Artists scheduled to perform include George Porter Jr., Juice with Joe Krown, Billy Iuso, Big Chief Alfred Doucette, Margie Perez, Dr. Bone and many more!
A special thanks to Laura Maggi of the Times-Picayune for her ongoing stories of abuse and death in Orleans Parish Prison. Here’s the latest.
Today’s Times-Picayune reports that the ACLU is looking into deaths at Orleans Parish Prison. Near the end of the article it reads: Gusman emphasized that Miceli, who stopped breathing less than five hours after she was put into the restraints, didn’t die at the jail but at University Hospital. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital after she was resuscitated by jail medical staff.
“She was revived,” Gusman said. “She didn’t die here.”
It’s just as I noted in my original post, hardly anyone “officially” dies in jail. Except this time, the facts are even more horrible. Cayne Miceli, a severe asthmatic for years, was restrained flat on her back with a heavy strap across her torso FOR MORE THAN FOUR HOURS! Sheriff Gusman said it himself.
Orleans Parish Prison is a torture chamber. It violates basic human rights and international laws regarding detainees. It must be held accountable. Nobody is safe. Going to jail for a municipal charge, without arraignment, can result in a death sentence with no judge, no jury, no indictment and no mercy.
The family is holding a Catholic Mass in remembrance of Cayne on Saturday, Jan 24 at 10AM at Our Lady of the Gulf in Gulf Shores, AL where Cayne spent her childhood. Friends are planning other events and memorials as well. Information can be found first at the Yahoo group dedicated to Cayne.
Cayne Miceli @ NO Jazz Fest 2008 photo by Kim Uddo (Links to slideshow)
With those poorly phrased words in Wednesday’s Times-Picayune, Sheriff Marlin Gusman rationalized Orleans Parish Prison’s mishandling of asthmatics like Cayne Miceli and others whose medical conditions are obviously beyond the scope of OPP’s capabilities for humane and legal treatment.
And with the death of yet another holding cell inmate this week, the spotlight only got brighter. However, no matter how revealing the coming days may be, the fact that OPP violates human rights in its treatment of those remanded to its care, and the consequent deaths and permanent disabilities caused by this public institution, make us taxpayers all participants in these cases of injustice. With each death and each abuse, we too, bear blame for our failure to demand that our public servants and institutions do their jobs better.
But OPP is not the only institution we need to demand be held accountable. Hospital Corporation of America/Tulane Medical Center’s responsibility to care for patients who receive drugs administered by its staff is paramount. Cayne knew prednisone could have serious side effects. In fact, prednisone’s potential for psychosis is widely known. Cayne’s reaction was hardly rare. Medical personnel on duty that night should have recognized the fruits of their labor–and it remains to be learned whether they were given the chance. Instead, someone reacted in an improper manner and then passed their duty to the police.
Then, Orleans Parish Prison killed Cayne Miceli. There are no other words to describe it.
Nevertheless, the painful fact remains: our dear, magical, sweet, spiritual, compassionate friend was basically tortured to death in OUR jail, by OUR employees.
Marlin Gusman’s statement seems to lack compassion and rubs salt into the wounds of family and friends. And he is reacting predictably. But OPP has blood on its hands, extracted in a cruel, inhumane manner for which OPP and the people in charge of Cayne Miceli bear culpability, liability and responsibility.
If this is “maybe the best medical care” OPP has to offer, all I can say is “God please help us.” And may God have mercy on their souls.
Yesterday I learned that while my partner Grasshopper lay in bed reading, while Maj. Elder of the 3rd Dist NOPD addressed our neighborhood association, while I sat in Israeilite Baptist Church helping with a presentation for the AgCenter (and a funeral for a murdered 18 year old took place mere feet away), one of our neighbors, a petite 80+ year old woman, was brutalized when from a moving car, thieves snatched her purse, dragging her screaming to the ground for at least 10 feet and injuring her severely. Her husband, a WWll vet, witnessed the event. In his own state of shock, he put her in his car and drove to his son’s house in Metairie and then they took her–with 2 broken legs and internal bleeding–to East Jefferson Hospital. As of today, I don’t know if she’s going to live. This happened on the side of my house at 11AM Saturday morning on a short, narrow street that only runs for 2 blocks between Trafalgar and Castiglione by the Fairgrounds, where construction workers are on the job 7 days a week rebuilding Langston Hughes Elementary.
