This is YOUR Moment. Now.
The National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC), of which SHARE is a founding member, is seeking yeas or nays on its goal to end breast cancer by 2020. (See Anne Grant's blog from last issue). That's a brave new goal, to put it mildly.
To reach the goal will require a massive effort involving hundreds of breast cancer organizations and hundreds of thousands of people who have, have had, or fear breast cancer. They must join together to define in particular what they want most. Then they'll have to decide what is possible. Only then, can it be determined exactly what breast cancer advocates can do to advance the cause.
Who's going to do this? With all due respect to NBCC, this effort is not really like the effort that went into putting a man on the moon or developing the atom bomb. Those efforts were centralized, and ran by command and control. This effort must run by consensus. Those efforts had a single target. This effort has many possible targets: researchers, doctors, drug companies, environmental polluters, just to name a few. Those efforts were funded by the government.
Unless and until this effort is funded by the government, it will certainly require dedication of resources by many breast cancer organizations to take aim at specific agreed-on missions. Reality is, these hundreds of breast cancer organizations (that do not now agree on what is most important) are competing with each other for funds to support their own activities, and some of those funds come from the very organizations, such as drug companies, that must become targets of End Breast Cancer by 2020. This competition will probably go on but it must not stop the process of consensus building. That process, it seems to me, must come from the grass roots.
SHARE is a grass roots organization with a difference. Though relatively small in the multi-organization breast cancer world, SHARE has high visibility. Its active volunteers supplement the dedicated efforts of SHARE's small staff and widen the organization's reach. SHARE has a huge and possibly unique Advocacy asset: SHARELeaders. These are the some 55 or more women -- volunteers as well as staff-- who completed NBCC's education program, Project Lead. SHARELeaders grapple with scientific and public policy issues and try to reach a consensus from which they may take action as individuals by participating in conferences, calling officials, writing and delivering testimony, or writing letters or articles. They often have pointed out problems with drugs or treatments that others have not yet given importance to.
From these efforts, combined with experience in working directly with breast cancer patients, SHARE participants know all too well the gritty truth about progress in breast cancer. Treatment for breast cancer is still much too iffy. Breast cancer is seldom cured. A few less people are dying each year from the disease, but just as many people as ever are getting it. Very little breast cancer research is actually helping people diagnosed with breast cancer. Worse, very little research seems intended to do that.
These bleak facts translate into lives lost much too soon -- lives we knew and loved. In 2009 and 2010 several SHARE participants who had had breast cancer became ill with new cancers or relapses or worsening metastasis. Two, knowingly near the end of their days, still found the strength to speak out in public. They might have lost hope, but they did not give up their power to try and change things.
I can imagine these strong women saying now: Ask yourself, am I playing the hope game because I don't feel powerful enough to do anything else? Ask yourself, where does Power come from? Does strolling in the park wearing a pink ribbon really give ME power? Does spiffing up my wardrobe at pinked-up boutiques do it for ME?
No. Power comes from taking action, towards a specific goal. Even if it's tiresome. Even if you're too busy. You don't have to be a SHARELeader to take action (but if you are one, please do!). In fact, if you never or only occasionally do advocacy, this is truly your moment. The End of Breast Cancer movement will need everyone it can get.
So please, everyone, do just one simple thing to exercise your individual power. Go right now to the web site that NBCC has put up, stopbreastcancer.org/2020. Watch (or skip) the video. Press the square for Yes or the square for No. Enter your email address. Enter your reason for your vote. Start by writing "Gail at SHARE sent me here." (Exact words suggested by Alice Yaker, Executive Director of SHARE.) Then give your comment. It doesn't matter if you vote yea or nay, it only matters that your voice is heard, and identified with SHARE. Help give SHARE a lion's voice.
Posted October 28, 2010.
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