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.

The world doesn't realise I have a regular job!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

The work of #MeToo is about healing. It's about healing as individuals and healing as communities.