Tarana Burke, a famous activist from The Bronx, is the founder of the Me Too movement.
Often talked about for her activism in the media, Burke has clarified multiple times that she is an organizer, not an activist. She created the #MeToo movement not as an awareness campaign but as a healing community for survivors of sexual violence.
In 2006, MeToo spoke about the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and assault in society. It gradually escalated into a broader movement following the 2017 use of #MeToo as a hashtag after the allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
Tarana Burke is committed to the intervention in sexual abuse cases impacting particularly black women and girls. So far, her campaigns have thrown light on the abuse meted out to communities of color. Her lifelong advocacy against discrimination and abuse will continue and hopefully help many more women.
Here are some thought-provoking Tarana Burke quotes that show her work's impact worldwide.
Best Tarana Burke Quotes
Burke established 'Just Be', a non-profit, in 2003 which helped survivors of sexual violence. Read some of the best quotes by the famous activist below.
"Social media is not a safe space."
"The truth always needs a resting place, or it will lie down wherever it sees fit."
"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 actually happened on October 15, 2017, was people raised their hands to say, me too."
- 'The Cut', January 10, 2020.
"I think that Me Too is for everybody."
"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."
"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."
"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 want the women I work with to find the entry point to where their healing is."
"As long as we are not living in our full humanity, we cannot create a world for humanity."
- 'You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience', April 27, 2021.
"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 can't have this.'"
"In many regards, Me Too is about survivors talking to survivors."
"At the time, the whispers to keep silent and appear normal were deafening. And so we did.
There is no blame here. We were just trying to survive."
"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."
- 'You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience', April 27, 2021.
"As a community, we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back, but not enough for connecting and healing."
"Get up. Stand up. Speak up. Do something."
"People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work."
Most Famous Tarana Burke Quotes
Tarana Burke was born in The Bronx in New York. She grew up in the same neighborhood. Here's a compilation of her most famous quotes.
"Me Too was just two words; it’s two magic words that galvanized the world."
"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."
"There are a series of emotions that most survivors go through after disclosing."
"The work of #MeToo is about healing. It’s about healing as individuals and healing as communities."
"You cannot put a song – you cannot put a person’s talent over somebody’s humanity. That’s just insane."
"I'm really trying to pivot the conversations to solutions instead of numbers."
-November 2, 2017, Speech at Hofstra, New York.
"You don't have to be anything but yourself to be worthy."
- November 2, 2017, Speech at Hofstra, New York.
"Don't beg for your dignity and your humanity."
- November 2, 2017, Speech at Hofstra, New York.
"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."
"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."
"We should collectively be talking to children – as young as kindergarten – about what consent looks like."
"For every Harvey Weinstein, there’s three or four thousand other pastors, coaches, teachers, uncles, cousins, and stepfathers who are committing the same crimes."
"'Me too' became a term that was both succinct and powerful, and it was a way to ring up immediate empathy between survivors."
"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."
"What’s interesting to me is that people engage survivors from a place of pity all the time – a place of sympathy."
"The personal is political for so many."
"We want to turn victims into survivors – and survivors into thrivers."
"We earn our stories, sometimes with blood, sweat, and tears. And we have to be good stewards of them and mindful of how and where we share them."
- 'Johnson & Johnson WLI Ascend Leadership Program', 2021.
(Burke was named Time Person of the Year in 2017.)
Most Inspiring Tarana Burke Quotes
Burke holds the position of Senior Director of the New York-based Girls for Gender Equity, a group that helps women of color develop their skills. Take a look at some of her most inspiring quotes in the list below.
"I’m grounded in joy; I’m not grounded in the trauma anymore."
"People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work."
"I started doing organizing work as a teenager. I was part of an organization called the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement at 14."
"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."
"You deserve safety. You deserve protection. You deserve love. You deserve peace. Breathe beloved. Let's do it together. Right now!"
- 'You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience', April 27, 2021.
"I’m all about cultivating joy in your life."
"I founded the Me Too Movement because there was a void in the community that I was in. There were gaps in services."
"There is inherent strength in agency. #MeToo, in a lot of ways, is about agency. It’s not about giving up your agency."
- 'The Guardian', January 15, 2018.
"I believed that she felt like a Phenomenal Woman as she delivered each line with an audacity and authenticity I had never seen before. I felt like I knew the kind of pain she had to be holding because it was the same pain I held every single day."
- 'Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement'
"Inherently, having privilege isn't bad, but it's how you use it, and you have to use it in service of other people."
-'The Guardian', January 15, 2018.
"If you give young people enough information, they’ll figure out what to do with it. They just need a little guidance."
