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3/4/96:		 The CDC recently released startling statistics about high HIV transmission rates within the African-American community. What does this tell us about our community and our behavior? What are some ways that we can reduce these rates?




Name: Ron Jenkins
Email: rommie@amnix.com
Response: I beleive that AIDS was induced into our communities as a mean to destroy the african american race along with anyone not straight and white.


Name: Rodrigo Cervantes
Email: bcgs1319@cueyatl.uam.mx
Response: PROTECT YOURSELF, IT IS YOUR LIFE,DO NOT RUIN IT. USE CONDOMS.


Name: m. david
Email: mmdavid@mem.po.mem
Response:
For this epidemic to stop, we must begin by taking responsibities for ourselves and our community. we can teach ourselves and our children not to engage in unprotected sex. I know as a health care worker people with hiv who practice unsafe sex. so it is also a matter of morality. people must care about themselves and their community to do the right things. we also must volunteer to help the community. volunteer at churches, community organizations, schools. we can act as mentors to the children and adults in our communuties. we must contribute not just to our nuclear families, but to the community.

Name: Jamil Bell
Email: jb5491@cub.uca.edu
Response:
Obviously this tells us that there are to many people going around with loose attitudes. Young ladies and men of today have low morals or no morals. It is all about how you treat yourself and then how you present yourself to others. There are to many ladies that just sleep with a man they don't even know on the first date with no protection, if there is a date at all. And then the men around here just act like a bunch of animals, sleeping around with any woman who will open her legs. Doesn't anybody know that AIDS is real and it is coming after us. It has no discrimination. I have a big problem with this. I am from a white college where every black person on campus know each other. So therefore, all the men sleep around and then women like me get talked about because I'm not giving it up to every Tom, Dick and Harry. If people would actually think for a minute maybe AIDS wouldn't be such a big problem among us.
Name: BigAir
Email: Braddock@pop.erols.com
Response:
Aids......try not to get it all of you out there.
Safe sex.. use a rubber men, whats the difference well my times up....peace.

Name: Janese Thomas
Email:
Response:
I feel their are too many people in the world that have aids. Most people get aids from drugs, or unprotected sex. Usually the people that you are supposed to look up to feel some kind of sudden preasure. So they try to escape from it, and run out and do something stupid. If people think before they blow it then life would be easier!!!

Name: richard
Email:
Response:
It says there is more work to be done !!! No we ain't made it over if our brothers and sisters are still being enslaved. No we have not arrived if our brothers and sisters are still back in Egypt. The phrase "He ain't heavy, he's my brother," must now take on some real meaning, if we plan to overcome these adversities. And please don't let the high statistics of HIV, high school drop out, teen age pregnancies, and youth in the penal system be the only reason we move to build family and community, but let it be the reason why we should not stop or can't afford not to build family and community.
These numbers are not an end, nor a beginning but a result of a people without a vision. Pledge to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reason, expecting the right results, to benefit our brothers and sisters and glorify GOD. What other choice do we have? Do what is morally right, suffer now and be rewarded later. Or do what feels good, feel good now, and suffer later. It is your choice.

Name: Ralph Randall
Email: ralph_randall@mail.hq.faa.gov
Response:
We need to begin by admitting we (the masses of people) do not know how AIDS began. We do know something about how AIDs/HIV is spreading. Reading the responses of others to this question shows how much we know or don't know. Reading some of the responses and statements lets us know we need a miracle (GOD). Staements like:
o most of the new case are of people in their twenties
o the disease takes ten years to surface
lets us know we don't know how it started. These statements reveal questions like "If all these twenty-something people have the virous were they all promiscous? Many of them would only have been 10 through 13. These statistics point to our lack of true information in my opinion about the start or root of this disease. Which leaves me believing we need a miracle (GOD). We need to communicate these question producing facts as a basis for calling to our "LIFE" our miracle. These question producing facts could begin to unite people around what we do know. We know all the AID/HIV cases are not about promiscous behavior. We know that there have been plagues in many other times in the history of humans. We know that we (majority population of humans) can not explain the reason for our existence on this earth or the reason this disease has presented itself in this time. I believe these things we know point to our need for a miracle (GOD). Further, I believe that if we began to believe a miracle is possible, we can make pass history of this disease we know as AIDS/HIV.

