LGBTQI and AAPI activist Taissa Morimoto talks queering the census and equality

May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. Taissa Morimoto is a member of the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community. She has experienced instances of microaggressions, harassment and being bullied as an East Asian woman and a queer woman.

She received her bachelor’s degrees and J.D. from the University of Florida, where she represented survivors of intimate partner violence and led workshops on civil rights restoration. She moved to Washington, DC to work in public policy. During her first year in DC, she worked simultaneously at the Task Force and at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) as a policy research fellow.

Taissa currently works on criminal and economic justice, democracy, and census advocacy as policy counsel at the National LGBTQ Task Force( NGLTF).

She has explored the dangers of the for-profit prison industry and the impact of a recent Supreme Court decision which may help reverse this trend. She has also done work related to reproductive justice including around sex ed policy and how it impacts LGBTQ youth. Taissa works with the Task Force’s ongoing efforts to Queer the Census. The Task Force has been advocating for nearly 30 years to make sure LGBTQ people are added to the Census and other federal surveys

When Taissa attended the day-long racial institute for LGBTQI AAPI at Creating Change in 2017 she recognized how similar her experiences were to others.