, which seemed as cartoonishly villainous as Montgomery Burns. He gave everyone a 60-day termination notice, vowing, through his proxies, to only hire a fraction of the staff and the newsroom back, if they chose to reapply for their old jobs. No one at The Advocate would lose their jobs, as an editor argued, without any hint of irony, because of the importance of rewarding loyalty.
To their immense credit, the Times-Picayune employees handled the announcement with impressive grace and professionalism. Georges, though, acted as if the purchase was comparable to a kind of military strategy. Yet the subtext was clear: He was buying a brand name, without respecting the people who ensured the name endured. We can all root for the success of the combined news organization while also recognizing and learning from how silly it was to literally treat this as a war.
All of that said, my criticism isn’t really with the two “major market” papers in Louisiana; it’s with the out-of-state conglomerates that devastated the rest of the state’s media.
III. Raison d’être:
I am not pretending to know the magic solution or to have figured out a secret formula, because the simple truth is: This is enormously challenging work, and we’re all fumbling for answers.
During my first two years at the Bayou Brief, we’ve built a respectable audience; we’ve broken stories of regional, statewide, and even national significance. We’ve won accolades and even occasionally the begrudging respect of colleagues at much bigger and much more accomplished publications. But again, this is tough work, and I’ve made more mistakes than I can count. I’ve listened to bad advice from the wrong people and ignored good advice from the right people. I’ve taken on far more, by myself, than I could possibly handle, and on a couple of occasions, I’ve hired people who promised they could help but ended up making things even more difficult.
Thankfully, though, I’ve never published an article I regret (though we will no longer be endorsing any candidate for any local or state office ever again); I’ve always been immensely proud of all of our freelance writers and contributors; I made the best decision of my professional career in bringing Sue Lincoln on board, and I’ve never had to issue a material retraction or apology (knock on wood).
I have stayed faithful to our mission, and I know now more than ever that our mission truly resonates.
I’ve also tried, with varying degrees of success, to follow the single best piece of advice anyone ever gave me when we launched. Steve May, one of the most successful publishing entrepreneurs in Louisiana, sat me down at his home in Lafayette one afternoon and cautioned me to avoid a trap that would have otherwise been unavoidable for me. “You can’t only publish stories about politics,” he said. “If you do, you become yet another political blog. To be credible, you must diversify your content.”
So far, we’ve published 71 stories about arts, culture, and history, 75 stories about sports, a multi-part series on Clementine Hunter, an investigative series on car insurance, 21 stories about education, 38 stories about the environment, and only 14 stories that can be appropriately categorized as pure opinion. We also made a deliberate decision to differentiate between stories about politics and stories about policy, because although they sometimes overlap, often, they don’t.
I had vowed to do my best to cover stories on all corners of the state. Right now, we have 24 about Acadiana, 39 about Baton Rouge, 31 about CenLa, 66 about New Orleans, and 23 about Shreveport. We are actively looking for more original content about Monroe, which has only been the subject of 9 stories, and we intend on adding a rural section to include all of the places in Louisiana that don’t quite fit into the confines of our traditional media markets.
We’ve also relaunched our podcast, “Briefly Speaking,” which is now available on eight streaming services, including Spotify and Apple, and in a couple of months, we’ll debut a multi-part podcast about one man’s extraordinary life’s story.
I am keenly aware of what we need to improve: First, we must raise substantially more money to be able to afford more content from more writers in more parts of the state. We need to dramatically improve our outreach to subscribers and supporters and ramp up our social media.
The good news is: All of this is within our reach.
IV. So, About the Logo:
The logo, if you look carefully, is essentially in the shape of a fleur de lis, which it includes separately at the bottom; the top flourish is a reference to the entrance gates you’ll encounter at cemeteries in New Orleans as well.
In the middle there’s a 19th century ink pen, an homage to the abolitionist writers of the time, and will occasionally be swapped out with an image of a cypress tree and the state Capitol. Obviously, the French words for “free press” and “truth” are a tribute to Acadiana.
