If you give young people enough information, they'll figure out what to do with it. They just need a little guidance.
I don't want to get into splitting hairs. Trauma is trauma. I'm not in a position to quantify or qualify people's trauma.
Sexual harassment does bring shame.
Part of the job is to find out what they need. #MeToo is about helping people find those resources.
Inherently, having privilege isn't bad, but it's how you use it, and you have to use it in service of other people.
Everybody has a lane. Everybody has something that they can contribute.
If we don't center the voices of marginalized people, we're doing the wrong work.
I've done community organizing my whole life and I think to myself, as an organizer, we don't wait for people to come to us and say, 'Help us organize something.' We go out into the community, and we bring the skills to a group of people to organize themselves.
I started doing organizing work as a teenager. I was part of an organization called the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement at 14.
We have to come together and speak honestly about what the barriers are within our community - and then tear them down. It's really that simple.
People are trying to find an outlet to tell their truth.
When one person says, 'Yeah, me, too,' it gives permission for others to open up.
'Me Too' became the way to succinctly and powerfully connect with other people and give people permission to start their journey to heal.
People ask me what men can do, and I tell them, even if you're not a perpetrator, you should believe women - or queer folks - when they say that they have been violated.
I've never had a person come to me and say, 'I want to take down this person.' They come and say, 'I need help. This thing is killing me. It's weighing me down. It's sitting in the pit of my stomach.'
Anita Hill thanklessly put herself and her career as a law professor on the line more than 25 years ago to publicly name Clarence Thomas for sexually harassing her at work.
In many regards, Me Too is about survivors talking to survivors.
At the start of my career - not just Me Too, which is not the totality of my career - I wish I would have known that you don't have to sacrifice everything for a cause. And that self-care and self-preservation is also a tool that is necessary to do the work.
I'm really a worker and about rolling up my sleeves and doing the work. If that lands me a place in history, then I would be among amazing company.
I've done work in every area of social justice you can think of, but I've been highly focused on young people and then specifically black and brown girls.
