An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like.
— Tarana Burke
The personal is political for so many.
We want to turn victims into survivors - and survivors into thrivers.
I'm all about cultivating joy in your life.
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.
I started doing organizing work as a teenager. I was part of an organization called the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement at 14.
You cannot put a song - you cannot put a person's talent over somebody's humanity. That's just insane.
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.
'Me Too' is about letting - using the power of empathy to stomp out shame.
I have been working with young people for more than 25 years.
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.
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.
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.
I feel the reason people started using 'me too' is there is beauty and power in those words.
Men are not the enemy, and we have to be clear about that.
There's a power in empathy.
We have to trust the voices of the community to be in leadership and know what we need for our communities.
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.
When one person says, 'Yeah, me, too,' it gives permission for others to open up.
Get up. Stand up. Speak up. Do something.
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.
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.
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.
People need hope and inspiration desperately. But hope and inspiration are only sustained by work.
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.
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.
We all have the right to an opinion, sure, but can we say how someone else should feel?
If we keep on 'making statements' and not really doing the work, we are going to be in trouble.
I'm grounded in joy; I'm not grounded in the trauma anymore.
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.
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.
People are trying to find an outlet to tell their truth.
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.
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.
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.
So many people who deal with sexual harassment don't have the means to file lawsuits or to get legal representation or legal advice.
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.
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.
