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6
Long-time AIDS Activist Discovers BCA
By April Dembosky
February/March 2004
Breast Cancer Action
Since her childhood
days of watching
the lawyer Perry
Mason on television,
Kathy Fisher has
always believed in the
power of the law to
achieve justice for all. Now a partner at
Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, with
28 years of legal practice under her belt,
Kathy dedicates much of her time and skill to
the service of social causes.
To honor the many dear friends she has
lost to AIDS and who are currently living with
the disease, Kathy serves as general counsel
for Pangaea, the SF AIDS Foundation’s
international affiliate, and tries cases on behalf
of AIDS organizations. She also makes regular
donations in support of AIDS advocacy
efforts. Recently, in the course of her pro
bono work, Kathy added breast cancer to the
top of her list of activist concerns.
With an extensive family history of
breast cancer, and a number of friends and
colleagues affected by the disease, it seems
logical that Kathy’s activist activities would
extend to breast cancer. But for many years,
the thought of working on breast cancer
issues was too close for comfort. “I didn’t
want breast cancer in my life any more than it
already was,” Kathy says, “I felt for a long
time that breast cancer was just an inevitable,
genetic destiny for me, my daughter, and
other women I care about.”
Kathy Fisher and her husband recently joined BCA’s Elenore Pred Circle, whose
members have included BCA in their estate planning. For more information about
planned giving and BCA, please contact Alex Momtchiloff, development director, at
(415) 243-9301, ext. 15, or via e-mail at amomtchiloff@bcaction.org.
There’s
nothing
like it!
Get inspired
and get
involved at
BCA’s
seventh
annual Town
Meeting.
JOIN US:
Saturday,
April 24,
Oakland
Asian Cultural
Center.
When her mother became ill with breast
cancer, and later her younger sister did as
well, both women chose to keep the illness
very private. Her mother was diagnosed in the
late 1970s, a time when the stigma around
the disease was so great that her illness
became the great family secret. Fifteen years
later, Kathy’s younger sister faced a different
kind of silence in her battle with breast
cancer—the uneasy quiet of the traditional
support groups that seemed to support, above
all, the cultural notion of female passivity
around the disease.
“My sister was not a shrinking violet,”
Kathy says, recalling her distaste for the
message that women ought to succumb to the
disease without question or protest.
When Kathy’s sister died in 1995, Ruth
Borenstein, one of her colleagues at Morrison
& Foerster, gave a donation to Breast Cancer
Action in her sister’s memory, introducing
Kathy to an approach to the epidemic with
which she could identify. Kathy was impressed
with BCA’s straightforward and
outspoken “Cancer Sucks” attitude toward
breast cancer. “I admire how BCA is honest
about the science and single-minded about
ending the breast cancer epidemic. And
frankly,” Kathy notes, “I love their irreverence
and sense of humor.”
Kathy credits BCA’s realism, compassion
and activist strategies for allowing her to
confront her fatalistic perspective on the
disease and realize that there was a way to do
something about it. She began giving yearend
donations to BCA.
Reviving an issue that she had long
relegated to a small corner of her life, Kathy
wanted to solidify her commitment to ending
the disease that had affected her and her
family so directly. She and her husband
decided to include a bequest to BCA in their
mutual wills. “We wanted to make sure that
our lives and deaths were about giving to
causes that really affected us personally,”
Kathy explains, “I signed up for life to give to
BCA because in addition to what BCA does
and the materials they produce, they use
money so well. BCA has immense integrity
about that.”
While a lot of organizations claim they
are working to put themselves out of business,
BCA member Kathy Fisher feels that
BCA is one agency that really means it.
“Unfortunately,” she says, “I’m confident they
will be around long enough to make use of
my bequest.” ◆