Another Black man has been found dead at the home of wealthy Democratic donor Ed Buck.
Authorities were on the scene to investigate at around 3:35 a.m. on Monday morning, according to WeHoville.
The deceased man’s name has not been released.
This incident marks the second time a Black gay man has died in Buck’s home. Gemmel Moore died of a suspected overdose in July 2017, as Blavity previously reported. Moore’s friends and family accused Buck of drugging young Black gay men for his sexual amusement.
“[Buck] would have my son to go out to … Santa Monica Boulevard looking for young gay black guys so he could inject them with drugs, see their reaction and how [they] would react and take pictures of them,” Moore’s mother, LaTisha Nixon, said of Buck in 2017. She said she got that information from one of Moore’s associates.
John Bice, another friend, validated Nixon’s story and described how Buck preyed on vulnerable people.
“Basically this guy would find young struggling black guys around town, pick them up and say he was going to help them out — make sure they had clothes and food. … He wanted to see them get high, first with weed. Then one day, the guy wanted him to shoot up,” Bice said.
The Advocate reports Buck was never charged for the 26-year-old’s death because evidence was “insufficient to prove [guilt] beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to the Los Angeles DA office.
Buck is known for donating to major Democratic candidates including Hillary Clinton and West Hollywood City Council members John D’Amico and Lindsey Horvath. He has never publicly commented on Moore, but his lawyer called the young man’s death “accidental” and “unfortunate.”
Communications strategist Jasmyne Cannick announced plans for a rally at Buck’s home on Monday evening at 7 p.m. on Twitter.
There will be a call to action at 7P today in front of Ed Bucks home at 1234 Laurel Avenue in West Hollywood re the death/murder of ANOTHER Black man at Ed Bucks.
Cannick mentioned Moore in an op-ed about her campaign to be a delegate for California’s Democratic party. She believes the party is in the midst of a morality crisis.
“That’s not the kind of political party I want to belong to. One that sees the lives of Black people as being expendable. As Black Democrats, that is not the type of return we expect on our years of investing in the Democratic Party with our votes,” she wrote. “If Gemmel Moore had been a white male or female — I seriously doubt the Party leadership would have been able to sweep it under the rug the way they so carelessly and deliberately did.”
The chance of any HIV-positive person with an undetectable viral load transmitting the virus to a sexual partner is scientifically equivalent to zero, researchers confirmed at the 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018) in Amsterdam today.
Final results from the PARTNER study were presented this morning at a press conference on the opening day of AIDS 2018. Results originally announced in 2014 from the first phase, PARTNER 1, already indicated that “Undetectable equals Untransmittable” (U=U). However, the statistical certainty of this result was not quite as convincing in the case of gay men, or for anal sex, as it was for vaginal sex.
Results from PARTNER 2, the second phase, which only recruited gay couples, were presented today.
The results indicate, in the words of the researchers, “A precise rate of within-couple transmission of zero” for gay men as well as for heterosexuals.
The PARTNER study recruited HIV serodiscordant couples (one partner positive, one negative) at 75 clinical sites in 14 European countries. They tested the HIV-negative partners every six to 12 months for HIV, and tested viral load in the HIV-positive partners. Both partners also completed behavioural surveys. In cases of HIV infection in the negative partners, their HIV was genetically analysed to see if it came from their regular partner.
The study found no transmissions between gay couples where the HIV-positive partner had a viral load under 200 copies/ml – even though there were nearly 77,000 acts of condomless sex between them.
Why PARTNER matters
It is fitting that the results of PARTNER 2 appear on the tenth anniversary of an impassioned debate at the Mexico City International AIDS Conference in 2008 on the validity of the Swiss Statement, which was the first published document to say that, under defined circumstances, people with HIV who have fully suppressed viral loads due to treatment cannot transmit HIV.
At the time it was said that due to lack of viral load monitoring in anything but high-income countries, this fact – even if true – would have little relevance to most people with HIV.
There was also concern that telling people with HIV that they were not infectious if virally suppressed would be counter-productive because it would discourage safer sex. The more important message to give to people, some experts said, was that they should take every dose of their therapy.
The thinking behind U=U is that telling people they are not infectious if virally suppressed was a message of hope, and something earnestly desired by many people with HIV. It would help to combat the stigma against them, and their own self-stigma. By providing a powerful incentive to take treatment it could also have a positive impact on public health, as well as on individuals.
The Swiss doctors who issued the original 2008 statement apologised at the time that stating that people “do not” transmit HIV under the circumstances above was too definite, and that they had only meant to indicate that the likelihood of transmission was reduced.
But what PARTNER tells us is that they were right all along. People who are virally suppressed do not transmit HIV.
It was widely assumed at the time that sexually transmitted infections (STIs) might make people infectious even when they normally had an undetectable viral load.
But PARTNER tells us that STI infections have no impact on HIV infectiousness in people who are fully suppressed.
And it was thought that because HIV is transmitted more easily via anal than vaginal sex, the results might not hold for gay men.
