10 • AUGUST 17, 2018 • LOSANGELESBLADE.COM
LOCAL
Trans artist/activist Casey Hoke dies at 21 Family, trans community and allies heartbroken By STAFF REPORTS Casey Hoke, a transgender artist, activist and national public speaker dedicated to helping others combat marginalization, died in Pomona, according to a family statement on his Facebook page. He died on Aug. 8. “My family is heartbroken. We ask for privacy, but at the same time want to make sure Casey’s friends and connections know,” Hoke’s brother Ryan Benjamin Hoke said in a statement. He later added in an email to the Los Angeles Blade: “Casey lost his battle with mental illness.” Hoke, 21, was well known in the national Trans community, particularly among the younger generation for his dedication to the LGBTQ community, especially in his art and in art history. Hoke came out as a transgender male in high school, worked as an organizer and peer educator at his high school’s Gay/ Straight/ Transgender Alliance and was selected as a Point Foundation scholar at
Casey Hoke led the Los Angeles Blade’s Pride contingent at LA Pride 2018. Los Angeles Blade Photo by Troy Masters
California State Polytechnic University of Pomona for graphic design communications. Hoke contributed to the Huffington Post and MTV News, had given TEDx Talks, and was working on QueerArtHistory.com,
an educational resource for all to learn about the visual storytelling of LGBTQ+ identity through time. “Casey was a beloved member of the Point Family and the love and warmth he brought
to every space he was in will be missed,” Point Foundation Executive Director & CEO Jorge Valencia, told the Los Angeles Blade. “Casey’s family told us how proud he was of his Point community service project, (QueerArtHistory.com) and that we in the Point Foundation would ask that folks go see the incredible work that Casey was doing. Dr. Eliza Byard, the Executive Director of GLSEN, told the LA Blade that she was deeply shocked and saddened by Hoke’s sudden passing. “I have known Casey since he was in high school and he was a remarkable force of light, love, art, and power in the world who worked with GLSEN at every level,” Byard said. “He was a sitting member of our board of directors and also often contributed his artwork to our cause. I am so grateful to have known and worked with him. He touched so many lives and he will always inspire me to press on and stop hate.” Casey Hoke was interviewed for the LA Blade’s June cover story, “Generation Next.” The memorial service will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation to the Pride Center at Cal Poly Pomona in memory of Casey Hoke.
Medical marijuana hero Scott Tracy Imler dies at 60 Battled Bush administration for AIDS, cancer patients By KAREN OCAMB kocamb@losangelesblade.com The announcement was sudden and shocking. “I am very sad to share with all his friends on Facebook that Scott Tracy Imler passed away this morning here in LA. He died in his sleep. Scott was 60 years old,” his husband George Leddy wrote in an Aug. 10 morning post. “We have been together for thirty years. We were married for nine years. I will miss him very much. We gave each other the best years of our lives. I will post details on his funeral here on his page. Thank all of you who loved him and struggled with him on so many fronts.” West Hollywood Mayor John Duran,
Scott Imler Photo Courtesy Facebook
described how Imler was a hero to AIDS, cancer and other patients with debilitating illnesses who discovered that medical marijuana helped fight nausea after chemo treatments and swallowing toxic AZT another AIDS medications, fighting the “wasting syndrome;” it also helped
fight glaucoma and epileptic spells, which impacted Imler. But the Drug Enforcement Administration lists cannabis as a Schedule I drug, with no “currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” equating it with heroin. Scott served as pastor at the Methodist Church at Fountain and Fairfax in West Hollywood. The church became a “sanctuary” for medicinal marijuana users. “[I]t took a lot of work with law enforcement to make it happen,” Duran writes. Imler served about 1,000 patients at that church— “the first in Southern California.” Imler joined with northern California medical marijuana advocate Dennis Peron in writing the successful 1996 Proposition 215 that allowed for the legal use of medical marijuana, with conditions. He then founded and ran the not-for-profit Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center co-op on Santa Monica Blvd near Gardner, a center that
came about with help from Duran, the City of West Hollywood and Wells Fargo Bank. But the DEA launched the pot wars from 1998-2004. On Oct. 25, 2001, the heavilyarmed DEA raided LACRC with little courtesy notice to West Hollywood sheriffs and local elected officials. US Attorney General John Ashcroft wanted to make an example of Imler. He and two others were not allowed to offer a “medical necessity” defense in court and therefore they took a plea with no time for incarceration. The federal government confiscated LACRC under the “drug asset forfeiture laws” as ACT UP/LA and others staged ongoing protests in a parking lot across the street. Imler then fought with the homophobic Methodist Church, which eventually evicted him, one of several major problems he and Leddy survived. “RIP Rev. Scott,” writes Duran. “A hero in the national AIDS movement. We shall not forget you my dear friend.”