Yves Tong Nguyen

Yves Tong Nguyen (they/she/he) is queer, trans, disabled, Vietnamese, and a sex worker. All of these identities have shaped the way they live their life, which they’ve chosen to live as an activist and community builder, learning the importance of authenticity all the while.

Yves found themself well aware of their marginalization early in life. Their parents migrated to the US and were given a cold welcome, often profiled and persecuted for their race and drug use. Yves recognized that their understanding of those experiences strengthened with time. “I kind of have this background… but that doesn’t necessarily radicalize you, doesn’t necessarily bring you to the type of politics that I have.”

Yves themself struggled with this ostracization, as well. They were on the receiving end of gender based violence at multiple points, and the institutions purportedly designed to support them (the legal system, the penal system) often worsened things. In this struggle, they became a burgeoning activist, primarily working within their own communities.

There was a clear turning point for them, however. “What really radicalized me was the murder of Trayvon Martin,” Yves said. The blatant violence of the police brutality committed against Martin spurred Yves onward, encouraging them to cross the boundary of identity-based activism. “I was doing a lot of Asian American centered organizing… and then I moved into kind of doing collaborative work around Black Lives Matter, as well as college campus organizing.”

In 2017, they made the move to Brooklyn, quickly acclimating to the activist scene here. In this new start, they found it necessary to foster a moral rigor, not allowing things like their anti-racism, anti-homophobia, or abolitionism to be compromised. “People will be like, ACAB all day, all cops are bastards, abolition,” Yves said. “But then they will call the cops on somebody if something happens, right?”

Yves also found it important to recognize the conflict avoidance in activist spaces— that many people have developed a disdain for any intra-community dialogue. When someone calls out bigotry of any kind, even those that people don’t quite understand, the community is obligated to treat it seriously. “I think that it’s our job as leftists, as people who have these politics, who are against conservatism, who are against fascism to be as rigorous as possible— to show up and answer those questions, to do the actual work,” Yves said.

Yves currently makes their home in Sunset Park, working with both Survived & Punished, a coalition against the criminalization of domestic violence survivors, and Red Canary Song, a collective dedicated to the empowerment of migrant sex workers and massage workers from the Asian diaspora.