Author: Lavender Phoenix

Image description: Fluffy pink clouds with a glowing Earth underneath. Above reads: “Our World, Our Solutions” with glowing yellow stars on the sides. In the center reads the text: “Raising $15,000 by 11/22 for Trans and Queer API Liberation.” Toward the bottom is the circular yellow APIENC logo and the donation link "lavenderphoenix.org/donate".

Now, we do as we’ve always done.

The day after the 2016 election, I woke up, logged onto social media, and saw outcries of anger and fear from my friends. On that day, I wrote a commitment to myself, and an invitation to others: “We are the people that power our movements. We are the people working towards change that lasts beyond

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Image description: Zoom selfie of 20 smiling QTAPI people.

Writings from #QTAPIClimateStories

On Saturday Sept. 19th 2020, APIENC’s Ecological Justice League (fka TTAC) brought folks together for a fun and creative Writing and Haiku Party! Participants engaged and connected with each other in order to better articulate their connection with and the impacts of the climate crisis through storytelling, haiku, and poetry. Here are some the creations that came out of the event!

Image description: Paige is indoors smiling at the camera.

Paige Chung

Sept 2020 | PAIGE CHUNG Paige (she/they) is a poet and a skater. In their own words, “My last writing project Nail Trap is juicier than your neighborhood gossip and my current project is hotter than your cousin’s mixtape. I’m based in Los Angeles, but I roll everywhere.” Paige first came to APIENC in the

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Image description: Hieu is indoors and smiling at the camera. There are posters on the wall behind them.

You Matter: Video Reflection on LEX 2020

LEX & the APIENC family brought so much… so many things, but what i’m most thankful for is the healing that it brought to me when i felt too overwhelmed to know where to start, & i want to share some of my learnings, un-learnings & re-learnings. radical vulnerability, as nerve-wracking as the build-up is,

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Image description: Zoom selfie of three people indoors and smiling at the camera

The Main Ingredient to Interdependence is Relationship Building

When we took on the role of coordinating APIENC’s Summer Mutual Aid Project, we were both fairly new to APIENC, just joining as a volunteer and Summer Organizer. Despite our newness, we understood the importance of mutual aid in this moment and were committed to building interdependent QTAPI communities. We didn’t fully know what it would take and look like for APIENC’s intergenerational trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander community in the Bay Area, so we were curious and committed to learning as we went.

Image description: A Zoom screenshot of Jasmin and MLin indoors in separation locations looking off to the side and holding phones up to their ears.

Hello are you there? Reflections from our Dragon Fruit Phone Tree

It all started with the Dragon Fruit Project (DFP) reunion, scheduled to happen on March 21, 2020. Since last December, a volunteer team had been planning for an in-person event to celebrate all those who had contributed to our intergenerational Dragon Fruit oral history project. However, as the date came closer and as COVID-19 spread in the Bay Area, the team decided to indefinitely postpone the event, and to prioritize the safety and health of participants who were planning to attend. Even though we were physically unable to see each other, we decided to offer a Phone Tree as a resource for community members to check in with one another. As the COVID-19 crisis escalated, California officially put into place Shelter-In-Place orders that would drastically change our community’s needs and ways of organizing.