Lifetime's new '50 Women' campaign features Baton Rouge's Chauna Banks

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A familiar face on the local political scene is part of Lifetime’s new online campaign, "Her America: 50 Women, 50 States."

East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Councilwoman Chauna Banks is Louisiana's representative in the initiative aimed to give voices to women across America.

"Who is the American woman?" The words flash on the screen in a clip from the internet campaign, which went live Monday. The promo includes clips of a seamstress, a welder, a professional horse rider, a police officer and more to emphasis the broad scope of the nation's women. They bring differing political, social and economic views to the table as well.

Banks, serving her second term, has strong ties to the Scotlandville area, part of District 2, which she represents. The 55-year-old school counselor grew up in Scotlandville and says in her Lifetime segment that she remembers a much different place, a thriving community before environmental contamination, poverty and economic woes seeped in and still remain.

"When Chauna was growing up, Scotlandville had a solid middle class. Many families bought property and settled in for the long term, living in houses like the pink-and-brick home Chauna owns," her Lifetime biography says. "It was a tight-knit, self-sufficient, African-American community. There were stores to shop in and doctors to see, churches, jobs and Southern University, a historically black institution that has been an anchor for the area since the 1920s."

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"In the late 1950s, Scotlandville began to decline as the city broke up the neighborhood with an interstate highway and demolished homes in middle-class subdivisions to build an airport and a water treatment plant," her story continues. "Poverty rose, as did crime. Property values sank. Stores closed. Many who could move did."

But Banks wants to be part of a change — a brighter future for her community.

“I have no other option but to keep pushing, keep fighting and believe that change will come,” she says.

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