APIENC (API Equality – Northern California)
API Equality – Northern California (APIENC) builds transgender, non-binary, and queer API power
I haven’t always felt comfortable asking for help. Previously, I thought asking for help meant I was not “good enough,” and I thought that struggling on my own was a reflection of true strength. I learned this mindset from my family, who are Brown working class immigrants always battling to survive. I experienced this individualistic
To me, APIENC is love — love that the world desperately needs. As a chronically ill, Việt, queer, nonbinary person, I felt unheard, othered, and silenced for far too long, by nearly everyone in my life in some way. I don’t blame them for that, but it hurt compartmentalizing myself. In that process, it began
There I was, on a zoom call with over 30 people who I had just met the weekend before, having a vulnerable one-on-one conversation with Sammie for everyone to watch. This was during the third session of APIENC’s annual Leadership Exchange, or LEX for short. Usually, LEX is an in-person, 2 weekend-long training for trans
We are non-Black people of Asian and Pasifika (A&PI) descent, and we are trans, nonbinary, and many Indigenous cultural gender identities¹. We span many movements, many generations, and many organizations. We affirm the value of Black lives, unconditionally. We are in defense of Black life. We fight for and alongside Black people, Black uprisings, and
We, as trans and queer Asians and Pacific Islanders, believe that everybody has a role in dismantling anti-Blackness.
I don’t remember the year; I was 24, maybe 25, when I went to visit a friend in St. Vincent’s Hospital on 7th Ave in New York City. I never found him. The hospital was overrun with AIDS patients and didn’t have enough beds, so those who didn’t have a room laid on gurneys in
Environmental and climate justice work is an emerging part of APIENC’s organizing and politics. APIENC’s TTAC (Think and Take Action Cohort) brings together and inspires queer and transgender Asian and Pacific Islander (QTAPI) people in the SF Bay Area to engage and take action to stop climate and environmental injustices, particularly as they affect Black