Me Too Creator Tarana Burke Reminds Us This Is About Black and Brown Survivors [yesmagazine.org]

Alicia:

Thanks for sharing this one! I'd not seen it. Since Burke has bene doing this work for so long I appreciate her perspective so much. She's got lots of strong opinions and many years of doing community work. 

Some great quotes from the article:

"I''m just going to continue to speak, and speak out, and try my best to represent the many intersections that I sit in. I'm a Black woman. I'm a Black mother. I'm a survivor of sexual violence. I'm an advocate for survivors of sexual violence. In all of those ways that I exist, all of those things coexist, there's a role that I play in supporting people whom I represent in those demographics. So, that's really important to me."

"Burke: That's actually the most problematic part here. All of this media attention is on the perpetrator. All of the conversation about fairness and due process is focused on the perpetrator. And this movement, this work that we have to do is about supporting survivors. And about interrupting and ending sexual violence where ever it lives.'

While praising the work of the TIME magazine "silence breakers," Melissa Harris Perry said, "But the space has not been silent. Our nation has been deaf."

"Jeffries: That reminds me of a Facebook friend's post that read, "Why is it that the whimpers of White women are always heard louder than Black women's screams?"

Thanks for this one. Glad I didn't miss it!
Cissy

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