But PARTNER 2 now tells us that U=U holds just as strongly for gay men (and for anal sex) as for heterosexuals.
[…]
PARTNER is not the only study about viral load and infectiousness. Last year the Opposites Attract study also found no transmissions in nearly 17,000 acts of condomless anal sex between serodiscordant gay male partners, meaning that no transmission has been seen in about 126,000 occasions of sex, if you combine this study with PARTNER 1 and 2.
What has changed is that we can now state that U=U with at least as much confidence for gay men as we already could for heterosexuals or, as the researchers say, “PARTNER2 provides a similar level of confidence for gay men as for heterosexual couples in PARTNER 1.”
“We looked so hard for transmissions,” Alison Rodger told aidsmap.com. “And we didn’t find any.”
The last line in the last slide she presented today was “Undetectable = Untransmittable.”
This is great news and so important, emphatically confirming what we already knew: UNDETECTABLE = UNTRANSMITTABLE for HIV. Pass it on.
There’s been plenty of talk in the past few weeks about Kanye West’s statements, from his interview with Charlamagne, to his Twitter antics regarding Donald Trump, and most notably his interview/rant on TMZ, where he said: “400 years of slavery sounds like a choice.”
I’m going to weigh in on this and show how simple this statement is to dissect and understand from a black perspective.
Simply put, I agree, slavery is a choice. Why exactly?
Because Joseph Cinque and the Amistad Rebellion, where Mende captives revolted against their ship’s crew and won their freedom in New York.
Because Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.
Because Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Haitian Revolution.
The Malê revolt of Brazil, led by Hausa Muslim slaves and freedmen during the last 10 days of Ramadan, inspired by their Islamic faith.
Because Nat Turner’s insurrection.
Because Frederick Douglass.
Because Igbo Landing, where 75 enslaved Igbos staged a mutiny near Dunbar Creek, Georgia and drowned their captors, along with themselves.
Because Queen Nanny, her brother Captain Cudjoe, and the Jamaican Maroons who led two organized wars against the British.
Because François Mackandal, the Haitian Maroon leader and Voudou priest who gave slaves poison from plants to silently kill off their captors.
Because the Tempati Rebellion of Surinamese Maroons.
Because the Kru people of Liberia.
Because the Demerara Rebellion, which saw the mobilization of 10,000 enslaved rebels.
Because Madison Washington (a now twice-emancipated slave) and the Creole Case mutiny, revolting against the crew and forcing the overseer to sail them to the Bahamas; inspired by word of the Hermosa mutiny one year before.
Because the Stono Rebellion.
Because Harriet Jacobs, who escaped from slavery by hiding in her grandmother’s attic for 7 years until she could afford to reach the North.
Because the Zanj Rebellion in Southern Iraq.
Because Henry “Box” Brown who mailed himself to freedom by hiding in a box-crate.
Because Carlota’s Cuban insurrection.
Because Robert Smalls, who stole a Confederate ship and sailed to the North.
Because Sojourner Truth, who escaped to freedom with her infant daughter.
Because the Little George ship revolt, which saw 96 captured Guineans kill the crew and sail back to Africa.
Because Malik Ambar, an Ethiopian sold into Indian slavery as a child who amassed an army and became a regional leader.
Because Mr. and Mrs. William and Ellen Craft, of which the wife posed as a white man and the husband as her servant to safely reach the North hiding in plain sight.
Because the Akwamu slave revolt of St. John.
Because Cuffy and the Berbice slave revolt.
Because the 1811 German Coast Uprising.
Because Samuel Sharpe and the Baptist War “Great Jamaican Slave Revolt, which saw the mobilization of 60,000 enslaved rebels.
Need I say more? Trust me, I can go on and on and on about this, giving examples anywhere from the the United States to the Carribean to Africa, India, or the Middle East.
The point behind “400 years of slavery sounds like a choice” is simple: if you have a choice to escape the plantation, you have a choice to stay and work the fields; if you have a choice to revolt and kill your oppressors, you have a choice to remain subordinate and take their orders; if you have a choice to free your people, you have a choice to leave them behind and let them suffer; if you have a choice to jump ship or take the wheel, you have a choice to remain a passenger.
The act of being enslaved or captured is almost never a choice–unless of course the attempt is met with resistence, and if it fails, then it fails. The choice in 400 years of slavery is allowing yourself and your people to remain in those conditions. Fear is not an excuse either, fear is a choice. Our ancestors and distant relatives knew this, and they fought with their lives for freedom. They were brave, couragous, resourceful and above all resiliant, and it’s almost an insult to not recognize this.
Kanye definitely should have been much better at explaining himself, but nonetheless his own screw-up isn’t an excuse to act out irrationally. Close enough, he freestyled shortly before the TMZ rant, saying: “Hopped off the Amistad and made ’[I’m] A God’ … I say what they say when the mic is off … teach white dominance? Question your common sense, see yall been washed in tradition that I'ma rinse, hopped off the Amistad and made ’[I’m] A God’ …”. I also like the line in Ye vs. The People (feat. T.I.): “A lot of people agree with me but they too scared to speak up”.
