"It's like a breath of life ..."

NFB producer Ravida Din speaks about what moved her to develop "Pink Ribbons Inc".



It sounds amazing.

My sister died from medical complications from ovarian cancer. Seeing this documentary won't be easy, but I feel that it's important to do so, given how antichoice board members at the Susan G. Komen Foundation have declared war on women.

Komen: The Canadian Connection, Part II

Back here we asked what the connection between the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and the Komen Foundation might be.

Here's its answer on Facebook

Hi everyone,
We’ve received some requests for information on our relationship with U.S.-based Susan G. Komen For The Cure. In 2009, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation formalized our process for sharing corporate fundraising partners cross-border. For example, if a U.S.-based corporate partner of Komen’s was interested in supporting CBCF in Canada, or vice versa, the agreement outlines how those connections would be made. We in Canada make our own assessment of whether a potential partnership makes sense for us. That is the extent of our formal agreement. While we welcome the opportunity to collaborate and share best practices with Komen and all breast cancer charities in Canada and around the world, we do so informally and we all make decisions on priorities and policies independently. All money raised by CBCF remains here to support our vision of creating a future without breast cancer.

OK, then. Just latching on to successful fund-raising strategies, while still partaking in exploitative pinkwashing. Though, as I said then, the Canadian national sponsors, with the exception of Revlon, seem not quite as evil as Komen's.

Surprise! The Komen Kaper Was Planned

From Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic we get some behind-the-scenes dirt on Komen's defunding of Planned Parenthood's breast exams program for poor people.

Surprise! It was a set-up. Komen recently instituted a rule that it would not fund organizations under any kind of 'investigation'. Well, some congressfundy was happy to oblige with a bogus demand for more documents from PP.

But three sources with direct knowledge of the Komen decision-making process told me that the rule was adopted in order to create an excuse to cut-off Planned Parenthood. (Komen gives out grants to roughly 2,000 organizations, and the new "no-investigations" rule applies to only one so far.) The decision to create a rule that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to these sources, was driven by the organization's new senior vice-president for public policy, Karen Handel, a former gubernatorial candidate from Georgia who is staunchly anti-abortion and who has said that since she is "pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood." (The Komen grants to Planned Parenthood did not pay for abortion or contraception services, only cancer detection, according to all parties involved.) I've tried to reach Handel for comment, and will update this post if I speak with her.

The decision, made in December, caused an uproar inside Komen. Three sources told me that the organization's top public health official, Mollie Williams, resigned in protest immediately following the Komen board's decision to cut off Planned Parenthood. Williams, who served as the managing director of community health programs, was responsible for directing the distribution of $93 million in annual grants. Williams declined to comment when I reached her yesterday on whether she had resigned her position in protest, and she declined to speak about any other aspects of the controversy.

But John Hammarley, who until recently served as Komen's senior communications adviser and who was charged with managing the public relations aspects of Komen's Planned Parenthood grant, said that Williams believed she could not honorably serve in her position once Komen had caved to pressure from the anti-abortion right.

And another surprise! The Komen board went against its own staff's professional advice. In other words, the move was purely ideological, thinly -- and as it turns out totally unsuccessfully -- veiled as an 'administrative' process.

Everybody wants to talk to Fetus Lobbyist Karen Handel. She's not giving interviews but she can't STFU.

We’ve also got a frame grab of a Tweet that Handel passed along: “Just like a pro-abortion group to turn a cancer orgs decision into a political bomb to throw. Cry me a freaking river.”

The more I hear about Komen, the easier it is to detest it.

But this episode perfectly exemplifies the right-wing modus operandi: high-handed, ideological decisions, arrogantly imposed, and ineptly justified.

And Dave at The Galloping Beaver, directs us to TBogg who points out:

They had to know this movie was being released this week and yet they still issued their press release cutting ties to Planned Parenthood on Monday.

Hubris or stupidity?

You don’t have to choose just one, you know….

Pink Ribbons INc.

The political fuckery is typical of women-hating fundamentalist religious fetus-lobby zealots.

But the media attention on the Susan G Komen faux-charity and foundation to help US corporations profit by exploiting breast cancer is timely for the long-scheduled release of Pink Ribbons Inc. - a stunning new documentary by the NFB.

Watch for it on Friday February 3rd, across Canada.

Screw 'Run for the Cure'

I was struggling to express my disgust at the cowardice of the Komen Foundation in caving to the pressure of the Fetus Lobby, which is taking credit and celebrating.

“The continued, collective efforts of the pro-life movement have paid off,” said Bradley Mattes, Executive Director of the Life Issues Institute. “Our work to educate Komen donors to the reality that the organization has financially supported the nation’s largest chain of abortion mills has caused Komen to halt the financial hemorrhaging. Evidently, Komen had to choose between political ideology and financial viability. They made a good choice.”

I was going to write about how Planned Parenthood serves mostly poor people, how much a mammogram costs, how utterly despicable this is. . .

Then I found Amanda Marcotte's latest and she nails it. It's a witch hunt.

That's when I realized that anti-choicers do this so well because the war on reproductive health care is basically a witchhunt, and the religious fundamentalists behind it are the modern day version of medieval paranoids of old who believed that women who didn't conform to their exacting standards were consorting with Satan.

. . .

Anyone who thinks breast cancer can be neatly cordoned off from this growing circle of hate for all things women's health care is fooling themselves. That's not how witch hunts work. The fear here is not about fetuses or babies per se, but a deep-set fear of female sexuality. Already anti-choicers have scooped breast cancer under the umbrella "abortion", claiming that abortion causes breast cancer. (It doesn't.) Komen would rather side with people who see breast cancer as god's judgment on you for having an abortion rather than side with people support comprehensive health care for women. That tells you all you need to know about their organization. I'm all for picking up your sneakers and taking up running as a hobby, but recommend now you do it for you, and not for the ever-elusive cure for cancer.

Oh, and by the way, Komen doesn't play nice. It wastes a million dollars a year of donors' money chasing down little fundraisers who have the temerity to use the colour pink or use the phrase 'for the cure' in their names.

"I think it's a shame," [target Sue Prom] said. "It's not okay. People don't give their money to the Komen Foundation and they don't do their races and events so that Komen can squash any other fundraising efforts by individuals. That's not what it's about."

Image source.

Ditch that Pink Ribbon.

And stop donating to the Susan Komen Foundation.

[The US'] most famous breast cancer charity pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it's well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women's health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

According to Jezebel, this is the reason this year's grant was cancelled.

[...]with the addition of a vocally anti-abortion ex-politician to the ranks of Susan G Komen For the Cure.

Karen Handel, who was endorsed by Sarah Palin during her unsuccessful bid for governor of Georgia in 2010, has been the Foundation's Senior Vice President for Public Policy since April 2011. During her gubernatorial candidacy, she ran on an anti-choice platform, vowing that if elected, she'd defund Planned Parenthood. Handel wrote on her campaign blog [...] "since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood."

She even promised to eliminate funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings provided by the organization.

The NFB has produced a feature documentary called 'Pink Ribbons, Inc.' that reveals how the reality of women living, surviving or dying of breast cancer has been appropriated by large companies using the marketing appeal of a "dream cause". They profit the most from the "Pink Ribbon" branding.

Instead of demanding better research into the environmental factors that increase the risk of developing breast cancer, women's energies and attention are diverted towards feel-good events.

'Pink Ribbons Inc' will be released across Canada on February 3rd.