The Pink Badge of Cowardice
TBogg, who has been covering Komengate under the tag "Pink is the New Yellow," puts it pretty well:I have to say that killing women with breast cancer before they might consider abortion sometime in their lives is one way to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.
He reports that SGK's excuse for dropping Planned Parenthood is that they have a rule barring them "from contributing to organizations that are under investigation at the local, state, or federal level." As Jezebel notes, "this brand new rule that suddenly appeared in the books of the Komen Foundation just so happened to coincide with a Congressional investigation launched by a Republican legislator, who himself was pressured by the pro-life group Americans United for Life."
Another "coincidence": Last April, the right-wing Republican activist Karen Handel was named SGK's Senior Vice President for Public Policy. The previous year, Handel had run for the governorship of Georgia on an anti-choice platform, picking up an endorsement by Sarah Palin.
Right-wing, anti-universal-healthcare Democrat Joe Lieberman's wife Hadassah, a former Big Pharma lobbyist, is "Global Ambassador" at SGK, pulling in a salary between $300,000 and $500,000 a year. asiangrrlMN writes that the foundation's board also includes "Jane Abraham, who is the chair of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-forced-birth nonprofit organization; and Maureen Scalia. Yes, the wife of Justice Antonin Scalia."
Then there's the foundation's CEO Nancy Komen Brinker, a longtime GOP activist and friend of George W. and Laura Bush's who has made amazing bank on the grave of her sister. This decade-old article with lots of detail on Brinker shows how thoroughly and for how long the foundation has been a cash cow for Republicans, an opponent of meaningful healthcare reform, and a "pinkwasher" for corporations whose products and activities are or may be carcinogenic. (Breast Cancer Action's website Think Before You Pink has lots of details on that last point.)
Sharon Batt, author of the book Patient No More: The Politics of Breast Cancer, told the Alternet reporter that Nancy Brinker was "'eerily reminiscent' of an earlier so-called cancer activist, Mary Lasker":Her husband, the advertising executive Albert Lasker, created the famous cigarette ad, "Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet." In the 1940s through the 1960s, Lasker used her business and social connections to transform the American Cancer Society from a small, local charity into the world's richest, most powerful health charity. The ACS became a voice for policies that have made cancer research and early detection into lucrative business ventures with little connection to the welfare of patients or to breast cancer prevention. The Komen Foundation is a reincarnation of the ACS, but specific to breast cancer.
(Ironically, Lasker was also president of the Birth Control Federation of America, "the precursor of the Planned Parenthood Federation.")
According to asiangrrlMN, Komen's 2009 funding report indicates that only 17% of the money they made went to funding cancer research. That's out of reported revenues of nearly $350 million. (About a million is spent ruthlessly suing any other charity or event in the U.S. that uses any variation of "for the cure" in its name.)
On the other end of the spectrum from Brinker, Handel, et al. are the low-income women served by Planned Parenthood: "76% of their clients have incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty level." This infographic shows how women of color and poor women are hit especially hard. Tom Levenson, crunching the numbers with caveats that his math is strictly "back of the envelope," estimates that Komen's pulling of funds from Planned Parenthood will lead to the deaths of 13 women.
But, no, really, Karen Handel is "pro-life."
The organization is getting exactly the PR it deserves. Supposedly they had been deleting tons of critical messages from their Facebook wall. Seems that they've stopped doing so, if only because they realized they couldn't stem the flood. (Note there is a new FB group called Defund the Komen Foundation.)
Meanwhile, PP has seen a spike in donations, several California state lawmakers are breaking ties with SGK, and a documentary called Pink Ribbons, Inc. that was already scheduled to open today is probably going to get a boost at the box office.
Here are a few more links:
• A few days ago, in support of PP, someone started a Tumblr called Planned Parenthood Saved My Life. It's up to four pages so far. Anyone who has received life-saving help from PP is welcome to submit their story.
• Komen has dozens of "corporate partners." If you use their products or services, you may want to reconsider, and to contact them about their affliation with SGK.
• If you'd like to donate to an organization that actually fights for cancer patients, consider the ones listed by Charity Watch.
