This interview has been edited for length.
My Twitter bio reads "servant leader." It speaks to my favorite quote by Dr. Cornel West: "You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people."
And sometime in my early 20s, I made a shift to thinking about sexual violence more as a social justice issue than just an individual issue. That shift was based on working with young people and young black girls and seeing the [lack] of resources in our community to support them. These kids needed to talk about the things they experienced. They needed to know they weren't alone in these circumstances.
Every time we had a trusted space where girls were allowed to talk about their lives, they inevitably talked about their experiences of sexual violence. And in some ways, it was just so second nature. These girls had normalized some of the ways that violence had affected their lives, so much so that they discussed it like it wasn't an issue. It was just like, "This is what happened."
It became clear that we had to do something specifically about the way sexual violence is [digested], the way it was affecting their lives.
When I created Me Too in 2006, it was really about the idea of empowerment through empathy, because what I realized was that it wasn't that they didn't want to talk about it -- it was that nobody wants to talk about it in isolation. You don't want to be the only one that comes forward and talks about how this thing is affecting you. So, if there's somebody that you see and you trust who can empathize with you, there's power in that.
I should be clear. This is something that happened over time. We worked for the last 12 years. Me Too wasn't "discovered" in 2017. Me Too wasn't put on a shelf. It was growing. And it wasn't built to be a viral campaign. In fact, I didn't think the movement would be sustainable if it went viral, because it's so personal. I was definitely proven wrong.
I feel like the media created a narrative around what "Me Too" was. And I think that black folks are so weary and cautious because we have had it happen so many times -- when it looks like it might be changing -- we don't trust it. Black people think if white people touch it, it's not ours.
That was a challenge for me. I'm like, "Why would you give up your power? Why would you turn over something to people, especially if you believe those people are going to misuse it, and say, Oh, well. White people are talking about it, so it's not ours anymore. It's theirs."
My biggest goal is to wrestle back this narrative. We need to make sure that we keep on expanding not just the number of resources that are available but also people's ability to get them. We want to make sure we connect people to resources and, while we have the momentum, we are building the movement to make sure more people are included. We want to give people ways to be active in the fight to end sexual violence.
The reason why people in general are so attracted to the words and the ecosystem that's been created around Me Too is because of the possibility for healing. I'm not going to allow that to be a situation where only one segment of the population gets that. That's for everybody.
It's also important to discuss power. When I think of the [Larry] Nassar survivors, I'm reminded of the kind of power he wielded over these young athletes. We need to constantly check on how we allow power to accumulate and privilege to go unchecked. And that happens in sports so much. I ran track from 6 years old up to college. I was an athlete. So, I understand that power structure.
I've told survivors that they need to put themselves first. They need to take care of themselves. But it's not their job to heal themselves. They need help with the heavy lifting. They need support in taking care of themselves.
The survivors often feel like "I am this sport." Therefore, I have to be a spokesperson of sorts. But they don't. They don't owe us their activism. They need to commit to helping and healing themselves. They need to know they are worthy of life, worthy of dignity and worthy of protection.
Tarana Burke is an activist from New York City who founded the Me Too movement. Additionally, Burke is senior director of Girls for Gender Equity, which describes its mission as promoting "physical, psychological, social and economic development of girls and women."