Location
GLBT Historical Society Museum, 4127 18th St., San Francisco, CA 94114
Admission
$5.00 | Free for members
RSVP and purchase tickets here
Within the LGBTQ community, the experiences of Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) people are often marginalized. Queer and trans APIA people face numerous intersectional challenges, including anti-LGBTQ prejudice in their respective ethnic communities, as well as racism and xenophobia within the larger LGBTQ community.
A panel of Bay Area LGBTQ APIA community leaders and activists will consider these particular challenges and discuss their efforts to promote, defend and extend the rights of queer and trans APIA people. This program is cosponsored by the Human Rights Program at Southern Methodist University.
PANELISTS
Mohammed Shaik Hussain Ali is a film producer, author and human-rights activist associated with multiple LGBTQ organizations across the United States, including Trikone and NQAPIA. Based in San Francisco for the past decade, he has represented the South Asian community on multiple platforms, making sure the community is visible. He is South Asian, Indian, Muslim and gay.
Crystal Jang is a self-identified, queer, Asian/Pacific Islander, intergenerational activist and “community auntie” who advocates for elder issues relating to aging in the API queer community. She is the cofounder of the REGCircle and the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women Transgender Community.
Amy Sueyoshi is the Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. Her research interests lie primarily at the intersection of Asian American and queer studies. She has authored two books — Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi and Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental.” Amy is also a founding co-curator of the GLBT History Museum and co-chair of the inaugural Queer History Conference 2019 hosted by the Committee on LGBT History.
Neo Veavea organized the first Samoan contingent for San Francisco Pride in 1982 and has continued to support Pride ever since. He cofounded United Territories of Pacific Islanders Alliances, an organization that has served as a support, social and resource group for LGBTQ Polynesians and Pacific Islanders since 1998. The first Samoan to run for the Board of Supervisors for San Francisco District 10, Neo has served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s LGBTQ Advisory Committee and District 10’s Visitacion Valley Citizens’ Advisory Committee.
Sammie Ablaza Wills is an enthusiastic organizer with a vivid love for justice and strategy. Growing up in a hustling-class Pilipinx immigrant household in Las Vegas, Sammie was shaped by the cultural resilience, joy, and trauma of their community. Currently, Sammie is the Executive Director of API Equality — Northern California, a grassroots organization building power for transgender and queer Asian/Pacific Islander people in the Bay Area.
MODERATOR
Michael Nguyen is the chair of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that works to unite our family and allies through inclusion, advocacy, and love. Michael is also known as Miss GAPA 2016, Juicy Liu. Michael serves on the boards of Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, the oldest LGBTQ bar association in the country; and Livable City, an advocacy nonprofit working to make San Francisco more livable through better transit and greener open spaces.
Image credit: API Equality—Northern California chanting during the San Francisco Trans The March (2018). Photo by APIENC, used with permission.