The Wades are a beautiful couple. They are gentle souls who, like our friend Cayne Miceli, didn’t deserve to have their lives ruined–or the hands of death visit–like this.
Of course this week has also been marred by a son who stabbed and killed his 72 year old mother for drug money.
Did someone change the signs on the edge of town to Hell?
UPDATED 1/10/09: Note: When I originally wrote this, many facts were unclear. Now that more information is available, I have re-written parts of this piece to reflect more accurately the chain of events and overarching realities that have come to light. This being a blog and not a printed publication, it is a living document and one that can be improved and edited to improve its veracity. I hope that’s what I’m doing. Regardless, I cannot possibly capture all the truths at work here. Suffice to say, Cayne turned to the system for help and it killed her.
Update: Jan 13, 2009-Shoeless Eric was with the family at Cayne’s bedside when the decision was made to remove her from life support. He’s created a moderated group site where you can find more information about what happened and what is going to happen: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/caynemiceli
Update Jan 14, 2009: Karen Dalton-Beninato’s blog on Huffington Post today is about Cayne. It’s a beautiful piece and features a piece Cayne wrote.
The lack of psychiatric beds, health care resources and basic human rights in New Orleans produced yet another tragedy. After being treated at Tulane Medical Center with a powerful steroid, prednisone, for her severe asthma, my friend Cayne Miceli believed she was having an adverse reaction to the drug. She sought to be re-examined and/or admitted and was turned away because the hospital felt it had done its job, and because she had no insurance. Unable to contain her frustration, her emotional state aggravated by the steroids, she flew into a rage and was taken away to jail. She allegedly attempted suicide and was put into 5 point restraints, aggravating both her mental state and her ability to breathe. She reacted badly to the restraints and was further subdued by two jail personnel. Subsequently, she “became unresponsive.”Jail staff intubated and “revived” her so that her “actual” death occurred at University Hospital with the decision of her family to remove her from life support. The facts are still unclear and may not be clarified for a while. But one thing is clear: the system failed her.
Cayne was a vivacious but troubled soul. She had a magical quality that connected her deeply to New Orleans. She was a survivor like the rest of us. She was full of life.
Cayne wasn’t afraid to reach out when she needed support. When she sought medical assistance for her asthma, it wasn’t done lightly. She has lived with asthma for many years. Cayne knew she needed help and did the best she could to get it. In Post-Katrina New Orleans, she found no room for her illnesses.
New Orleans without Charity Hospital is a city without compassion. That we continue to have too few psychiatric beds is unacceptable. That we continue to be haggling over the rebuilding of our health care infrastructure is abominable.
New Orleans is a city filled with Cayne Miceli’s, uncounted troubled and traumatized souls who keep things together most of the time. But when their lungs, hearts and minds can take no more, New Orleans provides no shelter, no bosom into which to retreat because Charity Hospital has not been rebuilt.
I now officially join the voices of those opposed to the tearing down of houses to build a new, fantasy hospital. Charity sits unused and ready to be restored while victims, the detainees–die lonely deaths in jail, our default system for handling the mentally troubled.
The people who seek to extend this process because they refuse to fix Charity Hospital have blood on their hands. I will remind them. Then again, maybe we all have blood on our hands these days.
Note: Jan 10, 2009: It’s clearer to me now that health and justice systems are in a dance of death lottery that can start when you say “I need help!” or merely, “I can’t breathe!”
