you don’t tie a red ribbon to someone on fire
02 Dec 2008 2 Comments
in narrative Tags: activism, aids, black, community, death, fundraising, gay, health, love, non-profits, Obama, poetry, public policy, queer, radical muffins love pleasure, schools
Today is World AIDS Day.
And we are not doing well as peoples of the world in many aspects of life. We explode our potentially glorious cities. Some children migrate every night to avoid being kidnapped into soldiering; some men rape refugee girls on their way to gather water outside their camps. While the world is in macroeconomic chaos, those at the micro level are watching the levees break. The sky is falling and sea is boiling, or at least poisoning us with the poisons we poisoned them with.
A plague is upon us.
Despite the apocalypse, reason and hope should drive cash and compassion into the struggle against AIDS. We need the work that empowers the communities most affected by the virus and changes the social factors that drive the epidemic as well as provides for the care of people living with HIV.
The AIDS crisis here and around the world exposes where we have most failed to provide for people’s basic needs: health care, housing, healthy food, education and safe community. And the opportunity to learn about our bodies and to grow in the capacity to have honest, caring relationships- some that are really fucking sexy- that embody the justice we hope to build in the world. Safety nets for when times get hard, and support for when we are struggling.
In honor of the people who have lost their lives as a result of communities and public policies that punish sexuality and drug addiction and abandon people, especially queer people of color, to preventable death, please:
Google search World AIDS Day and your city
then do something, like:
- send in $10 to your local AIDS service organization;
- then donate to your favorite social justice activists, especially feminists working around anti-violence and folks working in addiction/recovery. Your local library full of fiesty, free-speechy librarians is another good place to support;
- sign up to volunteer for soup kitchen this winter. Bonus karma for not at Christmas. Brownies for working with Food Not Bombs.
- read up on racial disparities in health in this country;
- support comprehensive sex ed in the schools in your community; and
- have safe sex with Obama supporters or staffers..or, you know, build the movement and share the love. Read radical poetry in the afterglow.
I guess do that when you are done on-line.
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