And the typeface: “Bayou” is styled similarly to the typography of French colonial Louisiana, and if you care to know about the style of “Brief,” look up the mastheads of some of the state’s earliest newspapers, specifically the New Orleans Bee and The Town Talk.
Oh, as I mentioned from the beginning, Clippy the Pelican still manages to make an appearance, but now, the story isn’t only about him.
In gratitude,
Lamar
The Rainbow Means Never Again Another Flood of Hate
It’s Pride Month in Louisiana and around the world, which means that families from LaPlace to Bossier City are pointedly avoiding eye contact when LGBTQ-themed marketing pops up on the television over dinner.
And this is not just any Pride Month.
This year, it’s the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City, the catalyst that sparked the contemporary movement for LGBTQ equality into motion. In 1969, at the time of the uprising, it was illegal to be gay or transgender in every single state except Illnois, which decriminalized same-sex relationships in 1962. In 2003, when the Supreme Court finally ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that laws criminalizing same-sex relationships were unconstitutional, fourteen states, including Louisiana, were enforcing them.
Sixteen years later, our unconstitutional law remains on the books due to successful lobbying by the Louisiana Family Forum, a white Christian nationalist organization intent on preserving the dead letter statute in case there’s a Supreme Court reversal in the future. That’s right. Fifty years after Stonewall, there is still a Louisiana law, albeit an unenforceable one, that criminalizes consensual same-sex relationships.
This history is important. In 2019 in Louisiana, it’s imperative those of us who are LGBTQ and our allies look to our history, study the tactics that have been successful in advancing basic human rights in the past, and incorporate and adapt them to today’s fight.
As recently as the 1980s, LGBTQ Americans had to figure out how to survive a government that was openly influenced by white Christian nationalism. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and James Dobson’s Family Research Council— in essence, the institutional ancestor of the Louisiana Family Forum (founded in 1998) and its sibling organizations across the country — formed deep links with the Reagan Administration through campaign contributions and appointments at all levels of federal government. As a result, nearly an entire generation of gay and bisexual men were ravaged by AIDS before President Reagan even acknowelged the existence of the illness.
But the activists of their time pushed progress further than anyone would have thought possible, achieving government intervention in the HIV crisis, moving new treatments into the market, and birthing a new movement of highly effective activism.
So how did the LGBTQ activists of the 1980s and 1990s force the government to address the HIV epidemic, and at the same time, advance nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people across the country?
They built on a key LGBTQ liberation strategy of the late 1960s and early 1970s to convince a critical mass of LGBTQ people to come out of the closet. They led sustained direct action campaigns, shutting down government buildings, infiltrating news rooms, and throwing pies at anti-LGBTQ spokespeople and politicians. They had difficult conversations with friends and family to hold them accountable for where they lent their political support. They built organizations like the National LGBTQ Task Force and cross-movement relationships to grow power and distribute resources, many of which are still active.
Today, we’re falling short, and I can’t help but worry that the giants of our movement’s past would be disappointed.
For the past several years, the movement for LGBTQ equality in Louisiana has been stuck in gridlock with our opponents. However, we have seen a significant shift in public opinion, more than enough to defeat anti-LGBTQ proposals. According to the most recent polling, conducted last year by Project Right Side, a conservative organization founded by a former Republican National Committee Chairman, 66% of Louisiana support legal protections for LGBTQ people in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
Support transcends partisanship, driven by majorities of Democrats (74%), Independents (61%) and Republicans (60%) alike. Even a majority of Louisianans who have a favorable impression of President Trump (57%) support these legal protections for LGBTQ people.
Yet our legislature has failed to advance these protections, despite the public will and the significant advocacy by LGBTQ Louisianans and their allies.
There are still no state laws protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, or health care. It is shameful. And while there’s plenty of federal case law that says these protections exist on the federal level, don’t count on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold that position.
