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On a Monday morning in October 1995, I walked the mile and a half from my apartment to WomenCARE to begin my twice-a-week volunteer work. WomenCARE—short for Women’s Cancer Advocacy, Resources, and Education—was located in a small duplex on Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz, California, about a half mile from the downtown Pacific Garden Mall. Its office consisted of one room, a closet, and a tiny bathroom. With its couch, several coffee tables covered by assorted cancer literature, shelves of books, and a teapot, the front part of the room functioned as a meeting space for support groups, a library, and a place for women to relax and talk. The back part of the room, which contained two desks, a computer, and two metal filing cabinets, served as WomenCARE’s administrative space. At the time, the organization’s paid staff consisted of two part-time codirectors . Amber Coverdale Sumrall, a tongue cancer survivor, was in her early fifties and a well-known local author and writing instructor. She lived with her partner in Santa Cruz. Lynn Boulé was in her late thirties and a mother of two young children. She resided on the west side of town. Several years before moving to the area, Boulé was diagnosed with lymphoma, and soon after, the doctors told her that she would die within the year. When I met Boulé, she drove a large green SUV to work. “A relic of the cancer,” she told me one day while giving me a ride home from my volunteer shift. “After my doctor told me the cancer was terminal, my husband and I decided to go wild and buy an SUV for the hell of it. Why not? I was supposed to die. But then I didn’t die, and now we’re stuck with this huge, gas-guzzling thing.” “End the Silence” Uncertainty Work and the Politics of the Cancer Industry Chapter 2 19 My volunteer work at WomenCARE marked the beginning of my foray into the culture and politics of the U.S. environmental breast cancer movement. At the time, WomenCARE brought attention to breast cancer’s environmental links by addressing the social, political, and economic forces that marginalized these links. Indeed, such critiques lay at the heart of the broader environmental breast cancer movement; they exemplify the primary strategy that activists took in the movement’s early days not only to bring attention to suspected environmental causes but also to bolster their position for why, despite the uncertainty surrounding them, public concern is warranted. Ultimately, the movement relied on—and continues to rely on—these critiques as the foundation for its efforts to transform the dominant breast cancer paradigm. An Emerging Social Movement On my first day at WomenCARE, Boulé and Sumrall gave me a crash course on the organization’s history and mission. Michelle Hobbs, Wendy Traber, and Deborah Abbott founded the organization in 1992, with Abbott serving as its first executive director. Hobbs and Traber were recovering from cancer—Hobbs had Hodgkin’s disease and Traber had Hodgkin’s disease and breast cancer— and felt that they knew few other women with whom to talk about their experiences living with the disease. Abbott, a therapist with a background in women’s health activism, got involved after realizing that Santa Cruz had few resources to help one of her young friends with cancer.1 When I met Boulé and Sumrall in 1995, WomenCARE was operating on a small budget consisting primarily of private donations from individuals and local businesses, as well as proceeds from community fund-raisers. Although the resultant budgetary constraints meant that Boulé and Sumrall could afford to staff the office only from 9:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they still managed to accomplish a good deal. To women with cancer, the center offered free holistic health services, including massage, tai-chi in the park, and yoga. It published a quarterly newsletter about cancer issues, newly published books, and upcoming events. It held drop-in support groups open to all women with cancer , as well as more structured groups that served specific populations— lesbians with cancer, Spanish-speaking women with cancer, and terminally ill women. Sumrall and Boulé also recently had started to develop a bilingual outreach program in nearby Watsonville for the town’s Latina residents, many of whom did not speak English and did not have access to cancer education, support , or services. WomenCARE...

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