It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but you already knew that. Some of you are beyond aware, fatigued by the reiterated reassurances that early detection is the next best thing to curing breast cancer.  You might even be quietly resigned to accepting “No Evidence of Disease” (NED)  as good as it’s going to get, but you might not say so out loud.

Breast cancer impinges on the lives of everyone you now, in ways not always immediately discernible, given the complexity of the disease, the politics of its lexicon, the business of it. Thus, during Breast Cancer Awareness Industry Month, you might catch yourself using a strange vocabulary that keeps you at a safe distance, employing words and phrases that minimize and sanitize the reality that, as the late Christopher Hitchins often reminded us  “there is no Stage V.”  You might catch yourself on social media making it cute – really cute.

So are you wondering what you can do this October? Register for another race for a cure? Commit to monthly self-examinations of your breasts even though you’re not really sure what you’re looking for? Schedule a mammogram? If so, remember to ask about tissue density. Unless you live in a state with tissue density notification laws, you might not know  – and you really should – if a deadly cancer is lurking in the dense tissue that hides it from a standard mammogram – it’s like looking for a polar bear in the snow.  It’s important to ask about ultrasounds and MRI screenings too. I didn’t know that. Nor did I know to ask. Meanwhile, invasive breast cancer flourished in the tissue of my right breast for perhaps a decade until that October when I found the lump.

Most of the time, breast cancer might not cross your mind. Until I was diagnosed, it didn’t occur to me even as a remote possibility. I had things to do, people to see, a family that needed me. Cancer was simply not on my itinerary other than in Octobers past, when I registered for the annual Komen walk. Only then – and in the most superficial sense – did breast cancer register with me.

I recall a blindingly bright Sunday morning in Phoenix, Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza awash in pink, shimmering with tens of thousands of people walking, running, hoping for a cure. Pink feather boas tossed around shoulders, “I love boobies” bands hanging from wrists, T-shirts announcing that “Real Men Wear Pink” and others urging us to “Fight like a Girl.” I walked with my daughter, probably believing that we were making strides towards an elusive cure for a disease I never dreamed would touch us. A carnival in pink – so much pink, enough to make me more aware of breast cancer, but not enough to help me fully understand what causes it, how I could have prevented it, and what I can do to keep it at bay. Breast cancer awareness was a party, and I was right there in the thick of it, with a pink tote bag.

Over the course of this month, you might still feel compelled to buy a product because it bears a pink ribbon.  You might not know that any company can attach a pink ribbon to its product. Pink ribbons aren’t regulated. So if you buy a pink ribbon product, consider asking what percentage of your donation will directly support the “fight” against breast cancer. Consider asking where they are sending your donation.

Here’s the thing, if you don’t  think before you pink, someone else will think for you. Namely, Susan G. Komen®  with its history of making breast cancer cute and making money – lots of money – for its official partners – partners like Bank of America. Komen has received in excess of $10.8 million from Bank of America since 2009, and this month Breast Cancer Action’s Think Before You Pink® campaign is calling them out.

Every purchase made through the Pink Ribbon Banking Program goes toward the $1.5 million that Bank of America has pledged to Susan G. Komen® between 2021 and 2023. Sounds good, right? Good for the fossil fuel industry – not good for breast cancer.

According to a report by Rainforest Action Network, in 2020, Bank of America invested $42 billion into fossil fuels. In the five years since the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, Bank of America poured over $200 billion. You’ll recognize Bank of America’s fossil fuel clients, big names like  –  include Exxon, Occidental, Marathon Petroleum, BP, Southern Co, Chevron, Pemex, Petrobras, and ConocoPhillips.

As a major investor in the fossil fuel industry and good friend to the Susan G. Komen foundation,  Bank of America invested over $42.1 billion in fossil fuel projects last year alone. For instance,  you may not know that just last month, Bank of America closed a deal to underwrite a new CAD $1.5 billion bond for Enbridge Inc., part owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the company that is  building the Line 3 tar sands pipeline and has reimbursed  Minnesota law enforcement over $2 million or cracking down on unarmed Indigenous water protectors as Tara Houska, Giniw Collective explains:

Bank of America’s client has paid out over $2M to local law enforcement here in my people’s territory, We’ve been tortured, shot at, maced, and jailed. Over 800 arrests and gross human rights violations alongside the irrevocable harm to our land, our water, our wild rice. To call any part of this tar sands company ‘sustainable’ is unconscionable. To fund its destruction of what ecosystems remain against the will of multiple tribal nations is abhorrent.”

There’s a pattern here.  Bank of America claims to care about our environment, sponsoring New York Climate Week while at the same time renewing funding for the Line 3 tar sands pipeline. The bank is also a national presenting sponsor of Komen’s 3-Day Walk®, Race for the Cure®, and More Than Pink Walk®. Bank of America claims to care about curing breast cancer while funding an industry that exposes us  to toxic chemicals including: benzene, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, and PFAS along the continuum – from extraction to processing, to exposure to fossil fuel products and byproducts.

Bank of America is a pinkwasher.

Susan G. Komen® claims to care about ending breast cancer, but at the same time continues to profit from an industry that causes the disease. On its website, Komen boldly states, “Creating a world without breast cancer starts with you.” Agreed. And, here’s one thing you can do. 

This month, join Breast Cancer Action’s Think Before You Pink® campaign in demanding that the Susan G. Komen® phase out the Pink Ribbon Banking Program  with Bank of America.

Join Breast Cancer Action throughout the month of October, with the first action launching tomorrow, Monday, October 4.

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