Survivor Power with Tarana Burke

Activist, advocate, author, and co-founder of the me too movement, Tarana Burke joins Prentis for this episode. Tarana is sharing the portals that me too has opened and made possible in our culture, her framework on the solvability of sexual violence, and how we shouldn’t believe the lie that we can’t break apart systems of power.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains conversation of sexual violence and child sexual abuse. If you are triggered by that, please be choiceful how you listen to this episode. Pace yourself, take breaks, or listen with a friend

• Check out the me too International: Survivors Sanctuary
• Follow Tarana on Instagram
• If you enjoyed this conversation, go listen to Prentis’ first convo with Tarana on the Finding Our Way podcast

Transcript

Prentis Hemphill
00:07 - 00:27
I'm Prentis Hemphill. This episode is a really timely one. The last couple weeks, we have all been perhaps inundated or overwhelmed with the news of the release of documents in the Jeffrey Epstein case and cases. It's been a trying week.

Prentis Hemphill
00:27 - 00:53
I mean, the things that we've seen, the stories that we've heard, the images that were shared, it's been really overwhelming. I know a lot of survivors are reeling from that and feeling triggered by that. And that makes so much sense. You know, I think for me, one of the things that I've been sitting with this week was how casual people spoke about the abuse, how casual people treated the abuse that was happening.

Prentis Hemphill
00:54 - 01:36
And we see in the documents that it is high profile people, people who are moneyed, people who are entertainers, people who are spiritual leaders that are in these documents kind of casually referring to sexual abuse of children. And that was really shocking for me, the kind of pedestrian way people talked about attending parties, what had happened at parties. It's been really, really shocking. And I think the other thing that's been sitting with me in that reflection is how casual and how central, how central abuse was to this class of people and how they related to each other.

Prentis Hemphill
01:37 - 02:00
That it was one of the ways they organized their years, like, when is the party going to happen this year? It was a reference point, a kind of social reference point. What brought people together across political lines, across fields, was the abuse of children. And that has really upset me this week.

Prentis Hemphill
02:00 - 02:51
It's been shocking and disturbing to think about the centrality of abuse of children. And it's not that I hadn't thought that before or didn't think that that was possible, but Feeling the ritual nature of it, the unrepentant nature of it, the casual way that people talked about it just really, really sickened me. And it just really, really sickened me. And I guess what I want to offer all of us in a week that might have been incredibly triggering is just understanding that what we're seeing is a class of people a group of people who are obsessed with power over.

Prentis Hemphill
02:51 - 03:31
And, you know, years ago, I used to work in an organization called Generation Five that worked on ending childhood sexual abuse. And what I learned in doing that work was that this kind of all sexual violence and this kind of sexual abuse also is always about power. It's always about exerting power over. I can't really say what's happening inside of people, but I know that it exists because people are expressing a certain kind of flagrant power over and disregard for life, for hurting other people, for hurting children.

Prentis Hemphill
03:33 - 04:10
It's an intolerance or incapability of power with, of sharing power, of collaborating, of negotiation, of connection, of real intimacy, that it's a negation of that out of fear or cowardice or simply their own training. But it really is about power. And so it makes sense in a way that we're seeing powerful so-called people in those positions celebrating their domination or dominance over others and over us in a way. So that's the lesson I'm taking from this.

Prentis Hemphill
04:10 - 04:19
And I know that sexual abuse happens across class lines. It happens across race lines. It happens across geography. It really impacts everyone.

Prentis Hemphill
04:19 - 04:56
And I know working as a therapist, the majority of the people I worked with came in with a childhood sexual abuse story. So this is something that reaches all of us in every walk of life and in every place that we see it, we see this story of power over. That is people grappling with their sense of power with other people and abusing children especially because of that, because of children's powerlessness inside of our system. So I'm saying all this because I've been grappling with it myself, I've been thinking about it.

Prentis Hemphill
04:56 - 05:29
I've been texting Tarana Burke in the last few months because I've been really interested in this idea of survivor power, and that's something that Tarana and me too has been focused on for years, that survivors are a group of people that have tremendous power. If we can come out of the shame, come out of the isolation, we are the many. And there's a power in us reclaiming our own bodies, our stories, our connection with each other, our relationships with each other. There's a power in that.

