People gather outside the West Hollywood apartment of Ed Buck on Tuesday. Buck was arrested on suspicion of operating a drug house. Jasmyne Cannick was speaking at a Democratic club meeting Tuesday night when her phone buzzed with a text: The police were raiding Ed Buck’s West Hollywood apartment. His neighbors had been alerting Cannick, a political consultant and activist for the black LGBTQ community, about comings and goings at the location after two gay black men in less than two years died of drug overdoses in the influential Democratic donor’s home. Buck’s arrest Tuesday, about a week after a third man overdosed in his apartment, was grim vindication for the black LGBTQ community, which has crusaded for more than two years to hold him accountable, even in the face of what some said was silence by many Democrats and LGBTQ activists in West Hollywood. Many have likened the effort to the Black Lives Matter movement, formed after a spate of high-profile police shootings of young black men. “Like America, the LGBTQ community is divided along racial lines, and that is reflected in West Hollywood. It is still not as welcoming to people of color and specifically those who […]
Click here to view original web page at www.latimes.com