In talking with LGBTQ people and allies who haven’t involved themselves in the movement for equality, the most common reason they cite is fear.
I’m writing to ask you to consider whether the consequences you might face are smaller than the collective consequences for LGBTQ people across our state if we fail to progress and secure basic civil rights.
For some of us, particularly black transgender women, the consequences of living authentically can be life-threatening. However, for a great number of us, the risk of speaking out is comparatively small.
I don’t deny that it is possible you could lose your job, your housing, the acceptance of your community, or the support of your family, but in speaking out, you may prevent the violent loss of innocent life of those who are even more vulnerable.
Our survival is important, but this fight isn’t just about us. It’s about the generations that come after us.
Dip a toe into discomfort. Wade into it. Get used to it and then wade out further. Dive deep. Push yourself to do more.
If all you’ve done is call your legislators to politely ask for basic civil rights, you haven’t done enough. It’s not enough to just vote. It’s not enough to just march. Get invested. Organize. Apply pressure. You don’t have to do any of this alone. There are people and organizations already out here waiting for you to join them. Come find us, and we can walk this path together.
Next year, during Pride Month, we should stand together and light the Louisiana state Capitol in rainbow colors, with or without a formal invitation.
And as Harvey Milk said in 1978:
“You must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them, but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop.”
Come out.
Come out in Vinton. Come out in Vidalia. Come out in Vivian. Come out in Venice.
There is no corner of our state where you will be alone, even if it feels like it today.
The Heart of Everyman
Over the course of a decade, from 2004 to 2014, he appeared in more than two dozen movies, and a handful of music videos. He was “that guy”: the middle-aged businessman, the veteran detective, the preacher, one of those older guys in the crowd. He was “everyman.”
On May 7th, 2019, Don Lincoln passed away, succumbing to an infection he contracted in the hospital, just as he was poised to get a replacement for his failing heart. Yet if not for his big ol’ heart, he likely would not have been “that guy” in a music video that has received nearly 2.7 billion views online.
“It Isn’t Going Away”
It began February 23nd, 2003, a Sunday night.
Up and down from his customary seat in the living room, he kept pacing the floor and occasionally pressing a fist to his chest. Ultimately he said, “I think I may need to go to the hospital. I thought this was just bad heartburn, but it isn’t going away.”
It wasn’t indigestion. It was a heart attack. The diagnosis? Dilated cardiomyopathy with congestive heart failure, likely brought on by several years of undiagnosed (and therefore untreated) high blood pressure.
Also known as an “enlarged heart,” it had a grim prognosis. Medication could slow the deterioration of the heart muscle, but the only “cure” was a heart transplant and qualifying for that would not occur until his quality of life had severely diminished. And less than 50% of those diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy live longer than five years.
He was 49 years old.
By March of 2004, he could no longer work at his usual job, managing a retail home improvement store. Each burst of adrenalin – his body’s reaction to any customer complaint – would cause angina. He would have to “pop a nitro” (take a nitroglycerin pill), struggle to finish out the day at work, and – increasingly frequently – take the next day off, because he still felt so bad.
At the age of 50, having worked and paid into Social Security for 36 years (since he was 14), he quit working and reluctantly applied for Social Security disability.
It took less than a month for that application to be denied, with no reason given. It would be another 29 months before he finally got a different answer – a ruling of permanent and total disability.
While he waited for a hearing on his disability application, he was fretful and restless. What could he do with his time – and limited physical endurance? Thanks to an aggressive tax credit program, Louisiana’s film industry was starting to bloom. A Disney production issued a casting call for lots of extras, for scenes being shot in Baton Rouge.
It didn’t pay a lot – less than a hundred dollars a day. But the work itself required only brief bursts of “Action!” in between the majority of time spent sitting and waiting for the cameras to roll on the next scene, and Don thought he ought to have the stamina to do that.