Prentis Hemphill
05:31 - 06:11
So I was grateful that Tarana said yes to having this conversation with me. We actually had this conversation I think a couple months ago now, so a lot has happened since, but it still feels like a really relevant conversation. And she brings so much nuance and clarity to understanding the experience for survivors and the potential for survivors coming together to tell our stories, to push for shifts in our culture that don't allow this type of abuse to happen. And I think it's important for us to start to interrogate in this moment, how we understand leadership, who we put in charge, how we understand power and how we practice it in our own lives.

Prentis Hemphill
06:12 - 06:24
So I hope you enjoy this episode. I do want to offer a disclaimer that we are talking about childhood sexual abuse. We are talking about sexual violence. So if you are triggered by that, please be choiceful in how you listen to the episode.

Prentis Hemphill
06:25 - 06:35
You can pace yourself. You can listen with someone. But I think this is an important listen for all survivors and anyone who's ever loved survivors or known survivors. It's for all of us.

Prentis Hemphill
06:35 - 06:49
So I hope you enjoy it and thank you Tarana, as always, I am excited to see you. I'm excited to talk to you. I have so many questions. I've been thinking about you almost nonstop, just given this moment.

Prentis Hemphill
06:49 - 06:53
But first, I just want to say thank you for coming on the podcast. I'm so happy to see you.

Tarana Burke
06:54 - 07:02
I'm happy to be here. Always happy to be here. Always happy to hang out with you, even for a short period of time virtually. But thank you for having me.

Prentis Hemphill
07:02 - 07:19
Yes, yes, yes. I have so many places I want to go with this conversation, but I think first I just want to acknowledge where we are in this moment, but like where Me Too has been over this last period of time. Like, what year are we in now? It's been how many?

Tarana Burke
07:20 - 07:23
This is year eight since the hashtag went viral.

Prentis Hemphill
07:23 - 07:24
Eight years.

Tarana Burke
07:25 - 07:25
Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill
07:26 - 07:26
Wow.

Tarana Burke
07:26 - 07:59
It's eight years. It seems incredible that that amount of time has passed. Just because I can reference the moment in my mind like it was you know, almost two weeks ago, but yeah, it's year eight. And it's interesting that you put it that way, like where we are, because at year five, you know, I come out of the civil rights movement, not the actual civil rights movement, but the civil rights movement and from and raised by people who were part of the civil

Tarana Burke
07:59 - 07:59
rights movement.

Prentis Hemphill
07:59 - 08:02
And you're like, I'm not that age.

Tarana Burke
08:02 - 08:29
I'm not that old. I'm very sensitive. Once you turn 50, you get a little sensitive. I was very keen, living and working in Selma, Alabama, and being a part of those commemorations of, you know, Bloody Sunday and Selma to Montgomery March, I was very keen to how people responded to every fifth anniversary, right?

Tarana Burke
08:29 - 08:52
It was a struggle for us to have, we had low attendance in between the fifth anniversaries and people in low media attention. in between those anniversaries, but the consistent thing were the people who were a part of the movement came every year consistently. They showed up every year consistently, didn't matter what the year was, right? We had our foot soldiers breakfast.

Tarana Burke
08:52 - 09:13
We had our, you know, the reenactment every year. And so when the fifth anniversary of Me Too rolled around, I was really clear that I wanted us to control the narrative, or to have more control of the narrative, because I knew what the media was going to focus on is, well, where are they now, right? What's Harvey Weinstein doing? And where is R.

Tarana Burke
09:13 - 09:35
Kelly? And all that kind of thing. And I knew that from the moment Me Too went viral up until that year, and since, this movement has always been about the survivors. And from the moment Me Too went viral until now, mainstream media, and really pop culture, has not had its focus on survivors.

Tarana Burke
09:36 - 10:08
And so we flipped the narrative at year five, and we have done that since, to make sure people ask the question, what has Me Too made possible? Right? And that slight change in focus and narrative meant that instead of saying, where are these people who cause harm and made us start, you know, talking about the trauma that we experienced, it's like, what can we do five years after this hashtag that we couldn't do six years ago?

Tarana Burke
10:08 - 10:38
Yeah, what has that what portal has opened up what pathways have opened up what has shifted in culture and policy in in just all in narrative and all kind of ways, and in the lives of actual material lives of people who have experienced this harm in real life. Right? And I would be in interviews and the reporters or whatever would start asking these questions. And I would say, I'm not answering that, but I can tell you what Me Too has made possible.