• Finally, if you want to make a donation to Planned Parenthood, I suggest doing so through their "Honorary Giving" page and asking them to send a thank-you card to:Karen Handel
Senior VP of Fail
c/o Susan G. Komen Foundation
P.O. Box 650309
Dallas, TX 75265-0309
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1772917.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
He reports that SGK's excuse for dropping Planned Parenthood is that they have a rule barring them "from contributing to organizations that are under investigation at the local, state, or federal level." As Jezebel notes, "this brand new rule that suddenly appeared in the books of the Komen Foundation just so happened to coincide with a Congressional investigation launched by a Republican legislator, who himself was pressured by the pro-life group Americans United for Life."
Another "coincidence": Last April, the right-wing Republican activist Karen Handel was named SGK's Senior Vice President for Public Policy. The previous year, Handel had run for the governorship of Georgia on an anti-choice platform, picking up an endorsement by Sarah Palin.
Right-wing, anti-universal-healthcare Democrat Joe Lieberman's wife Hadassah, a former Big Pharma lobbyist, is "Global Ambassador" at SGK, pulling in a salary between $300,000 and $500,000 a year. asiangrrlMN writes that the foundation's board also includes "Jane Abraham, who is the chair of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-forced-birth nonprofit organization; and Maureen Scalia. Yes, the wife of Justice Antonin Scalia."
Then there's the foundation's CEO Nancy Komen Brinker, a longtime GOP activist and friend of George W. and Laura Bush's who has made amazing bank on the grave of her sister. This decade-old article with lots of detail on Brinker shows how thoroughly and for how long the foundation has been a cash cow for Republicans, an opponent of meaningful healthcare reform, and a "pinkwasher" for corporations whose products and activities are or may be carcinogenic. (Breast Cancer Action's website Think Before You Pink has lots of details on that last point.)
Sharon Batt, author of the book Patient No More: The Politics of Breast Cancer, told the Alternet reporter that Nancy Brinker was "'eerily reminiscent' of an earlier so-called cancer activist, Mary Lasker":Her husband, the advertising executive Albert Lasker, created the famous cigarette ad, "Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet." In the 1940s through the 1960s, Lasker used her business and social connections to transform the American Cancer Society from a small, local charity into the world's richest, most powerful health charity. The ACS became a voice for policies that have made cancer research and early detection into lucrative business ventures with little connection to the welfare of patients or to breast cancer prevention. The Komen Foundation is a reincarnation of the ACS, but specific to breast cancer.
(Ironically, Lasker was also president of the Birth Control Federation of America, "the precursor of the Planned Parenthood Federation.")
According to asiangrrlMN, Komen's 2009 funding report indicates that only 17% of the money they made went to funding cancer research. That's out of reported revenues of nearly $350 million. (About a million is spent ruthlessly suing any other charity or event in the U.S. that uses any variation of "for the cure" in its name.)
On the other end of the spectrum from Brinker, Handel, et al. are the low-income women served by Planned Parenthood: "76% of their clients have incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty level." This infographic shows how women of color and poor women are hit especially hard. Tom Levenson, crunching the numbers with caveats that his math is strictly "back of the envelope," estimates that Komen's pulling of funds from Planned Parenthood will lead to the deaths of 13 women.
But, no, really, Karen Handel is "pro-life."
The organization is getting exactly the PR it deserves. Supposedly they had been deleting tons of critical messages from their Facebook wall. Seems that they've stopped doing so, if only because they realized they couldn't stem the flood. (Note there is a new FB group called Defund the Komen Foundation.)
Meanwhile, PP has seen a spike in donations, several California state lawmakers are breaking ties with SGK, and a documentary called Pink Ribbons, Inc. that was already scheduled to open today is probably going to get a boost at the box office.
Here are a few more links:
• A few days ago, in support of PP, someone started a Tumblr called Planned Parenthood Saved My Life. It's up to four pages so far. Anyone who has received life-saving help from PP is welcome to submit their story.
• Komen has dozens of "corporate partners." If you use their products or services, you may want to reconsider, and to contact them about their affliation with SGK.
• If you'd like to donate to an organization that actually fights for cancer patients, consider the ones listed by Charity Watch.
• Finally, if you want to make a donation to Planned Parenthood, I suggest doing so through their "Honorary Giving" page and asking them to send a thank-you card to:Karen Handel
Senior VP of Fail
c/o Susan G. Komen Foundation
P.O. Box 650309
Dallas, TX 75265-0309
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1772917.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.