From PBS Station Thirteen’s blog, Jason Wu contributed a post entitled “Look to Queer and Trans Leaders and Reclaim Revolutionary Possibilities.” The section on GAPIMNY is provided below:
One of the organizations I organize with today, GAPIMNY—Empowering Queer & Trans Asian Pacific Islanders, was formed in 1990 by John Chin, Don Kao, and John Manzon. GAPIMNY is an all-volunteer led organization based in NYC that strives to make intersectional interventions through its organizing—most recently by challenging mainstream calls for more policing and prosecution in response to bias-motivated violence. Instead, GAPIMNY demands systemic reforms that will address the root causes of violence in the United States and abroad.
The prehistory of GAPIMNY includes a 1988 Northeast retreat with GAPIMNY’s would-be founders and Kiyoshi Kuromiya, among other Asian gays and lesbians. These gatherings gave queer Asian Americans the opportunities to find one another and organize at a time when it was very difficult to do so. Despite the overwhelming whiteness of most LGBTQ+ spaces and documented LGBTQ+ history, Asian Americans have been part of LGBTQ+ organizing for decades, and were also at the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights on October 14, 1979. In addition, much of the foundational organizing in the 1970s and 1980s was led by Asian American lesbians in relation to cross-racial organizing with Black and Latinx queer community groups, and that organizing provided vital connections.
Read the Full Post Here: https://www.thirteen.org/blog-post/queer-trans-leaders-reclaim-revolutionary-possibilities/