Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Nguyen

Hi Michael, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?

Michael got his start as a community organizer and activist through the GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA), an all volunteer organization working to build a powerful Queer and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander (QTAPI) community in the Bay Area for over 35 years. Michael has a proven track record of delivering results for our community and is committed to making a positive difference in the lives of San Franciscans.

Watching G. W. Bush win the 2000 presidential election by one vote in the Supreme Court was my first introduction to politics. As the only child of Vietnamese refugees, I grew up without paying much attention to politics. My parents worked and sacrificed so much to give me a better future.

I left Texas after college to live in San Diego in 2003. There, I would march in my first Pride parade with the Gay Men’s Chorus of San Diego. That gave me the courage to come out fully as a gay man.

I moved to San Francisco in 2006 as a transfer law student to UC College of the Law, San Francisco. I’ve been a lifelong renter, and I would not be able to live in San Francisco without rent control.

I decided to go to law school, inspired by the advocacy of so many in our LGBTQ+ community during the Marriage Equality fight. As a brand new attorney on Election night in 2008, seeing Obama make history as the nation’s first African American President gave me immense pride; however, seeing the returns come in on Prop 8 felt like a slap to the face.

I started organizing through the art of Drag, becoming Miss GAPA in 2016. My drag persona, Juicy Liu, was created out of community. I believe in the power of drag to transform individuals to recognize their own potential to create change. Through grassroots efforts to mobilize the Queer and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander communities, I have stood up and spoken out against injustices, Anti-Asian violence, and built our collective power.

In March 2021, in response to the murders of massage parlor workers in Atlanta, I was the lead organizer of Castro to Chinatown: an LGBTQ+ March for Asian Lives. I was able to mobilize over a thousand protestors to march down Market Street to shout out loud, “Enough is Enough!”

I ran for SF Democratic party because I believe that every San Franciscan has a right to exist without fear of violence. I believe that public safety, however, is not achieved by more police, but rather when community comes together to keep us safe. That means making sure people have access to economic opportunity, including the vast wealth, jobs, and resources of San Francisco. I believe that San Francisco will be more safe when the community feels safe, and that starts with making sure our community has access to the resources they need to not only survive in SF, but thrive.

​I also ran for the San Francisco Democratic Party because I believe we need more people in our party’s leadership who will listen and meet our community where they are. Too often in our politics, corporate interests funnel huge sums of money to push through agendas that don’t work for everyday San Franciscans. As a community organizer and activist, I’m a champion for our most marginalized communities, especially for folks who don’t think their voices matter. I now bring decades of experience in nonprofit board governance, advocacy, and community organizing as an elected member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

Real progress can never really happen without some bumps and bruises along the way. I am the proud son of Vietnamese refugees who fled an authoritarian Communist regime after the Fall of Saigon. That survivalist mentality was passed down to me as I found my way towards politics after college. I struggled to find a job after the dot com bust in the early 2000s, eventually finding a role as a Technical Support Specialist, a job that didn’t even require my college degree in Computer Science and Music. I made the decision to go to law school after coming out because I wanted to make real change in our society, but I still needed to pay my student loans. So, I took a job in Big Law but got let go just 2 years after I started due to the downturn in the economy. However, because of the good relationships I had with partners, I was rehired as a contractor just a few months later that same year, eventually returning full time to continue pumping out patent applications.

I went in-house as a patent lawyer and worked at a big Software as a Service company in San Francisco. I thought I had finally gotten some stability, but then I was let go only 18 months later because of disagreements with my new boss. It turns out that a red flag for a corporate gig is the hiring manager leaving 2 weeks after you get started. With that, I went back to private practice, riding the rollercoaster of the feast or famine nature of “eating what you kill” — the remnants of the billable hour at smaller firms. Meanwhile, I spent my free time building the Queer and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander community in a time where the President of the United States incited violence against the Asian community, blaming China for COVID-19. In the wake of all that, in 2021, I organized an LGBTQ response to the murders of 6 Asian American women in Atlanta, bringing together over a thousand protestors, over 30 speakers at two rallies, including the Mayor of San Francisco and other elected officials. I thought it was time that the LGBTQ community came out in strong support of the Asian American community, and our intersectional Queer and Transgender API community needed to a space to publicly grieve and receive support from all of our people. That intentional uplifting of our intersectionality, with all our struggles and achievements, is what led me to start QTAPI Week, a high visibility week long celebration of the AAPI and LGBTQ communities, in 2021, that has expanded statewide in 2022 and then nationally the following year.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I have an alter ego drag persona, Juicy Liu, that I created after finishing law school in San Francisco and finding out that I was way more effective at selling jello shots in drag for my softball team, the Dragons. The very first time I did drag was back in college — probably 2001. This is pre-‘RuPaul’ era. My college, Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, had a drag week. I went to a small liberal arts school in Texas, and there were few of us, few gay folks. Did it again in law school, around Halloween; started professionally in 2016. At that time, I started doing drag monthly with the Rice Rockettes at the Lookout, a gay bar in San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro neighborhood. Then, two years later, I pioneered my own show, “Juicy Thots,” also at the Lookout.

