As we move into Pride Month, we’ll continue to share stories from past and present staff on their thoughts of how organizing and art interplay. Check for a new story each week.
“Organizing goes beyond just the events and the stories and the people,” says AAOP Partners Organizer Vang Xor. “It’s answering: how do you connect all of those together? For me, I see organizing as moving stories, people, events, from point a to point b to create a specific impact.”
Vang Xor says there’s a three layer impact when it comes to organizing — it’s not just the person organizing. It’s about forming those relationships and having conversations about issues you care about with those people.
But that’s not the only way Vang Xor thinks of organizing.
“I think fashion is an interesting point of organizing,” Vang Xor says. “What you wear and how you wear your clothes can be a gateway for future conversations.”
Vang Xor also talks about the fast fashion industry. Fast Fashion, he says, is one of the largest causes of pollution. Cloth and fabric can take decades to disintegrate so when a fashion trend dies, all of the clothes made for that trend are tossed aside, leaving large amounts of waste.
“My specific fashion choices correspond to what I believe in regards to recycling and sustainability,” Vang Xor says. “So I’ve been thrift shopping for almost three years now. All of my choices are actively like, how can I reuse this piece of clothing?”
Using fashion as a tool for organizing isn’t just about sustainability. It is also key in breaking societal expectations of gender and cultural norms.
Vang Xor points to the shirt he’s wearing. It’s a button down; one side is striped blue and white and the other is brightly colored with yellow and lime green florals.
“The shirt I have on right now is a men’s shirt and a women’s shirt sewn together, yet it looks like one cohesive piece,” Vang Xor explains.
When it comes to fashion and picking out clothes, Vang Xor says he’s thinking about breaking gender norms, about the pieces that contradict each other to make people question their understanding of societal norms.
“It’s also a form of self actualization,” Vang Xor adds. “Especially for queer immigrants. We don’t have those opportunities to self-actualize ourselves in a ‘normal’ process.”
“We spend most of our time, our youth and our adolescent and our young adult life, supporting and figuring out a means to support family so there is no time for self-actualization. The way that each piece of clothes is one way of providing that piece for growth is to self -actualize what you want to look like, what you would like to feel like.”
“And it can also be very healing too. For folks that are experiencing body dysphoria or gender dysphoria, to be able to choose what you want to look like outwardly is a form of healing as well.”