Yall have to remember one key thing about Kanye West; amongst all the interracial relationship controversy, Trump support, etc., Kanye was raised by a Black Panther for a father and a black community leader for a mother (R.I.P.) on the south side of Chicago. He doesn’t exist in the same thought bubble as today’s heavily liberal, majority-Democratic black population, and yall have to realize for once that not everyone is in your echo chamber screaming at the walls with you; people have different opinions, and the world that exists beyond your ideological safe space should be enough on its own to understand that we can’t deal with everyone in absolutes by something as shallow as political beliefs. Any talk about how Kanye let us down or how Kanye is a traitor, this and that, is nonsense and ultimately your own fault for thinking he had any obligation to meet your own expectations. And on top of that, everybody don’t gotta agree with you, fam.
The way a lot of you so-called “woke” or conscious black people reacted to Kanye’s statement lowkey reminds me of the Catcher Freeman skit from the Boondocks: “Man, fuck that white nigga, that’s yo massa, ion know that nigga! … You prolly don’t even wanna leave, all on massa nuts.” Like foreal, I have a strong feeling some of yall would actually enjoy slavery.
Lastly, considering the current climate of black culture, it’s also funny to me how a lot of these people complaining are the same people who recently applauded Killmonger’s character in Black Panther; the militant, black revolutionary anti-hero who infamously said before his death: “Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, because they knew that death was better than bondage.” Sounds to me like your buddy Killmonger wouldn’t hesitate to fight back and/or die in the process of seeking out his freedom. But let Kanye say it a bit different and the world catches on fire.
But I digress… Yall go do a lot more reading and do a lot less talking for a while. And stop alienating your own people.
I dislike Kanye as a person and an artist but I approve of his recent foray in politics.
My own personal interpretation is that Kanye made it seem like the concept of slavery for 400 years was a choice. And clearly the concept of it isn’t, its pretty much the definition of the word. And one single person wasnt a slave for 400 years. It was several generations. Born into it. Not knowing anything else or how to free themselves from it. That wasnt a choice. A slave born to slave parents that don’t teach them about rebellion and revolt and freedom won’t know those things exist and just grow up knowing slavery as “the norm”. All the previous examples were people who knew of greater better things and fought for them. Died for them. But not everyone is born with that part of them.
Good point. But it doesn’t always need to be taught. Humans have an inherent desire to remove themselves from stressful situations, whether by fight or flight. You don’t need to know how to plan an attack to know that you have the general ability to attack. Most of the stuff I listed on here happened in cases where the enslaved people initially had no weapons, no fighting skills, and no experience in any situation of the likes. It’s a natural response. Some people just don’t have the willpower, which I understand. But there is always many more people who do.
Agreed it is in everybody. But the desire isnt always. Especially when the result could easily be death. And many people dont have the “from my cold dead hands mentality” God bless those who do/did. But lets not look down our noses on those who didnt.
Fear of death is fairly rational so I’ll just leave that be. But personally, if it meant my entire life was going to be a living Hell, I wouldn’t hesitate to be resistent. That’s just how I am as a person and I’ve always been that way, very strategic in my approach to things and always finding a way to isolate myself by any means. So I’ll say honestly if there is another thought process contrary to my own, where people are more hesitant or content, then I don’t understand it.
Good information… different point of view. Dialogue…
CHECK!!!
Good dialogue. I understood where Kanye was coming from but he has always suffered from not being able to express himself well. Which is ironic. Yes, every other place that there has been a large slave force they fought for their freedom, while in America they had to be “given” it. Now, I understand that, potentially, the slaves that were around during the time of the emancipation proclamation had witnessed attempted revolts and had been terrified into abandoning any such thoughts. But at the end of the day, blacks in America aren’t seen as warriors because in places like Haiti, Cuba, and others they fought for the right to be free. While here, the oppressors had to give them theirs
Being scared due to witnessing the bloody strife and consequence for emancipation is a good point. I respect your view.
I think Kanye is naive and his comment lacks information if not intellligence. Slavery in the Caribbean made rebelling successfully much more possible than in the states . To begin with the Africans greatly outnumbered the whites and the territory was similar in climate to west Africa which allowed for a maroon populations to adapt more successfully when out of white society. Regardless of these advantages Haiti was the only one that succeeded in expelling white rulers and claiming itself free. It was black People against a gun powered world. He’s a fool to think that black people chose slavery if they chose anything it was to survive and in many cases even this was forced upon them. It can be viewed that anything that happens to an individual is by choice but my question to him is why not elaborate on such an incendiary and accusative comment when he was given the chance, if this was his philosophical take? Instead he seemed unprepared for the passionate reactions. He should know that this point of view without clArification is ammunition for a world that already holds us in disdain to use against us. So in view of this I do question his motives.