Tarana Burke
10:38 - 10:51
And so when you ask me like, what's going on with Me Too now, I think about that in two ways. I think about what we've made possible. And I think about what we're trying to make possible. Right?

Tarana Burke
10:52 - 11:09
And that's how I kind of, that's how I move all the time. I'm always thinking about what we've made possible and what we're trying to make possible. What we've made possible so far is numbers of things that are like brass tacks. There's all kinds of laws that have passed, policies.

Tarana Burke
11:10 - 11:37
Even when you think about, like, I keep having to draw this line for people when they're talking about the things that show up in the media right now. Like when the Diddy case happened a few months ago and, you know, the verdict wasn't what some people thought it should be. And there's all kinds of debates about that. The immediate headlines, which we hear all the time, the Me Too movement is clearly dead.

Tarana Burke
11:37 - 12:08
And this is the final nail in the Me Too coffin. And it's like, interestingly enough, we are always, this is the same thing that keeps coming up. However, what Me Too made possible is to get a multimillionaire like Sean Combs into a courtroom and actually get a verdict against him and some level of accountability for a man who's operated with impunity for two decades.

Prentis Hemphill
12:08 - 12:10
Right, right, right.

Tarana Burke
12:11 - 12:34
One of the witnesses in his case literally said, when asked why she didn't come forward before, and she said, it was before Me Too. Like, we live in a world that was pre-MeToo and post-MeToo. She said that, right, in her testimony. So there's a litany of things that are actual tangible material things that MeToo has made possible.

Tarana Burke
12:34 - 13:24
You can draw a direct line, literally, like in cases like that, from the hashtag going viral to survivors coming forward. Some of those survivors who came forward literally, some from the Russell Simmons case, some from the Governor Cuomo case, literally were the people who helped to lobby for the law to be changed in New York that created the look back law that opened up the time period for people to sue for sexual violence that they experienced in this period of time, which allowed Cassie to sue Diddy, which set that whole thing in motion, right? So you can draw a direct line from the viral hashtag to that man being in the courtroom to that verdict.

Tarana Burke
13:25 - 13:45
So no, you're not going to change the US legal system in eight years, right? The system wasn't set up to provide what some people would call actual fair and just accountability. But that kind of shift in eight years is incredible. Absolutely.

Prentis Hemphill
13:47 - 14:33
I kind of want to talk about that a little bit more because, I mean, you and I come from different, like, it's not even corners, but like different spaces and movement related and different. And I think one of the things that I've been reflecting on a lot lately is just what it actually Takes to to change things on that scale and on that level. So when people are like, oh me too's over. It's like actually No, we still haven't gotten the point fully of what me too is doing and is capable of doing because I I think it's so powerful that you're like we needed to control the narrative because you know that a lot of the Media attention it wants

Prentis Hemphill
14:33 - 15:00
to like build something so that it can like, you know also report on its demise It wants to say oh This is swelling and then we got rid of it and on to the next thing and it shapes the way people even understand What's happening? So of course given the way we're all trained in just the shape of this culture, the first way that people are going to understand what's happening in Me Too is through, what are these men? What's happening to these men's lives? What's happening?

Prentis Hemphill
15:01 - 15:24
And I'm saying men in particular, not only to point to, you know, who's been most public, but to say, like, it's actually a narrow view of what's Happening I think around sexual abuse because it's not only men. It's not only family man. It's not it's like it's a much wider Thing but we want to go. Well, what's happening to this individual life?

Prentis Hemphill
15:25 - 15:31
And I think what you're saying about survivors. It's like actually This is this is much bigger than them. We haven't learned that yet.

Tarana Burke
15:32 - 15:55
We haven't learned that and Listen, the biggest case that came from the New York look back law had nothing to do with Diddy. It actually had to do with the 700 plus women who sued the New York state prison system for what they experienced when they were incarcerated in New York state prisons. Right? That case is unprecedented.

Tarana Burke
15:55 - 16:24
You had over 700 women who sued New York State for the sexual violence that they experienced while incarcerated in the prison system in New York. Never to happen in the history of this country. that got almost zero media attention. So when we talk about why Black women have the second highest rate experience with sexual violence in this country, we often talk about it in relation to Black men and what they experience in our communities.

