I: Welcome everyone to the APAMSA NHAAPI Health Issues Interview series, where we’ll be interviewing researchers, policymakers, community-based organizations, and other experts on health-related topics that affect the NHAAPI community. My name is Grant Wen and I’m the health advocacy director at APAMSA National. 

For this interview, I would like to welcome Alexander Nicholas from Philadelphia, Asian and Queer, also known as PAQ. PAQ is a volunteer social organization that strives to engage queer Asian and Pacific Islander folks within the Greater Philadelphia area. Through a range of advocacy, social, and supportive programming, PAQ commits to building and uniting their collective voices as queer AANHPI communities. Alexander Nicholas, pronouns they/them, is a steering committee member of PAQ and currently at a master’s program of social work at Widener University. So without further ado, let’s welcome Alexander.

My name is Alex or Alexander, and I’m a second generation Filipinx, trans masculine, non binary person. I became involved with PAQ two or three years ago. And our organization has a range of programming. I’m mostly involved with our afternoon tea and discussion groups, where we discuss various topics related to the queer NHAAPI community. Before COVID, we also had food tours, where we would all get together and go to various NHAAPI owned restaurants to support them. And currently, in COVID, we’ve moved almost completely to online at this point. We are trying to get back to in person events. We recently had a drag night. And right now we have a Discord server, facebook group, and instagram handle.

I think because of the pandemic, and the hyper visibility that the AANHPI community was suddenly facing, a lot of our topics of discussion shifted to more of dealing with our mental health and how to weather a new surge of racism against us. Because a lot of our community was based on feeling like we didn’t have visibility within the queer community, as Asians and Pacific Islanders. And so now it’s like, okay, well, we can’t really separate these identities. So how are we being affected by racism right now?

In addition, before the pandemic, we as an organization had been talking about trying to put together a queer AANHPI conference. And just something small, where we could have various workshops and speakers, to try to grow the community and connect with other organizations in Philly. But then COVID happened. So those plans were put on hold. But other than that, we also partner with Laneway Community Center and do our fundraising through them. And I think one of our goals j has been to start a queer AAPI Scholarship Fund.

Lastly, for those of you who don’t know, the Laneway Community Center is located in Center City, Philadelphia. And it is, I think, one of the older or oldest queer community centers in the city. I’m not quite sure if they’re open right now, but we also used to hold our afternoon tea and discussions there.

There have definitely been new challenges after COVID. In the past, community work was 90% in-person events, like gatherings at community centers where individuals could share food or celebrate festivals and special holidays together. But due to COVID, people couldn’t gather and don’t feel comfortable doing so. So that was a huge challenge, especially for some of our community members, as the majority of clients we serve are the elderly with limited English proficiency, and really limited knowledge and even access to internet and digital devices.

COVID really changed everything for our organization also. First, we couldn’t work in our office building, so we had to work from home.Second of all, we had to transition events and projects to digital platforms, and to do so, the initial steps we took were to do digital literacy programs for the seniors in the communities that we serve. I know that some of our partners called the seniors individually and gave them instructions on how to use Zoom, how to create an account, etc. And then they went into health education and even social gathering through zoom and other digital platforms. So that was really new to us. But surprisingly, they all adapted to the digital world fairly quickly. The seniors seemed to become very familiar with the platform, and they really enjoyed talking to each other. So that’s really going smoothly for now, but with things slowly transitioning back to reopening, I’m sure there’s going to be new challenges, and we will see how we can adapt to any new situations.

We also have been supporting local businesses since the pandemic. For example, we ordered 1000s of masks from a local Vietnamese shop. That’s one of the ways that we’re supporting the local community. We also collaborated with the local businesses in Chicago, where they helped us distribute the resources that we created, such as handouts with in-language materials and resources for local communities. 

Right after the pandemic hit, everyone—-but especially the communities we serve (elders with limited English proficiency)—- had been isolated at home. So we collaborated with APAMSA to create a student ambassador program for students to call seniors who felt isolated to make sure they felt supported enough to meet their physical and mental needs. Especially after the anti-Asian violence, there was a huge increase in mental health needs for the coming from the elders in our communities along with even more hesitancy in going out. We’ve received some good feedback, especially with the program that we’re doing with APAMSA. Seniors across the country appreciated the company and the conversations they had and also the students helping them process COVID information and also the vaccine.

With our community, a lot of the health issues that we were dealing with, via our organization, were mostly related to mental health and finding community and reducing isolation. The queer AANHPI community also still deals with AIDS/HIV, and especially as immigrants, there can be a language barrier to accessing services for that. And a lot of our steering committee members happen to be social workers, so we are personally very involved with trying to help with those disparities.

I would describe PAQ as very grassroots. It involves programming by and for the community. The kind of barrier to entry to becoming a steering committee member is quite low, I think, compared to other organizations, which I really like. And so when we have programming, it was very much a loop of feedback of just like, “Oh, well, I personally need community in this way. Can we work together to try to make that happen? In terms of our members, I think it’s a mix of first and second generation immigrants. Among both steering committee members and members who are not part of our steering committee, we have a wide range of NHAAPI experiences.

There has been a lot of discussion around feeling trapped and paralyzed around how to move through the world when you’re dealing with queer phobia and transphobia, and anti Asian racism. Because of the pandemic, a lot of people also moved back in with their families. Many times, members of the AAPI community will choose not to come out to their families, because it’s more important to maintain the relationship dynamic of the family. But when you’re stuck at home, it becomes harder and harder sometimes to maintain that balance. But if you go outside, you risk anti Asian violence. And a lot of people have just been struggling with that balance and trying to engage with coping skills.

Since I’m mostly involved with our afternoon tea and discussion groups, this topic of discussion has come up really frequently—-of people needing mental health support, or just community support. And being in a space where everybody has some kind of base level of similarity can really help you feel seen, even if you are talking directly about the specific struggles with COVID and anti-Asian violence.

There’s also definitely a shortage of therapists in general. One of the main factors of me choosing to change careers, from animation into social work, was the lack of queer therapists. And we are out there, but everybody’s rosters are always full. And so we can always use more mental health professionals, not just for the queer AANHPI community, but for the general population as well.