AAOP has been a young person-led, mostly femme and queer-led organization since 2016 and while you may have met staff and young leaders in community events, while volunteering for canvassing or even in the past, who are the people behind AAOP? Over the next few weeks, we’ll be re-introducing AAOP staff! Get to know who is part of AAOP, our likes and dislikes, experiences and stories.
Lastly, we have Linda, our Executive Director!
Favorite Part of Your Role: My favorite part of my role is co-creating and leading with a team of creative young people to create systems change through building people power, provide leadership development and training, amplifying narratives on race, class and gender, and grow youth grant making for change.
Least Favorite Part of Your Role: My least favorite part of my role is all the administrative and paperwork. Although most of my days are not spent on ground organizing with people, I understand that documentation and maintaining institutional information and knowledge is critical for our long-term work.
What inspires your work? When you think about our home, school, work, art, culture, law, and politics, they are all defined and led by adults. Many times those adults aren’t from our communities nor most adults don’t know our experiences, but they get to define what our options are and what represents us. Most times those are inaccurate representations and information about our interests.
So what inspires me as a Hmong queer-femme leader is to be part of an organization that is youth and young people-led and powered by their leadership, interests, and community solutions.
Life motto or quote that inspires you: “What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.”
— Bell Hooks
Share a story or a memorable moment that happened while at AAOP:
I remember before the pandemic where we used to host in-person events such as the Get Out the Vote efforts and we had provided an abundance of great food (provided by local restaurant businesses) for our leaders and volunteers. Everyone who came through appreciated and remembered our initiative to feed and replenish their community labor for change. I’m excited and hopeful to be doing that again.
Testimonies from other staff:
Their name is Yellow Ranger and my gosh do they kick ass. Besides their supreme hard work ethic and imaginable mind, the care and support from Linda is wonderful. – Jeffrey
Linda does so much for us. She works so hard to make the organization run and is always thinking about how to grow our work. Her vision and passion for this work is inspiring. – Clara
Linda does so much for AAOP! I’m always amazed how she can balance everything and appreciative of the critical questions she brings up when we have our check ins. It always puts a smile on my face whenever her nephew comes by and says hi too. – leyen
Linda is one of the few first Hmong queer leaders that I’ve met as I was transitioning from late teen to early young adult. I met Linda for the first time in June of 2017 and we talked about mental health in the Hmong community. She welcomed me into AAOP space and suggested that I be an organizing fellow. Ever since then, Linda have continued to be a Hmong Queer elder for me. – Vang Xor