THE FACTS
HARD TRUTHS & MOONSHOTS
Over 9-MILLION AMERICANS have died of cancer since 9-11, yet Congress has shown obscene indifference to the suffering and death due to the world's leading killer. Our leaders committed nearly $5-trillion to fighting the War on Terror, yet the far more deadly cancer enemy was almost completely ignored in the last decade.
CONGRESS has such a dismal record on cancer research because there has never been a mass public consensus to prioritize the issue. Our goal is to change that...
We also recognize the enormous lobbying power of special interests who hold sway over many political decisions in D.C. We know many allied groups have tried to lobby Congress on cancer research without great success. The fact that the Cancer Moonshot's roughly $300-million annual increase was celebrated as a great win troubles us. In a $4-trillion budget, $300-million is chump change, especially when it averages about $88 for every American now fighting cancer...
CANCER WILL KILL OVER 600,000 AMERICANS AND OVER 8-MILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE THIS YEAR
Congressional inaction against such a deadly enemy KILLS PEOPLE.
TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT
We feel support & solidarity with all other groups & individuals who continue to push Congress for increased cancer research funding. We fully understand if some don't like our outside the box approach, but frankly polite politicking hasn't worked very well. Our creative activism is meant to force the issue into the national spotlight by designing powerful visual reference points that speak to today's image driven media environment. In short:
Fuck the status quo, fuck Congress. We'll be nice as we fight them, & have a beer with them AFTER they declare a real
WAR ON CANCER....
IF CONGRESS WON'T LISTEN TO THE LIVING,
THEN WE'LL GET THE DEAD TO SPEAK FOR US...
OUR INSPIRATION
“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
THE BOXING METAPHOR
Boxing is what we know. It's our business, our work & sometimes our reward. By using boxing & a 12-round championship fight as our narrative framework, we're using what we know to battle on foreign territory.
But this fight is entirely
non-violent peaceful creative ACTIONS that aim to dramatize visually & emotionally the pain, suffering & death Americans face & have faced due to cancer. Any fight references are entirely benign.
A FAIR FIGHT
Congress is not our enemy. Their indifference to the cancer problem is, thus making Congress our opponent in this fight that is all about making the voice of millions of cancer wounded Americans heard. Our aim is to wake
Congress to make them fight cancer.
We pledge to fight hard, clean & fair, with facts, fun & positive intentions.
We expect to use tools & strategies adapted from past struggles, but in completely unique new ways.
PUNK SHAMING
When the powerful do nothing, then the powerless must strike back. Special interests lobbyists have the run on Capitol Hill.
An upstart wannabe movement without money has no chance playing the political game under those rules.
Instead we've devised our own competition with a unique twist on Democratic action. Punk Shaming is all about pounding home reality, not letting politicians create their own phony world where they can ignore over
9-million cancer deaths.
THE NEXT BIG THING
Dispel the notion that the U.S. government has spent enormous sums of money trying to find a cancer cure. Yes, even spending approximately $6-billion per-year for cancer research can seem like a lot until put in the context. Perhaps easiest to explain, would be using cost per-death where the government has spent less than $10,000 for each of the cancer deaths, while the cost per terrorism death is nearly $1.5-billion for every death.