CAM BUI is one of our newest volunteers! She is a queer cisgender Asian-American woman who has just recently become involved in our Dragon Fruit Project. She is also a full-time student in kinesiology at SF State University.

In high school, Cam was involved in C.A.T., which is a coalition in the South Bay against teens smoking tobacco. In addition to becoming a dedicated volunteer for API Equality – Northern California, Cam has also recently been present at a lot of APIQWTC events. And even more recently, she has discovered the healing powers of meditation at the POC Sitting Group at the Easy Bay Meditation Center.

Cam first decided to volunteer with API Equality – Northern California after realizing she wanted a community to be a part of. After witnessing and experiencing a lot of small moments of social injustices throughout her daily life, she just couldn’t ignore it anymore. She felt she needed to do something about it. In the process of her politicization, her friend and community organizer for API Equality – Northern California, Tracy Nguyen, helped her to really put into focus and context the social injustices she was seeing all around her.

Cam found the Dragon Fruit Project, which preserves queer API histories, particularly interesting because after her Asian-American history class ended last semester at SF State, it really put into perspective how much of our history is missing from the mainstream:

“I realized how much history isn’t easily accessible, especially Asian-American history. After the class ended, I really just missed it.”

 In addition, Cam found that the internet provided her access to people’s lived experiences and stories in a way that deepened her social consciousness. She found her own realities reflected in different political discussions and wanted to channeled her anger and frustration into action.