The Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) is a national movement with more than 85 chapters at high schools, colleges, and universities across the United States committed to bringing an end to AIDS in the U.S. and around the world through education, informed advocacy, media work, and direct action. SGAC demands sufficient resources, effective prevention, and guaranteed access to AIDS treatment and care as a matter of moral urgency. We envision a world in which AIDS is no longer a death sentence, in which economics and geography do not determine access to life-saving drugs, and where every woman, man, and child has the knowledge, means, and rights to protect her- or himself from infection. To achieve this world, we must remake our institutions to reflect a shared commitment to our common humanity. We must confront the underlying causes of the AIDS plague--poverty, inequalities of race, gender, and class, sexual stigmas, and a politics that allows us to deny our responsibilities to and for each other. Our global economy must be matched by a global conscience. We have the tools to fight AIDS: prevention, treatment, support for orphans and families. To succeed, we must summon the will to use these tools. We will not accept excuses for inaction; we will not accept false barriers that divide us; we will not accept the myth that any of us are powerless. We pledge ourselves to the struggle against AIDS--a struggle that becomes a fight against apathy, against indifference, against injustice. By forming a global youth movement, we will rise to the challenge of fighting AIDS. We will halt this pandemic. |