He kept a journal of his early experiences. Here’s some of what he wrote:
#1 Glory Road Oct. 11th – 20th, 2004
Played a photographer. Great gig. I got to stand on the court between the Texas Western cheerleaders and the basketball team. Was able to spend a lot of down time talking with the guys on the team. Many of them knew nothing about basketball: they were mainly fairly new actors. The most well-known of them is Derek Luke. He just made a big movie called “Friday Night Lights” with Billy Bob Thornton.
Jon Voight played the Kentucky Coach Rupp. He was great with everybody. One of the people on set told him that their 5th grade son loved him to death. Jon told that person to bring the kid on set to meet him. A couple of days later, it happened. Jon walked right up to the kid, called him by name, and gave the kid a bag, which had one of Voight’s fake ears and noses in it. How kewl would that be to get?
The highlight of my time was getting to watch Nevil Shed (playing Al Shearer) go over his lines and actions for a scene he has with his coach. I was standing at the reporters’ table watching him, and before I knew it, he was making me part of the scene with him, acting it out as if I were the coach. When we finished, I asked him to explain the scene to me, which he did, and then thanked me for helping out. Right after that, I got to watch him do the actual scene with Coach Haskins (Josh Lucas).
The scene that took the most time with the extras to film was a crowd scene out in front of the arena (Parker Coliseum at LSU). Here we have a team of mostly black players coming into an arena in the South during the early 60s. They did several scenes with rednecks protesting the blacks playing at all.
But the scene that sent chills up and down my spine was when blacks in the crowd were trying to get to the front, next to the wood barricades, to greet the players. The reporters at the front of the barricades (me included) were being crushed by the enthusiasm of the crowd trying to see this team with an all-black starting lineup. In the background was a singer, singing the old blues song “Glory Road.” WOW – what an awesome scene! Can’t wait to see it on the big screen.
#2 Dreamer Nov. 8th – 9th, 2004, 2 nights shooting at old Evangeline Downs in Lafayette.
Mainly crowd scenes at the horse races, but did get a kewl moment with Kurt Russell. I was walking by and stopped to look at the replays from the 3 cameras they had just shot the horses coming around the final turn, down the stretch to the finish line. On one camera, as the horses came around the last turn, you could see something (a cat or a possum) running from the inside track, crossing in front of the horses. As we were watching and laughing, trying to figure our what the critter was, I heard this voice raised above everyone else’s: “Look, how great is that? Here we’re supposed to be at a hellhole of a track, and how appropriate that an animal runs out in front of the horses from the inside of the track! We’ve got to keep that in the movie.”
I turned around, and there, about a foot and a half from me is Kurt Russell. He just couldn’t believe something like that had happened. Only in Louisiana.
Then on the second night, I got picked to be in a scene with Elizabeth Shue and Dakota Fanning. We are in the stands cheering on our horses. They are in the front row, and I’m two rows behind them, in great view of the camera.
#3 Last Holiday Dec. 8th, 2004, 1 day shooting in N.O.
The scene is the last scene in the movie, when Queen Latifah and LL Cool J open up their own restaurant in New Orleans.
They sent me and about 7 other people down the sidewalk to be walking to the restaurant. Queen and Cool J are out front greeting people as they come in. A car with Queen’s “kids” pulls up at the curb and the valet lets them out, then a limo with the mayor and his wife, then one with Emeril Lagasse. After about 5 takes, the PA Ryan calls to me to follow him. I’m thinking he’s cutting me from the scene, as we walked toward the extras holding area. Instead, he tells me to get in the cab lined up behind Emeril’s limo. We roll to the curb, the valet opens the door for me and I walk up behind Emeril to shake hands with Cool J. And then I walk right up to Queen, with the camera right there in my face.
She’s the most beautiful woman I have ever met, and I told her so. She hugged me.