It’s also clear to me that if someone at Tulane had said, “OK, we’ll examine you again,” instead of “call the police,” Cayne would probably still be with us.
Now that we know more about Cayne’s horrible experiences and death, the lack of beds is only part of this problem.
In Post-Katrina New Orleans, we live with layers and layers and layers of problems, of missed opportunities, of disorganization and incompetence that infect the system from within our “rebuilt” homes to the halls of power in Washington DC. I pray we see that improve in 2009.
I also learned that I have a dear friend whose brother suffered gross mistreatment in a local jail. That this isn’t the first asthmatic to die in a local jail. That the last person to die on that torturous medieval restraint system died a medieval torture death: dehydration.
It’s bad enough my country justified torture. Now I know that my community tortures, too.
5 Point Restraint System
And I’ve learned that best estimates put those shining new hospitals opening in 2016.
At the current rate of death and disablement happening in area jails, I’m probably going to personally know several more victims before the next seven years pass.
Our jails and prisons are maiming and killing too many people who often haven’t even been arraigned. And now our hospitals can’t recognize the symptoms of the drugs they administer and dump their patients on the police? Suffice to say I find this unacceptable/abusive/you fill-in-the-blank.
We’re losing basic human rights. I hope we’re waking up.
As Cayne so often said when she reached a stopping point in the conversation: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Peace & Love! Peace & Love!”
<Sigh>.
Magical Cayne Miceli (photo enhanced by Jeremy Machalek of WhyArts.com)
We’re sad to learn that New Orleans drummer Wilbert “Junkyard Dog” Arnold died. Junkyard was a special person, sort of New Orleans’ answer to Keith Moon–a talented, unique drummer whose life was filled with joy, pain and a drumming technique all his own. As the longtime drummer for Walter “Wolfman” Washington, we spent many hours enjoying his special sense of rhythm and one-of-a-kind style. Junkyard’s kit was always tied together with chains to symbolize the history of slavery. He was also a good singer, and, along with his very talented wife Marilyn, his latest band performed regularly in the French Market and at Ray’s Boom Boom Room on Frenchmen. Some of his best work can be heard on the New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy CD released just after Katrina. See more about Junkyard on this site. He will be missed.
It’s a damn shame how the few writers/publishers making money off Louisiana music have completely ignored the details of this story and its connection to the demise of the state’s main support mechanisms for music. I guess if the occasional ad money from the state keeps flowing, the criticism stays in check.
In this economy, nothing is what it was. And that’s bad news for the once-famous. Celebrity has changed. Thanks in no small part to the plethora of channels/movies/sites, the machinery of fame suffers from the media’s general state of dilution: there are too many sources pushing too many vapid “products” into a system that continues to expand.
Even athletes are losing ground. As business declines, endorsements are being withdrawn. You’ll be seeing less of Tiger Woods. And this year’s Olympic champions, despite record audiences and name recognition, are finding few companies interested in using their images. It’s a new world.
The narcissistic shallowness that is Hollywood will not respond well to being ignored. But the fact is, as things get worse, who cares about most of the pathetic tripe emanating from the movie and television industry?
I’ve said for more than ten years that the media giants are doomed. They played games with their accounting by constantly growing, masking their debt and overhead. Now, as the auto industry, which accounts for some 25% of ad revenues on television, pulls back, the media’s naked butts are showing.
Not that any of this is going to change the brothel-like affair Louisiana continues to have with the film and television industry. Consider this: if the State of Louisiana is willing to pay a percentage of the film business’ bill based on budget and impact, why can’t it do the same for music? Using the methodology of the film tax credit system, the state ought to be putting up millions to support our multibillion dollar music industry. Instead it continues to do nothing for music.
The silence from our tiny world of music writers and publishers is inexcusable.
Not that Louisiana can buy fame for our musicians. Fame will never be the same. But, the state shouldn’t be so in love with only one component of the media. Louisiana should love its music even more than it loves film.
