Change Agent

Home-Grown Activism

An Alameda Mom Fights for a Safer Environment

    Before Mary Brune moved to Alameda in 2002, she’d always considered herself just another worker bee.
    But in August 2005 the 36-year-old East Coast transplant from Ocean City, N.J.—also an island city—decided to step outside her comfort zone and banded together with three other Bay Area moms to form a nonprofit called Making Our Milk Safe—MOMS for short. Their overall goal is to help create a more socially just and environmentally sustainable world.
    Originally, Brune and her pals—nursing moms one and all—were focused solely on reducing the presence of toxic chemicals that scientific studies consistently find in breast milk. They have since expanded their agenda to include concern about the bisphenol A in baby bottles, PVC in consumer products and fire retardants in furniture. All of these things impact the health and development of children. “Companies are not being held accountable for the products they make, the chemicals they contain and the harm that they cause,” says Brune.
    For the first six months, Brune worked full time as a technical writer and contributed to MOMS in her spare time. Eventually, however, she realized that for MOMS to grow and have a significant impact, she’d have to quit her day job and effectively abandon her career, which she had excelled at and won awards for in Northern California’s Touchstone writing competition. This meant taking a $45,000 per year pay cut, a difficult decision because living in Alameda is not cheap. As a full-time MOMS advocate, Brune, who mostly wears blue jeans and sports a simple wash-and-go hair style, averages 55 hours a week for a part-time salary. So to make ends meet and help pay her mortgage, Brune still does the occasional freelance assignment, writing user guides for companies like Tyco Electronics. Ultimately, though, she feels that “anything worth doing is something you usually have to sacrifice for.”
    When Brune studied technical writing in college, she took one class in grant writing. At the time, she figured she could probably use it to help with her husband Michael Brune’s nonprofit work. He’s currently the executive director of the San Francisco–based Rainforest Action Network. Today, though, the grants she writes for MOMS have become her bread and butter, and her husband’s expertise is icing on the cake. “You couldn’t ask for a better mentor to bounce ideas off,” she says. The Women’s Foundation of California, As You Sow and the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation have given MOMS money.  In 2007 MOMS obtained enough funding to cover two part-time salaries plus expenses. Brune seized that opportunity to
hire Jessica Welborn, 29, a doctoral candidate in perinatal psychology to research breast milk contamination and write fact sheets.
    To communicate the scope and urgency of MOMS’ issues, Brune’s schedule includes a fair amount of public speaking.
She’s often invited to provide testimony for legislative committees in Sacramento, and she has given a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Such forums may welcome her comments, but even so, preparing a presentation causes her a lot of anxiety, says the easy-going yet confident advocate. To overcome her stage fright, she thinks back to when she first learned that the chemical perchlorate—a component of rocket fuel—was present in breast milk. The sense of outrage this discovery sparked, combined with her ongoing desire to protect her daughter Olivia from harm, continues to inspire her.
    In May, Brune attended a press conference in Sacramento with fellow MOMS to support California Assembly Bill 706, the Crystal Golden-Jefferson Furniture Safety and Fire Prevention Act. This bill calls for the removal of brominated and chlorinated flame retardants from furniture and bedding. The basic idea is that fire-safety issues can be addressed with alternative technologies, and that because the commercial furniture and mattress industries have made such changes to their products, the residential furniture industry should follow suit. Her then-2-year-old daughter sat behind her on the capitol steps as she spoke. Because Brune’s father was a firefighter, this issue is doubly important to her.
    California’s furniture market is huge, and this bill could potentially have a nationwide impact. Recognizing this, MOMS paid $5,000 for a lighthearted video as a means of garnering support from the legislature and Gov. Schwarzenegger. The video was created at Agit-Pop Communications by John Sellers, who’s married to MOMS co-founder Genevieve Raymond. He’s a well-known social critic that Mother Jones once called “a career thorn in the side of the establishment.” The video was released on the Internet at www.killercouch.com as part of a viral marketing campaign.
    After a considerable amount of drama and political posturing, the bill failed to pass by two votes in September. Brune, though, feels confident the issue will come up for a vote again in 2008, and she’ll keep plugging away on the issue with her partners at Friends of the Earth and MomsRising.org.
    In the meantime, Brune has moved MOMS out of her kitchen and into an office on Oak Street next to the Alameda Free Library. The office has a space for nursing moms, children’s books and blocks, and Brune believes it will allow her to more readily tap into the talents of moms with small children. Volunteers will be asked to help with letter-writing campaigns, Web site maintenance and a newsletter. She’s also submitted a grant proposal to fund a project to explore gaps in the Consumer Product Safety Commission recall process that leave consumers in low-income communities at risk for lead exposure.
    So despite the set back on AB 706, 2007 was a big year for Brune. Professionally, MOMS is on solid ground, and with the celebration of her 10th wedding anniversary last fall, her family life is also humming along nicely. Her success at obtaining funding and building strong relationships is a testament to the power of individuals to make a positive difference in their communities.
    To learn more about the work MOMS does and how to help, visit www.safemilk.org. Read Mary Brune’s comments about AB 706 on her Huffington Post blog at www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-brune.