David Gilbert - Fight the Power/Fight the Plague lyrics

Waiting for the government to stop AIDS would be suicidal. We have to step to the problem by taking responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our communities. And the peer education model shows us that we do have the ability to make a big difference through our own gra**roots efforts. At the same time, communities that take initiative to help themselves can ally to demand socially beneficial use of social resources. Our tax money that goes to corporate welfare – the $2.5 billion, for example, for one unnecessary Sea Wolf submarine being produced simply to keep the companies afloat, or the hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for the savings and loan scandal – could instead be spent on public health and other human needs, both nationally and internationally. What we don't need is Dr. Dougla** and the like convincing people that HIV is not spread through s** and d**. Instead, we need to engage the youth in detailed and sensible education on s**uality and responsibility, and we need to make measures available to move IDUs away from needle-sharing. We don't need hysteria about casual contact to generate cruelty toward people with AIDS and to foster support for police state repression. Instead, we need to support and learn from our brothers and sisters with HIV, and we need more open and democratic dialogue throughout the communities. Finally, we don't need to be led on a wild goose chase searching for the little men in white coats in a secret lab – which we will never find – which only leads us away from confronting the colossal crimes of malign neglect that are right in front of our faces, that can be documented, that are completely rooted in racism, h*mophobia, and profiteering. Once we see the real nature of the problem, we can step to it with programs of proven effectiveness against AIDS that also strengthen oppressed communities: gra** roots public health education and mobilization that includes and fights for: -- extensive peer-led programs in prisons, schools, and communities; -- thorough and responsible s** education in the homes, schools and other institutional settings for youth, along with more and accessible STD clinics; -- general access to NEPs, and much more intensive and culturally relevant anti-drug education and treatment. At the same time we need movements that fight: 1) to make the resources of society, now being lavishly squandered on the superrich, available in order to: a) stop lethal public health and environmental conditions with programs that respond to initiative and leadership within the Black, Latino, and poor communities; b) make medicine and social services for survival needs universally available; c) put qualitatively more effort and focus into treatment and research for AIDS and the host of other health problems causing tens of thousands of unnecessary d**hs. 2) for international solidarity with the people of Africa, including an end to the debt payments, along with reparations back to them, so that they can mount the health campaigns needed against the scourges now threatening to take millions of souls. It's time to stop the real genocide. David Gilbert #83A6158 Clinton Correctional Facility, Box 2001, Dannemora, New York, 12929 USA