Tarana Burke is afraid that her work is going to disappear.

Before hitting the Academy Award’s red carpet on Sunday night, everyone was asking the #MeToo founder the same questions:

“What’s the statement?” “Are you all going to wear black dresses?” “Are you going to wear a rose?”

According to The Telegraph, she replied:

[W]e don’t need another ‘thing’. If we keep on ‘making statements’ and not really doing the work, we are going to be in trouble.

But Burke’s worry began last year October, when she awoke to find the movement she had founded as far back as 2006 had suddenly taken on a life of its own:

“But honestly, that morning I just felt panicked,” admits Burke, a warm and enthusiastic-eyed 44 year-old single mother. “I spent the first part of that day feeling like the work I had invested my life in was going to be erased by a simple tweet. Then I had this moment of total clarity.”

The movement was ignited when Burke was unable to help a teenager, Heaven, who had opened up to her about being sexually assaulted. You can read all about it here.

More than 10 years later, and within a week of Alyssa Milano tweeting out the slogan, #MeToo had been used more than 12 million times; within two weeks it had reached 85 countries.

However, it soon became divisive:

“It should never have become an ‘us and them’ thing,” Burke insists now, between taking calls from her flu-ridden 20-year-old daughter.

“#MeToo has been popular because of the moment we’re in, but it’s not really a women’s movement: it’s a movement for all survivors of sexual violence. Yes, women are the drivers because so many are victims, but we can’t erase the boys who spoke up about Kevin Spacey, or the millions of men who have been subjected to sexual violence, too.

“Men are not the enemy, and we have to be clear about that.”

“Unless you are committed to bucking the system you will keep coming up with those same conclusions. I just don’t think they got it. I was so saddened by that letter.”

Burke also understands that while social media is powerful, it’s also fleeting. For now, she is going to continue doing what she has always been doing: spreading the message of her movement, and try and finish the documentary she is making:

“I want to find Heaven,” she tells me. “I’m going to try and track her down.”

What will she say to her if she finds her? Burke says after a long silence. “I want to let her know that my inability to connect with her that day and give her what she needed propelled an entire movement. And I want to apologise, because everything I have done, all this work, is really an apology to her.”

Do yourself a favour and read the full piece here. Burke is a very refreshing voice, in a movement that has come to be widely discussed and debated on every social media platform.

[source:telegraph]