Top 50 Tarana Burke Quotes

For every Harvey Weinstein, there’s three or four thousand other pastors, coaches, teachers, uncles, cousins, and stepfathers who are committing the same crimes. We have to keep that in focus and we have to keep talking about it.

I have a lot of experience – not just with my ‘Me Too’ campaign but with survivors disclosing. I know that there is a wave of emotions that happens after that.

We have to trust the voices of the community to be in leadership and know what we need for our communities.

Anita Hill thanklessly put herself and her career as a law professor on the line more than 25 years ago to publicly name Clarence Thomas for sexually harassing her at work.

You cannot put a song – you cannot put a person‘s talent over somebody‘s humanity. That’s just insane.

The young girls of color that first encountered the ‘me too‘ movement in community centers and classrooms and church basements were there not only because they needed a safe space, but because they needed their own space.

I think that Me Too is for everybody. I think it’s important that people feel validated.

If we don’t center the voices of marginalized people, we’re doing the wrong work.

I’ve done work in every area of social justice you can think of, but I’ve been highly focused on young people and then specifically black and brown girls.

I think it is selfish for me to try to frame Me Too as something that I own. It is bigger than me and bigger than Alyssa Milano. Neither one of us should be centered in this work. This is about survivors.

I don’t think that every single case of sexual harassment has to result in someone being fired; the consequences should vary. But we need a shift in culture so that every single instance of sexual harassment is investigated and dealt with. That’s just basic common sense.

Sexual harassment does bring shame.

Donald Trump has proven to be the kind of person who you can’t reason with and who you can’t have a logical conversation with – and who I can’t imagine having a heart-to-heart conversation thinking that I would change something specifically about this person.

Foundations have to think outside the box and maybe expand past the usual suspects that get all of the funding and start thinking about how to reach into communities and support community healing on a more local level.

I founded the ‘me too’ movement in 2006 because I wanted to find a way to connect with the black and brown girls in the program I ran.

‘Me too’ became a term that was both succinct and powerful, and it was a way to ring up immediate empathy between survivors.

I think that women of color use social media to make our voices heard with or without the amplification of white women. I also think that, many times, when white women want our support, they use an umbrella of ‘women supporting women’ and forget that they didn’t lend the same kind of support.

Everybody has a lane. Everybody has something that they can contribute.

We want to turn victims into survivors – and survivors into thrivers.

Celebrity doesn’t serve me unless it advances the work that I’m doing.

The first thing I organized around was the Central Park Five case for the young men who were accused. We talked about the unfair misrepresentation of these young teenagers in the media. I’ve been fighting back against Donald Trump for a long time.

In many regards, Me Too is about survivors talking to survivors.

When the #MeToo movement started and went viral, it was everyday people all around the world. The fact that the stories continue to be about famous white women has everything to do with who the media places attention on.

What’s interesting to me is that people engage survivors from a place of pity all the time – a place of sympathy.

I wish men would stop telling me how they are not ‘bad guys,’ how they’re ‘an exception to the norm.’

There are so many different people doing amazing work across the country that I, in my capacity, definitely want to lift up, because they don’t get lifted up that often.

Men are not the enemy, and we have to be clear about that.

I’m driven by the gaps, the things that are missing, the areas where marginalized people exist – and where the least resources are available for them.

People ask me what men can do, and I tell them, even if you’re not a perpetrator, you should believe women – or queer folks – when they say that they have been violated.

The personal is political for so many.

Get up. Stand up. Speak up. Do something.

At the start of my career – not just Me Too, which is not the totality of my career – I wish I would have known that you don’t have to sacrifice everything for a cause. And that self-care and self-preservation is also a tool that is necessary to do the work.

If I found a healing tree in my backyard, and it grew some sort of fruit that was a healing balm for people to repair what was damaged, I’m not going to just harvest all of those fruits and say, ‘You cant have this.’ If I have a cure for people, I’m going to share it.

For every R. Kelly or Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein, there’s, you know, the owner of the grocery store, the coach, the teacher, the neighbor, who are doing the same things. But we don’t pay attention until it’s a big name. And we don’t pay attention ’til it’s a big celebrity.

As a community, we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back, but not enough for connecting and healing.

I’m grounded in joy; I’m not grounded in the trauma anymore.

I’m really a worker and about rolling up my sleeves and doing the work. If that lands me a place in history, then I would be among amazing company.

I don’t want to get into splitting hairs. Trauma is trauma. I’m not in a position to quantify or qualify people’s trauma.

There are a number of people who are anxious to leave #metoo behind and move on, but I don’t think people realize how short of a time we have been discussing this issue compared to how long this has been an issue.

I’m all about cultivating joy in your life.

Men need to help reshape the conversation around consent.

There’s a power in empathy.

Even when black folks make me angry, I know that the foundation is that I love us. I want us to win, and I want us to have all the things that we deserve in the world. And that’s driven by love.

If you give young people enough information, they’ll figure out what to do with it. They just need a little guidance.

I have been working with young people for more than 25 years.

So many people who deal with sexual harassment don’t have the means to file lawsuits or to get legal representation or legal advice.

What does justice look like for a survivor? It’ll mean different things to different communities.

Patriarchy doesn’t just make men out to be ogres. Women buy into the patriarchy as well, and women make those comments as well, like, ‘Boys will be boys.’ Women have to undo that stuff, too.

Black women have been screaming about famous predators like R&B singer R. Kelly, who allegedly preys on black girls, for well over a decade to no avail.

Social media is so immediate and in your face that I know many people have been helped and many people who have been traumatised by their entire timeline filled with ‘me too.’