Name: carl hubbard
Email: Carl.D.Hubbard.1@nd.edu
Response: PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!THE BLACK young kids of today are to growm for there selfs.We as black adults needs to take control and talk a little more time to talk about sex.WE have to take CONTROL.

Name: Tia
Email: troverbey@osprey.smcm.edu
Response:
What is tells us about OUR community is that not enough home training is going into play. My gradmother always says that manners and habits start at home and travel abroad. Without more teaching in the homes and more education about sex and sexual activity most of the kids are going to go directly to the next source that provides them with answers. SCHOOLS! If we don't plug into our children now the rights and wrongs about sex (protected and unprotected) then how will they learn. Habits, which are often hard to break, can be taught from the jump street. And all the blame cannot be placed on the home. The community and the church are just as guilty. They are supposed to be reinforcements to the home. Without them is like having a family without grandparents -- no one to watch the children when the parents aren't around. We ALL need to jump on the ball with sex education.

Name: r.lands
Email: lands@electric.austin.tx.us
Response: This issue says, we have an unbalanced equation in society and is the solution given a real solution or an imaginary solution. We need motherly love, the maternal presence in our society. From that comes values. Our daughters not only how to be a woman, but to expect from a man. What has happened unfortunately, because of the unbalnced situation, what ever the cause, women are trying to play the role of men as well, they attempt to be both mother and father. This leads us to loving our boys and raising our girls. Instead mothers should be mothers, love all your children and demonstrate to your girls how to be real women and demonstrate to your boys what a real woman expects from a real man. Let the fathers teach boys how to become men teach the girls what real men expect from real women. If single find a brother that you respect as a man. find a church, a organization, real men are out there, we just have to be willing not to compromise.
It took the children of Israel 40 years before they finally got the message. In the 1996, the alarm has sounded, yet our people do not hear. What will it take, a paradigm shift. We have to as a society, as elders, as teachers, ministers, doctors, parents, engineers, reuge collectors, beauticans, musicians, daycare providers, accountants and etc. to have a no compromise attitude. Our people do not respect HIV nor AIDS. Because they have no respect for much of anything. It's hard saying but think about it. Do you stop at stop sign, even if no one else is there? If you do, it is either because you know if you run it and get caught you will get a ticket, or have anaccident. It is a cause an affect type relationship.
Or it could be over your driving career, the stop sign has value to you, its purpose has value to you. So whether anyone else is there or not, because you respect the purpose of the sign and it has value you will stop. Well, perhaps we don't value life as much as we say we do.
Maybe instant gratification is more important then longterm living. If my tomorrow is today then why not do what I want now. Instead of preparing for the future. Without a vision the people perish. There is no vision other then getting paid. Perhaps the older generation (20 on up) needs to share with the younger generation there dreams and desires. All they see is "out to get mine." If we can get them to buy in to having a vision (which comes from GOD), and a mission , then they will have purpose.
We abuse things because we don't know the purpose of a thing. When a person knows they have purpose, they willbe less likely to abuse themselves, with premarital sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, etc. But it takes a firm stand to say, this is what I am going to do. Isn't that what the MM March was about. Making a stand for the right thing, the right way, for the right reason, expecting the right results, to benefit our community and glorify God. What can we do, STAND and when we have done we can do to stand and, things still seem bad, then.... STAND.
Name:
Email: MendelBrat@aol.com
Response:
What this tells us is that people, still, in the middle of this epidemic, are having unprotected or unsafe sex. We are putting our lives, our families, our futures at risk for moments of pleasure. We are not taking responsibilty either for ourselves or our community every time we do this. There's enough out there that's killing us already -- we don't need to add sex to that list.
And has anyone thought to correlate high teenage pregnancy rates within our community with these high HIV transmission rates? Every time we hear of some young girl getting pregnant, she's engaged in unsafe sex. She's put her unborn child at risk. She and the man who screwed her are placing burdens not only on themselves and their future, but their community, their families and all of our futures.