Tarana Burke Quotes

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

― Tarana Burke

“Get up. Stand up. Speak up. Do something.”

― Tarana Burke

“The work of #MeToo is about healing. It’s about healing as individuals and healing as communities.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“’Me too’ was just two words; it’s two magic words that galvanised the world.”

― Tarana Burke

“We talk about sexual harassment in the workplace, but there’s sexual harassment in schools, right? There’s sexual harassment on the street. So there’s a larger conversation to be had. And I think it will be a disservice to people if we couch this conversation in about what happens in Hollywood or what happens in even political offices.”

― Tarana Burke

“Violence is violence. Trauma is trauma. And we are taught to downplay it, even think about it as child’s play.”

― Tarana Burke

“People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“Smoking is definitely not cool anymore, and the folks who have worked against that have done a great job.”

― Tarana Burke

“If we keep on ‘making statements’ and not really doing the work, we are going to be in trouble.”

― Tarana Burke

“An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like.”

― Tarana Burke

“There’s a power in empathy.”

― Tarana Burke

“We have to come together and speak honestly about what the barriers are within our community – and then tear them down. It’s really that simple.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“I founded the Me Too Movement because there was a void in the community that I was in. There were gaps in services. There was dearth in resources, and I saw young people – I saw black and brown girls – who are hurting and who needed something that just wasn’t there.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“’Me Too’ is about letting – using the power of empathy to stomp out shame.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“I just don’t believe that ‘no’ is always a final answer – unless we’re talking about consent.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“There is always a way to get what you need, and I really believe in taking what you have to make what you need.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“We use a term called ’empowerment through empathy.’ And ‘Me Too’ is so powerful, because somebody had said it to me – right? – and it changed the trajectory of my healing process once I heard that.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“Inherently, having privilege isn’t bad, but it’s how you use it, and you have to use it in service of other people.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“Men need to help reshape the conversation around consent.”

― Tarana Burke

“When one person says, ‘Yeah, me, too,’ it gives permission for others to open up.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“I’m all about cultivating joy in your life.”

― Tarana Burke

“I feel the reason people started using ‘me too’ is there is beauty and power in those words.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“The world doesn’t realise I have a regular job!”

― Tarana Burke

“I started doing organizing work as a teenager. I was part of an organization called the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement at 14.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“These movements aren’t about anger. We’re not angrily saying ‘Black Lives Matter.’ We’re declaring it. It’s a declaration. We want to be seen as robust, full human beings that have anger and have joy. We want to be able to just freely have that joy. Like everybody else does.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“People are trying to find an outlet to tell their truth.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“I’ve done community organizing my whole life and I think to myself, as an organizer, we don’t wait for people to come to us and say, ‘Help us organize something.’ We go out into the community, and we bring the skills to a group of people to organize themselves.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“The personal is political for so many.”

― Tarana Burke

“We all have the right to an opinion, sure, but can we say how someone else should feel?”

― Tarana Burke

“Sexual harassment does bring shame.”

― Tarana Burke

“The work is more than just about the amplification of survivors and quantifying their numbers. The work is really about survivors talking to each other and saying, ‘I see you. I support you. I get it.’”

― Tarana Burke

“I want the women I work with to find the entry point to where their healing is.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“I’m interested in talking to people and dealing with people who are set and ready for change and action. Who get it. And who are looking for solutions.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“We have to have something that reaches the masses. That’s what I’ve always known Me Too could do.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“I’ve never had a person come to me and say, ‘I want to take down this person.’ They come and say, ‘I need help. This thing is killing me. It’s weighing me down. It’s sitting in the pit of my stomach.’”

― Tarana Burke

“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.’”

― Tarana Burke

“Part of the job is to find out what they need. #MeToo is about helping people find those resources.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“Nobody can take you out of something, especially if you’re the one who started it.”

― Tarana Burke

“When you truly empathize with someone, you have to take into account all the things that make that person who they are.”

― Tarana Burke

“We should collectively be talking to children – as young as kindergarten – about what consent looks like.”

― Tarana Burke

“I want survivors to know that healing is possible.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“’Me Too’ became the way to succinctly and powerfully connect with other people and give people permission to start their journey to heal.”

― Tarana Burke

“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.”

― Tarana Burke

“I didn’t start Me Too as a hashtag, and had I had the opportunity to, I probably wouldn’t have done it that way. I think that what has happened subsequently has been beautiful to watch, but what concerns me is what all of these survivors are going to do now.”

― Tarana Burke

“There are a series of emotions that most survivors go through after disclosing. It starts with feeling great, like the weight on your shoulders has been lifted, and then you’re alone with your thoughts, like, ‘Why did I do that?’ And then, what about the person who gets backlash?”

― Tarana Burke

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

― Tarana Burke

“I don’t work for Hollywood.”

― Tarana Burke

“Social media is not a safe space.”

― Tarana Burke