{"id":169804,"date":"2018-07-08T06:25:32","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T10:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=169804"},"modified":"2018-07-08T06:25:32","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T10:25:32","slug":"metoos-tarana-burke-laying-groundwork-for-the-long-haul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/08\/metoos-tarana-burke-laying-groundwork-for-the-long-haul\/","title":{"rendered":"MeToo’s Tarana Burke: Laying groundwork for the long haul"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Now,<\/a>
Now, with more visibility than she ever dreamed possible, Burke finds herself in another race — to get the next phase of her own #MeToo work up and running before the spotlight dims. (Shutterstock photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK — Not long ago, Tarana Burke took the podium in a hotel ballroom full of admirers — a scenario that’s become somewhat familiar this past year — and told a favourite childhood tale about the time she was forced to run a three-legged race with a cousin who wasn’t, like her, competitive or athletic.<\/p>\n

She wanted a different partner, because she didn’t want to lose. But her grandfather told her sternly: \u201cWe don’t leave anybody behind.\u201d And so she ran the race with that cousin, and lost, but learned a memorable lesson about taking care of those less powerful.<\/p>\n

Burke took that lesson into her career as an activist and organizer, especially her work with survivors of sexual violence — work that led her to coin the phrase \u201cMe Too,\u201d more than a decade before it exploded as a global hashtag and a slogan for a sweeping social movement.<\/p>\n

Now, with more visibility than she ever dreamed possible, Burke finds herself in another race — to get the next phase of her own #MeToo work up and running before the spotlight dims. And an important part of that, she says, is to put the focus back where it started — before Harvey Weinstein and the movie stars and red carpets — on survivors, especially women and girls of colour, who she says have always been disproportionately impacted by sexual violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe #MeToo movement is a survivor’s movement,\u201d Burke says. \u201cAnd it’s for everybody. I just want to make that point extra clear.\u201d In other words, the movement doesn’t leave anybody behind, just like her grandfather told her.<\/p>\n

But beyond that, how do you take a cultural moment with a powerful mantra, and turn it into a sustainable, working movement? That’s what Burke, 44, is concentrating on now, nine months into the #MeToo era. She’s spending the summer working on final plans for programming at \u201cme too.,\u201d her organization that’s housed at the Brooklyn-based Girls for Gender Equity , the non-profit where she’s a senior director. The immediate goal: Launching a new online community in the fall, full of resources for survivors across the country.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview, Burke decried what she called a persistent false narrative about #MeToo.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all this time, I still run into people every day who say, ‘You’re anti-men,\u201d Burke said from France, where she was speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival. \u201cThey say, ‘All you want to do is make people lose their jobs.’ And it just takes the focus away from what we’re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese misconceptions are out there, no matter how much visibility I have, and they’re super harmful, because people believe them,\u201d she added. \u201cSo the work I am doing with the visibility I have is to try to give people a broader perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burke has been on a head-spinning ride since the day last October, shortly after the Weinstein story erupted, when actress Alyssa Milano encouraged survivors of sexual assault or harassment to tweet #MeToo.<\/p>\n

The hashtag spread like wildfire, and it was quickly pointed out that the phrase had originated with Burke. Since then, she’s been balancing her work at Girls For Gender Equity with countless high-profile appearances, where she’s been hailed as a standard-bearer for the movement: the Golden Globes, the Oscars, the Time 100 gala where she was honoured as one of the year’s most influential people, and many others.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the challenge is trying to balance all these things,\u201d she says, \u201cmanaging this level of visibility and also knowing that we have to do a lot of groundwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essential to that groundwork is fundraising. Whereas the legal defence fund of Time’s Up, the Hollywood-based group advocating for gender equity in the workplace, has raised upward of $20 million, Burke’s own group has nowhere near that kind of money. Tennis legend Billie Jean King and TV host Robin Roberts each gave $100,000, and Google has given a $250,000 \u201cGoogle Rising\u201d grant. But the biggest boost came in May, when Burke received a $1 million commitment — and plans to raise twice that, annually — from the New York Women’s Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot about what would have happened if we had been fully funded 12 years ago,\u201d she told a cheering crowd at the foundation’s breakfast, where the grant was announced.<\/p>\n

With its new funding, \u201cme too.\u201d is not only launching the membership-based online community — with a planned October start date — but also developing programming, for later in the year, that will include elements like survivor healing circles. The group also plans to spend about half its resources supporting community-based groups across the country fighting sexual violence.<\/p>\n

Burke herself is constantly travelling and speaking, working to put the focus back on survivors, especially in marginalized communities, and away from figures like Weinstein, whose accusers have largely been white, famous actresses. \u201cThat’s what her work has been out in the world right now,\u201d says Joanne Smith, Burke’s colleague and founder of Girls for Gender Equity. \u201cTo remind people — or tell people who never knew — why it is that we have to be so specific about girls of colour and black girls in particular being impacted by sexual violence. Because those stories don’t get told.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burke is aware that the celebrity component of the Weinstein story has in some ways fed a perception that #MeToo — the broader cultural movement — has left some communities out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a lot of black women who don’t feel like they have a place in this #MeToo movement that ironically was started by a black woman,\u201d says Nupol Kiazolu, a student activist in New York City, who took the stage at the Women in the World conference this spring and called on white women to stand with their black counterparts. \u201cI don’t feel like this movement is inclusive enough as it should be. We have a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar sentiments were explored at Brooklyn’s Billie Holiday Theatre in March, where actresses including Pauletta Washington and Simone Missick performed from the writings of 50 women and girls of colour for a theatrical piece entitled \u201cOur Place in the Movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn so many (past) social movements, the voices of black women are almost non-existent,\u201d said Indira Etwaroo, the theatre’s executive director. \u201cAnd so with the #MeToo movement it begs the question, where do we belong, what place do we have?\u201d She noted that when three actresses — and Weinstein accusers — took the Oscars stage to present a segment on MeToo and Time’s Up, a black woman was not among them.<\/p>\n

Burke says it’s logical that #MeToo exploded into view when high-profile celebrities became involved. \u201cThat’s what the media does, cover celebrities,\u201d she says. \u201cThat attention has caused people to make this connection that #MeToo is about white women in Hollywood.\u201d But she also points out that when hundreds of thousands of women began using the #MeToo hashtag, \u201cit went viral because of people — everyday people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ana Oliveira, president of the New York Women’s Foundation, says she’s been heartened both by Burke’s extensive experience with survivors of sexual violence, and her clearheaded plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cTarana is very clear that this is not about demonizing men,\u201d Oliveira says. \u201cAnd she’s not interested in building an empire, or a big national organization. She is interested in the sustainability of efforts that happen locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burke says she tries to impress on people that this is an opportunity not to be squandered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect that in a year or two, it won’t be as newsworthy,\u201d she says. \u201cThe thing that WILL be newsworthy will be the ways that we’re moving the needle to end sexual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for that to happen, the focus needs to shift back to where it started, she says — away from the accused, and onto the survivors.<\/p>\n

\u201cMillions and millions of people literally raised their hands nine months ago to say #MeToo … and their hands are still raised,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause nobody is responding to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK — Not long ago, Tarana Burke took the podium in a hotel ballroom full of admirers — a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":163236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[32716,42065],"class_list":["post-169804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-metoo","tag-tarana-burke","mauthors-jocelyn-noveck","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}