Posted on September 6, 2023

By KR, Executive Director

Thank you! Because YOU choose to show up with us, our work at Breast Cancer Action remains radical and relevant. We couldn’t do this without your support and we are deeply grateful.

Thank you for raising your voice and for donating your hard-earned dollars. Thank you for showing up and for continuing to stand in solidarity with us, because with you, we take action to realize environmental, health, and social justice for all.

We remain a leader in the breast cancer movement as an independent watchdog, free from corporate funding. We hold the powerful accountable and we will not stop calling out profit-over-people capitalism, corporate greed, and the systems that enable these policies and perpetuate these destructive values.

BCAction connects the dots between the climate crisis, environmental justice, and our risk for breast cancer. Through critical analysis and translation of the science, we demonstrate how the breast cancer crisis is worsened by fossil fuels and climate change in what we’ve named the “breast cancer double burden.”

Through toolkits and fact sheets like our Climate Crisis and Breast Cancer, we illuminate the intersections of environmental racism and public health that impact our bodies, our families, and our communities.

Your support of our work extends the reach of materials like these, democratizing the science and helping to drive positive structural change.

With you, shoulder-to-shoulder with us, this past year our recent grassroots actions have included:

  • Signing on to a letter by the Sierra Club, along with 25 environmental justice partners, to the California Air Resources Board urging the regulatory agency to create a comprehensive plan to track the noxious methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure.
  • Signing on to a letter with our environmental justice partners in the Last Chance Alliance urging the Biden Administration to phase out fossil fuel production and manufacturing on public lands, when the Department of the Interior was updating its oil and gas regulations.
  • Signing on to a letter opposing the Lone Cypress Hydrogen Project in Elk Hills, California, a “blue hydrogen” project. Blue hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, it’s not renewable, and it’s marketed as if it’s a climate-friendly solution. “Blue hydrogen” is just industry jargon but the colorful branding won’t stop us from calling out industry tactics.

Your support and engagement are at the foundation of this work to stop breast cancer before it starts – through prevention. By taking action with us when we mobilize and by ensuring the strength of the movement, we infiltrate and disrupt the politics of breast cancer and move forward together.

Additionally, and together with you, the following events have created opportunities for us to expand our community of activists, and raise dollars that sustain our critical work nationally:

  • In May, we held our first in-person fundraiser in over three years – and it was a huge success! Hosted by JoAnn Loulan, fierce former Board Member and treasured BCAction activist, this fundraiser supports our work to address and end the breast cancer crisis. This year’s 19th annual dynamic event in Portola Valley, CA was attended by over 150 guests. I was joined by Dr. Rainbow Rubin, Director of Science at Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, to take to the stage and share with the community the connections between the climate crisis, environmental exposures, and the impact on people living with and at risk of breast cancer.
  • Our third annual Drawing the Connections Auction and Community Gathering was held on June 13th. It was a moving and inspirational evening. This vibrant, intersectional art auction and gathering illuminated the powerful overlap between art, activism, and social justice, also lovingly known as art-ivism! More than 45 artists joined us for this year’s event, and more than 130 people participated virtually for a night of storytelling and activism, all while raising vital funds to promote and scale our BCAction programmatic work.

As summer turns towards fall, we are eager to have you join us:

  • On September 21st for Cocktails for a Cause, hosted by our fierce and fabulous board members.
  • During October’s Think Before You Pink® political education campaign. Our groundbreaking campaign, entering its 21st year, continues to grow and deepen. Built on the foundation of our demand for corporate accountability and calling out pinkwashers, we continue to evolve this campaign to meet the changing times. Because quite frankly – we won. With fewer and fewer pink ribbons on the market compared to Octobers of previous decades, the connections between the dark underbelly of corporate fundraising, regulatory policy, and their impacts on breast cancer have become more insidious, and often harder to recognize. It’s our job to expose these connections and call them out. This October we’ll continue to follow the money and educate ourselves and others as to how we can make even more progress toward sustainable change.
  • On October 17th for our 3rd annual Radical Disruption Compassionate Resistance event, we’ll get into “good trouble” taking collective action together as a community.
  • During November for our #GivingTuesday storytelling series and fundraising opportunities.
  • In December when we attend the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, where we will translate the science to make this industry-focused conference more relevant to all.

We deeply value your solidarity as breast cancer activists! With YOU working toward health justice alongside BCAction, we will address and end this devastating disease.

We look forward to the results of our continued work together: a world in which people and communities thrive because they are healthy, liberated, and free from breast cancer. We do this vital and critical work with you and because of you.