GAPA was founded in 1988 by a group of gay and bi Asian and Pacific Islander men who had been meeting as a rap group at the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley. At the time, the founders saw a need to build community with other queer APIs, shape a positive sense of queer API identity, and mobilize the community to increase our political power in a time darkened by the AIDS epidemic. Now, over 33 years later, GAPA meets a national moment of racial reckoning, at an unprecedented time of awareness of the violence perpetrated against Asian Americans, by changing our name to GLBTQ+ Asian Pacific Alliance. This new name more fully reflects who we hold ourselves accountable to: the entire GLBTQ+ Asian and Pacific Islander community.