I am not a person--
you can't tell, right--
I'm not a person who really likes to be out in the front.
But I consider this a part of the work that has to be done.
And I think that there has to be a voice in this moment
to give one context to this work, to what we're
experiencing and what we're seeing.
But to also keep the focus to where
it should be on-- on the most marginalized people,
on the most marginalized voices, on the people with the least
resources, the people that nobody is going
to have conversations about.
In the 90s and coming into that early aughts,
there was this real movement around black women and gender
based violence, reproductive justice movement-- all of that
was sort of taking off.
And so it created a space to have these conversations more
widely, but it was a very academic space, right?
It was still really difficult to have
community based conversations about these issues.
So I would go to these conferences
and have these wonderful conversations and strategy
sessions with like minded people.
But they were studying the issue,
but they weren't actually in a day to day living the issue.
They weren't working with young people,
talking to people in the community.
And so it was just this real struggle of how do we take--
actionize again-- how do we take this wonderful dialogue
and bring that to the community?
And so that was a real struggle for me for a long time.
I would really like to talk to young people
directly on the campuses-- like let's get down and dirty
and strategize around how you can do different things to move
the needle on your candidates.
And so that may look like the Black Student Union working
with the white sorority.
Right?
That may look like working across these--
and I'm not saying that sort of this kumbaya
kind of whatever way--
I mean, if you're going to work across various lines of issues,
people need to understand those other issues
and be invested in those other issues
at least in ways that allow you to work together.
But I think we have to think outside the box.
And students are the best folks that think outside the box.
And so that's been my biggest privilege
is to talk about and get literally a diverse group
of folks at the table from these schools,
and let's strategize together about what
you can do differently on this campus
and off this campus to move the needle.
If you get the wherewithal to share with somebody this thing
that you've been holding in a pit of your stomach
for your whole life, and their response is,
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
Right?
There's an othering that happens in that moment, well
meaning of course, and people don't know what to say.
But there's something else that happens.
If in that moment, the response is, I'm so sorry.
I know how you feel because that happened to me too.
Now that's a drawing in, right?
We've created a relationship, even if it's just for a moment.
There is a connection that happens in that moment
that nobody else can understand but the two of you.
We have been having a sustained conversation
about sexual violence for four months.
And people are like, what next?
What now?
SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
TARANA BURKE: What now?
Have we won?
SPEAKER 2: Right, yeah.
TARANA BURKE: Did we win?
SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
Yeah.
TARANA BURKE: No.
AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]
TARANA BURKE: No.
We didn't win.
SPEAKER 2: Mm hmm.
TARANA BURKE: Cut it out.
SPEAKER 2: Yup.
Yup.
TARANA BURKE: We have work to do.
I spent the first--
all of like October and November just on TV shows
like, what do you think about Kevin Spacey?
What do you think?
And it was just like whack-a-mole
every time somebody else committed a crime.
You know?
Every time there was another accused,
it was like, bring out the founder the Me Too movement
and let her-- and then finally I was just like, stop.
I don't want to keep talking about individuals.
You're going to keep making Boogey Men.
And we should be talking about systems.
You think that a person like Harvey Weinstein--
AUDIENCE: [APPLAUSE]
TARANA BURKE: A person like Harvey Weinstein doesn't just
exist in a vacuum.
You don't just for 20 years do the things that you do,
and you're not supported by a whole system of folks
that are invested in him.
There were people who were invested in him being rich,
in him being successful, in him and ignoring this.
So we don't care about human dignity as much
as we care about a dollar.
And that's why somebody like Harvey Weinstein can flourish.
I often talk about, this is not a movement about trauma.
It's a movement about joy.
Because joy saved my life.
And it was a point in my life when
I had to make a commitment.
There is a way sometimes that survivors--
where their trauma is an identity.
It becomes a part of who you are,
and you lean into it every day.
And we don't mean to.
We don't have tools though and resources
to do something different, right?
It just becomes comfortable almost.
And so, at some point when I realized not only
that it was what I was doing, I was watching other people
doing it around me.
I decided to shift and lean into my joy.
And then I became obsessive about it, right?
I literally cultivate joy in my life.
I literally find ways-- in all the ways that joy exists,
I just take it and I hold onto it because it's not always
going to be there.
It's not always going to be good.
I think one of the dangers in this moment
is that we talk a lot--
I say survivor all the time.
I talk about being a survivor all the time.
And I think it is good to move from victim to survivor.
But I also think that when you have a person like me who
becomes this figure of a person who's a survivor,
people think that I'm a destination.
I am a goal.
I have people ask me every day, how do I get like you?
I want to be healed.
I'm like, baby, you don't want to be like me.
OK?
We all have our own journey.
And so I think we need to talk more about survival, right?
Being a survivor is a title.
Surviving is a choice.
And so I literally wake up every day
and make the choice to survive.
When I get connected to the pain that I've held around this--
and I think about somebody else holding that pain,
having that pain--
when I think about ways that people could have interrupted
that pain for me at an earlier age,
it is motivating because I just don't
want anybody else to have it.
AUDIENCE: [APPLAUSE]