Louisiana’s overly generous film tax credits finally made the New York Times. Thanks in no small part to the ease (caused by lax oversight) with which budgets are overstated and credits overpaid, film tax credits are being challenged around the country. Economists are having a difficult time justifying the state paying $27 million of a $167 million budget, for example. And if one compares other industries and businesses to the way film is treated by governments around the world, it’s no wonder people are starting to complain. Besides being unfair to every other industry, the tax credits have not been proven to be cost-effective.
To their credit, Louisiana commissioned a study to determine the economic impact of the film subsidies; and, lots of people are waiting to see the results. I’m sure few would like to see anything but a positive return on this creative investment. However, there are myriad questions that arise when the taxpayers become major partners in productions. Why, for example, are we not entitled to a piece of the pie?
If an investor puts up millions of dollars for a production company to produce a film, the investor is a partner. So, why aren’t we partners? If we put up 16% of the budget of a $167 million picture, shouldn’t we be entitled to the same financial arrangements as the other investors? And the same goes for sports and all other economic bailouts or investments by the taxpayers.
I’d ask former Louisiana film commissioner Mark Smith what he thinks, but he’s busy talking to the feds.
Of course my ongoing criticism of this investment of public money into the film industry is that Louisiana isn’t known for producing Spielbergs the way we’ve produced Nevilles or Marsalises.Why, then, can’t the state commit to properly funding work to support its historic music resources?
As has always been the case, Louisiana would rather support sports, film, petrochemicals and agriculture and do what it has always done: take music for granted.
With the State of Louisiana annually funding the Tipitina’s Foundation at a higher rate than it ever budgeted for the Louisiana Music Commission, it’s becoming more and more obvious that Tip’s has become the state’s de facto music commission. That’s fine because the foundation has done an amazing job establishing it’s model and growing it for the benefit of all concerned. Not only does the foundation create an invaluable networking opportunity for musicians via it’s offices and workshops, but it also provides jobs within its growing structure. And in an industry in which real, full time jobs are harder and harder to come by, this is no small feat.
I say kudos to Roland and Mary Von Kurnatowski, Bill Taylor and the staff of Tipitina’s Foundation. While the state neglects its own formal music responsibilities via a budget-less, office-less, website-less and functionally broken music commission, the foundation keeps chugging along, helping musicians connect with resources and, most significantly, each other as they struggle in the ever-more-difficult business of music. My hat’s off to Tipitina’s as they continue to grow.
Not that the Louisiana Music Commission is totally dormant. They’ve been planning, studying and meeting for more than 2 years now, having actually accomplished nothing. This is in sharp contrast to the work of the LMC in years past.
In our first two years, 1992 to 1994, with a total annual budget of $56,000, the LMC was a busy and productive entity. We created and produced two commercial radio shows, developed a live television show (LTV that went on to air 100 unique episodes featuring a total of nearly 300 musical guests), created New Orleans Jazz Centennial Celebration, secured the launch ceremonies for the Louis Armstrong stamp, saved the Aaron Neville Christmas Special which resulted in securing a $10,000 donation to Farm Aid (held at the Superdome that year), and more. Here’s a copy of a report from back then. It was on the agency’s website. But, as I’ve noted before, the url and 8 years of web postings were thrown away during the Blanco years. Interestingly, Gov. Jindal has reappointed one of the contributors to the LMC’s demise.
The LMC recently met in Shreveport and announced plans to try to attend MIDEM (a very costly undertaking) and to study Branson and Austin–all things that have been done before. They continue to be mired in outdated perceptions of the music industry based on the tired and often self-serving rhetoric of the commission’s reappointed chair, Maggie Warwick. And now, after 2 years of dawdling I believe it’s time for everyone to admit that the LMC is dead and that Tipitina’s Foundation is the best hope for Louisiana’s musicians seeking to improve their lives and business models.
But what do I know.
Here are more links to past pages on the defunct LMC site:
NOLAmotion Blog 
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