#4 Elvis TV miniseries: filmed Jan. and Feb. 2005 (aired on CBS May 8th and May 11th, 2005)
Day one: a courthouse scene, shot in Algiers. Elvis has gotten into a fight with a guy, who then pursued charges. I’m playing a reporter trying to get sound, with three photogs in front of me trying to get their pictures.
After the shoot, I got a chance to talk to Johnny, who plays Elvis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). He’s from Ireland – really nice guy.
Day two: I was supposed to be a background player, sitting in the diner when Elvis meets Col. Tom Parker for the first time. But they picked me (because I was the biggest guy there) to do the stand-in work for Randy Quaid, who was playing Col. Tom Parker. The guy who was supposed to do it simply hadn’t shown up. I stood on the mark, sat in the booth while they set the lighting and mic placement, and the camera positioning, for each scene. Really cool!
While they were shooting the scenes inside, I was outside, talking to people on the street. One lady, a friend of the diner owner, was all excited because she grew up loving Elvis, and to have them filming at this place she knew so well was so exciting to her. All she wanted was “to get a good look at this guy” playing Elvis.
Well, one of the P.A.s overheard us talking, and when Johnny came back on set, the PA told him about it. Out comes Johnny, and walks right over to meet this lady. She was beside herself, and Johnny was so gracious to her thanked her for coming around, and hugged her before he left.
Day three: I had gone to the Louisiana Actors’ Social in New Orleans, and Christopher Gray of LA Actors & Talent walked by me. He was on his phone, but he turned back and told me to “stay put.” When he finished his call, he came back and said the production needed somebody to play the landlord the next day, and asked if I was interested. Of course I said yes.
When I arrived on set, they gave me a script and walked me through the scene. Then they took me to wardrobe, then to the dressing and makeup trailer. Once I was ready, they called me to the set for my scene, and I stood around while they set the lights and the mics. Then they called “Action!”
I stood at the door while Vernon Presley (Elvis’ dad, played by Robert Patrick) begged me to give him two more weeks to pay the rent.
After the scene was over, Allen (the director) thanked me. Camryn Manheim (playing Elvis’ mom Gladys Presley) also said thanks, and Johnny came through to day thank you, as well. He did a double-take, and laughed, saying, “You were Randy’s stand-in the other day! You look so different this time!”
Robert Patrick, who had been joking around during the whole shoot, was telling another guy how good I was, keeping a stone face, and making it easier to deliver his lines. The guy came back with, “That’s amazing! You never have anything good to say about people!” They both laughed, then Robert hugged me and said thanks again!”
And they called me back to stand in for Col. Parker. In fact, they made me the official stand-in for Randy Quaid through the rest of the film.
May 6th, 2005 “Louisiana Live” radio talk show
I had a 30-minute segment with host Don Grady, talking about my experiences as an extra in movies. This was the Friday before part one of “Elvis” aired on Sunday. I was plugging that mainly, but also getting the word out that anyone could be an extra in movies.…
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He kept on working as an extra, featured and background, and was tapped to be James Gandolfini’s stand-in for the filming of “Welcome to the Rileys.” The following year, he was the stand-in for John Malkovich in “Secretariat.”
Don became one of the leaders of the Baton Rouge Film Industry Meet-Up Group, and soon casting directors started calling him for referrals, when they were seeking certain types or ages or numbers of actors for various productions. Even if it wasn’t a role for him, he was always glad to connect other actors with gigs.
On the other hand, he deeply disliked any hint of wrongdoing that might tarnish the state’s burgeoning movie industry. And when it became clear to the local film industry workers that Malcolm Petal’s L.I.F.T had positioned itself to control the business and take a cut of every production, Don spoke to the FBI.
L.I.F.T. was supposed to stand for “Louisiana Institute of Film and Technology,” and it was supposed to be a school to train camera and sound people, set designers and costumers, makeup artists and actors. Instead, you “had to go through LIFT” to expedite your approvals for shooting locations, transportation needs, catering services, and – most especially – your okays for the state tax credits. Malcolm Petal was ultimately found guilty of bribing the state’s top film official and sentenced to five years in prison. Due in part to the controversy and in part to the drain on state funding, lawmakers began tweaking and scaling back on the film tax credit programs, ultimately driving the industry away to other states.