"Healing-centered engagement is akin to the South African term 'ubuntu," meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence. collective engagement, and service to others."
-' You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience', April 27, 2021.
"If we don't center the voices of marginalized people, we're doing the wrong work."
"An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like."
"I cannot define how you or your body responds to things. I can’t tell you that’s not trauma."
"So many people who deal with sexual harassment don’t have the means to file lawsuits or to get legal representation or legal advice."
"Men need to help reshape the conversation around consent."
Most Interesting Tarana Burke Quotes
Tarana Burke has been a leading light for women affected by mental or physical violence. Compiled below is a list of her most interesting quotes.
"Celebrity doesn’t serve me unless it advances the work that I’m doing."
"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."
"‘Rejecting shame for Black lives means rejecting individual responsibility for structural failures."
- 'You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience', April 27, 2021.
"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."
"Violence is violence. Trauma is trauma. And we are taught to downplay it, even think about it as child's play."
"Empowerment through empathy."
"I’m writing to you right now because if you haven’t changed by now, I’m afraid of what else might have been added to this list."
- 'You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience', April 27, 2021.
"After all, I didn’t see my story as my gift, only as my shame."
- 'Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement', September 14, 2021.
"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."
"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.'"
"My greatest hope for this book is that little Black girls, and survivors of all stripes, will see some part of themselves in my story or feel a connection. I think there has to be more literature in the world that helps people navigate this world, navigate their own lives."
- 'Marie Claire', September 12, 2021.
"Sexual violence happens on a spectrum, so accountability has to happen on a spectrum."
"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."
Quotes On Me Too Movement By Others
Many personalities have spoken up following the #MeToo movement. Below is a list of the most famous quotes from them.
"Standing behind predators makes prey of us all."
- DaShanne Stokes.
“If #MeToo has made men feel vulnerable, panicked, unsure, and fearful as a result of women finally, collectively, saying "Enough!” so be it."
- ‘Rage Becomes Her: The Power Of Women’s Anger', Soraya Chemaly, 2018.
"In 2017, after the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault scandal went viral, the #MeToo movement grew like wildfire. It triggered my trauma. Flashbacks of horrific injustice. Old memories resurfaced."
- 'Sacred Wandering: Growing Your Faith In The Dark', Dana Arcuri, 2019.
"The #MeToo movement has done an excellent job of highlighting workplace harassment of females. It is now time to expand it to represent the unwarranted workplace harassment of workers by the opposite gender."
- Steven Magee.
"One people's movement is all of humanity's movement."
- 'No Foreigner Only Family', Abhijit Naskar, 2020.
"When it’s, “he said/she said,” the woman can’t win. But when it’s, “he said/she said/she said/she said/she said/she said,” transparency has a chance, and light can flood the places where abusive behavior thrives."
- Melinda Gates.
"The reason you need emotional support is because it's important for survivors to be heard."
- ‘Soul Cry: Releasing & Healing The Wounds Of Trauma’, Dana L. Arcuri.
"What I find sort of extraordinary is that this man is at the top of a very particular iceberg."
- Emma Thompson.
"Women writers, above all, are expected to understand and, if not tolerate, then excuse the bad behavior of male writers and editors."
- Elissa Schappell.
"I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly, and I found it really hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate. A lot of the feelings I’ve been having about anxiety, about being honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier or taking action."
- Reese Witherspoon.
"The predator wants your silence. It feeds their power, entitlement, AND they want it to feed your shame."
- Viola Davis.
"I want people to know that this movement isn't stopping. We're going to move forward until we have an equitable and safe space for women."
- Mira Sorvino.
"We can't let bad behavior slide any more. Things are changing for the better."
- Jimmy Kimmel.
"Asking women why they didn’t report their sexual assault right away is akin to asking someone why they didn’t report their own kidnapping."
- Aoarna Nancherla.
"Sexual or physical violence, harassment, demeaning language is not the price one should pay for seeking or maintaining employment. Period."
- Gabrielle Union.
"With all our imperfections. With all our complexities. We’re worth it. And this is a year of owning who we are."
- Emma Stone.
"There is no better time to really continue to shine a light on women feeling empowered and people really helping to support them, men included."
- Meghan Markle.
"A new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because a lot of magnificent women and some pretty phenomenal men fighting hard to make sure that they become the leaders who take us to the time when nobody ever has to say “me too” again."
- Oprah Winfrey.
"There is no timestamp on trauma. There isn't a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm."
- Dawn Serra.
"You're not a victim for sharing your story. You are a survivor setting the world on fire with your truth. And you never know who needs your light, your warmth, and raging courage."
- Alex Elle.
