Hi John,

Breast cancer activism goes beyond holding pink ribbon marketing culture accountable in October, and extends throughout the year. 

It also means connecting the dots between our three core programmatic priorities: issues of breast cancer screening, treatment, and diagnosis; the root causes of breast cancer; and watchdogging pink ribbon fundraising. Our advocacy work addresses the intersecting issues of environmental justice, gender justice, racial justice, and health justice. 

Here’s what we actively supported in California in the month of April, alongside our coalition partners: 

• We signed onto Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles’ letter to the CA Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Communications in support of SB 57 to delay utility shutoffs during extreme weather to protect vulnerable communities. 
• With our coalition partners in Last Chance Alliance, we sent a letter to the CA Senate Environmental Quality Committee in support of SJR 2, a resolution to negotiate the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, calling for a phase out of coal, oil, and gas, and into a just transition. 
• We joined dozens of other environmental organizations in signing onto CA Senate Bill 556, the Oil & Gas Pollution Accountability Act, which will create “health protective zones” to hold industry accountable for health conditions like respiratory ailments and cancer diagnoses, for people who reside within a certain proximity to oil and gas production facilities or a wellhead.  
• We sent a letter in support of CA Assembly Bill 418, which will ban five toxic chemicals commonly found in processed foods and which have already been banned by the European Union.   
• As a coalition member of the Last Chance Alliance, we signed-on to a letter from Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods (VISION) to CA Governor Newsom and Secretary of Natural Resources Crowfoot, urging them to use their authority to rein in CalGEM to protect public health by putting a stop to oil drilling permits.

You can also read the March summary of our advocacy work on Facebook, including our support of the 2023 Banking on Climate Chaos Report.

Authored by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Sierra Club, Reclaim Finance, and Urgewald, this investigative annual report details which banks are driving the climate crisis by funding fossil fuels. 

By connecting the toxic, cancer-causing chemical exposures caused by fossil fuel production, drilling, and manufacturing, with who is most impacted due to increasing extreme weather events and decades of environmental racism, we make it clear that breast cancer activism and advocacy are forms of both racial justice and climate justice. 

Thank you for supporting this work, and engaging with this intersectional advocacy toward the goal of educating ourselves and others as to the best, most effective solutions to address and end the breast cancer crisis, and stopping this disease before it starts. 

You are our power. 

In action, 

Haleemah Atobiloye 
Program Manager