Top 88 Quotes & Sayings by Tarana Burke

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American activist Tarana Burke.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Tarana Burke is an American activist from The Bronx, New York, who started the Me Too movement. In 2006, Burke began using metoo to help other women with similar experiences to stand up for themselves. Over a decade later, in 2017, #MeToo became a viral hashtag when Alyssa Milano and other women began using it to tweet about the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases. The phrase and hashtag quickly developed into a broad-based, and eventually international movement.

American - Activist | Born: September 12, 1973

Source: Wikipedia

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

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

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'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 want survivors to know that healing is possible.

Tarana Burke

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

Tarana Burke

Men need to help reshape the conversation around consent.

Tarana Burke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Tarana Burke

When one person says, 'Yeah, me, too,' it gives permission for others to open up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's a power in empathy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tarana Burke

Sexual harassment does bring shame.

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

You cannot put a song - you cannot put a person's talent over somebody's humanity. That's just insane.

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

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

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

'Me Too' is about letting - using the power of empathy to stomp out shame.

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

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

Tarana Burke

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

Tarana Burke

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

Tarana Burke

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

Tarana Burke

'Me too' was just two words; it's two magic words that galvanised the world.

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

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

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

Tarana Burke

Social media is not a safe space.

Tarana Burke

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

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

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

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

Tarana Burke

Top 88 Quotes & Sayings by Tarana Burke

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