Our Silence Will Not Protect You

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Newsletter #79–November/December 2003

From the Executive Director:

Our Silence Will Not Protect You

by Barbara A. Brenner

Silence can communicate many different things. In response to a criticism, it

might be an acknowledgment or a moment of quiet fury. In response to new

information, it might indicate a lack of understanding. In response to a

question, it might reflect ignorance, doubt, or disagreement. But when people or

institutions impose silence, it then communicates—falsely—that there is only one

valid point of view.

 

The first inkling I had that there was a move afoot to silence BCA’s message was

last year, when we launched our Think Before You Pink Campaign, criticizing

corporations that use the pink ribbon to boost sales. NBC News featured the

campaign in its “Fleecing of America” series and, in the process of developing

the segment, contacted someone on the cause-marketing side of breast cancer who

disparaged BCA, suggesting that our criticisms should be ignored. That strategy

failed.

 

The Susan G. Komen Foundation—the poster child of corporate breast cancer

marketing—tried another tactic in connection with the San Francisco Race for the

Cure, held in early September. Like many other organizations, BCA has for some

years rented booth space at the race. This year, for the first time, the rental

agreement contained a provision that all materials to be made available at the

booth were to be submitted in advance to Komen and could not be changed once

Komen had approved them. We don’t know whether other groups received the same

rental agreement, but our friends who also rented booths at the race told us

they were not required to submit their materials beforehand—and BCA chose not to

do so. Our presence at the race was not restricted.

 

At the time of this writing, I am trying to set up a meeting with local Komen

officials to find out what is going on, but an interview that I had with a

newspaper reporter around the time of the race is revealing. The reporter, who

was working on a feature story about Komen, asked why BCA had a campaign

targeting the Komen Foundation. It soon came to light that the reporter was

referring to our Think Before You Pink campaign. But that campaign is not

directed at the Komen Foundation. It’s directed at the use of breast cancer by

companies trying to make a buck on women’s concerns about the disease. Komen

selected itself for the focus of BCA’s campaign by leading the pack of breast

cancer organizations involved with cause-marketing efforts. (If you doubt this,

think about Komen’s trademark of the phrase “for the cure”—any marketing

campaign that contains that phrase is raising money for the Komen Foundation.)

 

Of course, corporate connections are not the only place where BCA parts company

with the Komen Foundation. Whether the issue is information about the benefits

and limits of mammography, the use of pills for the “prevention” of breast

cancer, environmental links to the disease, or the use of pink ribbons (which

the Komen Foundation tried—without success—to trademark some years ago; (see

www.thinkbeforeyoupink.org/PrettyInPink.html), BCA and Komen could not be

further apart on most breast cancer issues. As BCA has become more and more

effective at getting our message out, the Komen Foundation is apparently trying

to squelch a decidedly different point of view.

 

Komen is not alone. In the summer and early fall of this year, the Avon

cosmetics corporation, which for over two years has effectively ignored the

critique of its breast cancer crusade by the Follow the Money Alliance for

Accountability in Breast Cancer, decided that a new tactic was needed. So the

company started offering large grants ($200,000 over two years) to member

organizations of Follow the Money.

 

Of course, there were strings attached. The grant agreements mandated that the

recipient organizations could not in any way criticize Avon; if they did, the

flow of funds would stop. The first organization that Avon approached in this

way—the Cancer Resource Center of Mendocino County (CRCM)—was offered funds for

its WeCAN program, a critically important but underfunded effort to train

advocate volunteers to help women in rural northern California through their

courses of cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment. CRCM was in no position

to turn down the offered funds and accepted the gag order along with them.

 

Avon next approached the Babylon Breast Cancer Coalition (BBCC) with an offer of

$100,000 a year for two years, with $75,000 to be distributed each year for

research into the environmental links to breast cancer. The money in this

instance was accompanied not only by a gag order but also by a requirement that

the organization be a positive presence at Avon’s two-day breast cancer walk.

 

Avon evidently chose the BBCC as its next “pick off” play because the

organization has a relatively small budget (under $300,000) and so would welcome

a cash infusion, because the organization has been involved in efforts to study

environmental links to breast cancer on Long Island, and because BBCC has

historically given small grants of $10,000 to researchers each year.

 

But Avon miscalculated. The BBCC board, outraged by Avon’s conditions for the

grants and by the failure of Avon to deal in good faith with the concerns raised

by BCA and the Follow the Money Alliance—concerns about how much money reaches

the breast cancer field and how the decisions on funding are made—rejected

Avon’s offer. In doing so, they urged Avon to come to the table with the

Alliance and to directly fund the Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts,

which conducts research into environmental links to breast cancer.

 

The power of the Babylon group’s “no” is still reverberating. Within days of the

organization’s refusal of Avon’s hush money, Avon responded positively to

requests for meetings from the Alliance’s allies in the socially responsible

investment community. By the time you read my next column, we should know

whether these meetings have happened and are leading toward meaningful change at

Avon.

At the end of the day, we aren’t asking Avon to stop its breast cancer efforts.

We are only asking that corporations involved in the cause, such as Avon,

function with the same transparency and accountability in our world that they

claim to offer in the business arena.

 

Whatever happens in the next few months with Komen and Avon, BCA’s message will

not be silenced. As long as women are being diagnosed with and dying from breast

cancer, we will confront the institutions and the social, political, and

economic forces that stand in the way of change.

 

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