I let go of my monthly show after the pandemic, to focus on other things. I did perform as part of Sister Roma’s birthday show at Oasis, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood. I pull out my drag when requested for bigger shows, such as the “Fight to Legalize Drag” benefit at Oasis in April 2023, Legalize Drag: Texas Edition at El Rio later in 2023, and Legalize Drag: Florida also at El Rio earlier this year in 2024.

Drag gives me the opportunity to experience my life in a different way. Juicy Liu — my drag persona — is still me, but is a more highly-stylized version of me. I love singing — so I’m a singing drag queen, which is a little more rare here in the United States, compared with British Commonwealth countries. Through my drag, I’m able to transform into what is needed in the moment– whether that’s Gaysian Oprah on a talk show podcast interviewing LGBTQ luminaries, a late night show style comic MC uplifting and highlighting marginalized performers in the LGBTQ community, or an energetic activist community organizer turned politician, delivering a message of hope and organized action to inspire the masses.

My drag also helped inspire me to push for the creation and eventual selection of San Francisco’s first drag laureate, D’Arcy Drollinger. As an appointed member of the LGBTQ Advisory Committee to the Human Rights Commission in San Francisco, I have a unique opportunity to push forward policy and legislation recommendations to support the many different facets of our LGBTQ community. Drag is certainly a key pillar of the community, and I’m proud that I was able to push that over the line.

One of the big misconceptions about drag is that it is the same as being transgender. In our politics, we are seeing a huge backlash against the transgender community, specifically equating them as drag queens. A lot of people when I first started doing drag more would ask ‘do you identify as trans?’ No, respectfully, I am just a gay man who likes to perform drag, an exaggerated performance of gender, but I am not a trans person. I know a lot of trans people and I want to be respectful of that. Right now, there’s a purposeful misinformation campaign to classify trans people as drag queens. Drag is an art form, and all people can do drag.

The crackdown on drag nationally is heartbreaking and makes me feel very upset and mad. Not only is freedom of expression, protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, at risk, but state governments very clearly having animus to a whole community feels hateful. I spoke recently on a panel at Lavender Law, the annual conference of the National LGBTQ+ Bar, on the drag bans and how ridiculous these bans are. Terrifyingly, they are moving through the appellate courts and drag is being argued as non-expressive activity not protected under the First Amendment.

I hope that this is the last stand for the conservatives pushing these restrictions, seizing on an opportunity to create division and pick on a marginalized community, yet again, to serve their political interests. They’re trying to pull things backwards, and we’re not going back.

I’ve spoken on various panels and seminars on this, including at a Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club event in March 2023 on this topic along with Roma, drag king Alex U. Inn, Office of Transgender Initiatives Executive Director Pau Crego, former Milk club president Gabriel Haaland, and Jackie Thornhill, a trans woman who is a legislative aide to gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman.

How are they going to ban us? Effectively make our existence illegal? It can happen so quickly. We have to fight for our right to express and center our queer joy in all we do.

My unique combination of legal training, political connections, community organizing, and comedic timing makes me a proud Drag activist that sets me apart from others.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?

I think the most interesting lesson I’ve learned from the COVID-19 crisis is that our government can only effectively handle a crisis with competent and responsible leaders in charge. At the end of the day, we must trust our elected officials to make the hard decisions to protect our public health. That was clearly evident to me as I watched Donald Trump spout out ridiculous statements like injecting bleach into your veins, not asking ALL Americans to wear masks to protect each other, and blaming the whole crisis on China, inciting fear, hatred, and violence against Asian Americans. Contrast that with San Francisco Mayor London Breed who imposed shut downs earlier than most major cities and helped create rapid response centers to ensure testing was available for our most marginalized communities. It was a very real and public lesson in governance and how having the wrong leader leads to terrible outcomes– over a million Americans dead because of the incompetent and antagonist anti-science leadership in the White House.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/juicyliupresents
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juicyliurealness/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltnguyen/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyrbWrbbrAvp-a6rojiXJFw?app=desktop&persist_app=1
• Other: https://linktr.ee/juicyliurealness

Image Credits

Kevin Zhao