The FBI hadn’t forgotten Don, though. As Louisiana’s film industry was shrinking, law enforcement found the problem of “active shooters” was growing. Using cops to play the bad guys in training exercises wasn’t optimal, since cops think and react like cops, not like unhinged gunmen. With grant money available for training purposes, the FBI, in cooperation with city and parish law enforcement agencies, decided to hire actors to play the bad guys. They contacted Don, and he helped put together the “Louisiana Renegades” – a group of actors who played school shooters and bank robbers, hostage takers and distraught individuals setting themselves up for “suicide by cop.”
Don’s last big gig – before the film industry and his health dwindled away– was playing the preacher in OneRepublic’s “Counting Stars” music video. It’s been viewed nearly 2.8 billion times since its release in May 2013.
Five years ago, with his heart function declining, Don decided he would prefer to go with an artificial heart pump, known as a Left Ventricular Assistance Device (or LVAD), rather than opting for a heart transplant when he reached the point of eligibility. Since a transplant would require taking anti-rejection drugs that would essentially eradicate his own immune system, he wouldn’t be able to be around people or around his grandkids, for fear of the germs and the sniffles that could snuff out his new lease on life. On the other hand, he could keep his immune system with the LVAD, and therefore continue with a social life and family life – to have a life.
Beginning in August 2018, increasing irregularities in his heartbeat and recurring bouts of congestive heart failure sent Don to the hospital repeatedly. After five admissions, it was clear it was time to shift into the LVAD program at Oschner in New Orleans.
On April 2nd, 2019, his health insurance plan said no.
Three weeks later, they relented, agreeing to cover a consultation at Oschner on May 8th.
Hospitalized in Baton Rouge on April 29th, he passed away May 7th.
Louisiana’s Legislature honored his contributions with a commemorative resolution, SCR 136. And Gov. John Bel Edwards issued a statement, commending Don’s “life well lived.”
You can still watch him in those movies and videos.
His family — his children, grandchildren and I — miss his hugs.
“Everybody’s just waiting to hear from the one
Who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun
Where sweet childhood still dances
Who’ll come along
And hold out that strong and gentle father’s hand?
Long ago I heard someone say something ’bout Everyman.”
– Jackson Browne, “For Everyman”
PODCAST: A Former Challenger Is Keeping Close Eye on Congressman Clay Higgins
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Publisher’s Note: After a series of fits and starts, we finally have the ability and the capacity to officially launch “Briefly Speaking,” the podcast we piloted in January with the guys from the enormously popular “Pod Save America.” Currently, “Briefly Speaking” is streaming on a variety of platforms, including Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Breaker, PocketCasts, Anchor, and RadioPublic, and we anticipate it being available for download through Apple Podcasts within the next four or five days.
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Fair warning: Even though the name of the podcast is Briefly Speaking, as anyone who knows me or reads the Bayou Brief can attest, we’re not necessarily known to be brief.
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On Wednesday, on the penultimate day of the 2019 Louisiana legislative session and while candidates for the upcoming statewide elections begin readying themselves for what is certain to be an exhausting, four month-long rollercoaster ride, I sat down with Rob Anderson, one of six candidates who challenged incumbent U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins last November.
Anderson was one of four Democrats, and ultimately, he received 13,477 votes, finishing in fourth. Higgins won outright in the primary.
Despite the disappointing results, however, Anderson, who was a first-time candidate, seems to be more hopeful than ever, and although he hasn’t yet made it official (and was coy during our conversation), it sure sounds like he’s ramping up for another run.
Because we spoke for two hours, I split up our conversation into two parts.
Follow these links to hear the full episodes: