Tarana Burke

“The personal is political for so many.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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