Tarana Burke
16:24 - 16:55
We don't talk about what Black women experience in the hands of law enforcement and why that has our numbers exponentially high. When people talk about Me Too and they talk about my story and they talk about, we talk about men and women all the time. We don't talk about children. the vast numbers of children, when we look at the numbers of people who said Me Too, 12 million people in 24 hours is the number you hear quoted all the time, 12 million people in 24 hours, and when the hashtag first went viral.

Tarana Burke
16:56 - 17:31
The vast majority of those people were responding to the call to say Me Too, but the vast majority of those people were not new survivors. they were adult survivors of child sexual abuse. And it's as hard as that is to hear, it's a reality that we don't ever want to, we've never unpacked, we've never talked about. These were adult survivors who had experienced this from as children, as teenagers, and were carrying that trauma into adulthood and had never talked about it.

Tarana Burke
17:31 - 17:54
I have told the story, story, story, after story, after story. One of the hardest stories I ever had was a 80 something year old white woman who I met in the Pittsburgh airport who recognized me. She was with her family and peeled off to the side to tell me that it had happened to her when she was a small girl of like four years old. This was an 85 year old white woman who had never told a soul.

Tarana Burke
17:54 - 18:06
Wow. Me too for the first time. right? These are the, that's the proliferation of stories, but we don't talk about child sexual abuse as a public health crisis in this country.

Tarana Burke
18:08 - 18:10
That's what the, that's, that's what is behind me too.

Prentis Hemphill
18:12 - 18:47
I want to talk about, I want to, I, this, I do want to talk about that. I want to talk about that right now. Cause it, it is, so pertinent to this moment, but I think what you just said, it's like this, it's a hidden epidemic. You know, I tell the story often of when I was seeing clients in a therapy, therapeutic setting, and I shit you not, every, almost every single client that I saw was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Prentis Hemphill
18:47 - 19:15
I would say easily 90% of the people that I saw that came in and everybody would tell me that. as though it were something shocking that they were gonna tell me that I wasn't expecting. I could almost like feel when it was about to come, to be like, next time I'm gonna tell you, next time we have a session, I'm gonna tell you something that it's a big deal, I've never told anybody. And I would sit there and I go, I know what they're gonna say.

Prentis Hemphill
19:15 - 19:27
I mean, I'm here to receive it, but I know what's coming because it is everywhere, because every single person is having that experience. And yet we don't, Talk about it.

Tarana Burke
19:27 - 19:41
You know what? Anecdotally, I'll never forget. I used to watch the show, My 600-lb Life, the show with the doctor now, and he's helping the people lose weight, whatever. And I remember telling my girlfriend one time, I was like, do you recognize this pattern?

Tarana Burke
19:42 - 19:44
I don't know if you've watched the show.

Prentis Hemphill
19:44 - 19:47
I know it exists, but I haven't seen it yet.

Tarana Burke
19:48 - 20:13
So as a part of the show, he's a doctor, and you go to his clinic, and you go through his program. As a part of his program, he assigns you a therapist. And the therapist is this different, there's been different women at different times, but they come to the house and they do like an assessment. When I say that probably, because I didn't watch it religiously, but I'll just say 75, 75% at least of the clients were survivors of child sexual abuse.

Tarana Burke
20:14 - 20:25
And it wasn't, ever talked about as like, wow, this keeps happening, or wow, does anybody see a pattern? But because I'm attuned to it, I was like, it's always this.

Prentis Hemphill
20:25 - 20:26
Yeah, always.

Tarana Burke
20:26 - 20:35
It's always this, right? It pops up as themes. And even in movies, it pops up as a theme in movies. Right.

Tarana Burke
20:36 - 20:53
They'll allude to it. They'll talk about why the, what the trauma is in this person's life as a character's life. It's like a plot device that's used in movies of times, but not explored because it's just that prevalent. It's just that prevalent.

Tarana Burke
20:54 - 21:08
And people talk about me and my story all the time. I remember when I was seven. You have to tell this story correctly. Not only was I seven, but the Me Too movement was built from children.

Tarana Burke
21:08 - 21:31
I was working with junior high school children. These were sixth and seventh and eighth grade children is where this started with. You know what I mean? We are not really adequately, and honestly, we do it, I will tell you, one of the most devastating experiences I've had as a young adult outside of this work was when Sandy Hook happened.

Tarana Burke
21:32 - 22:06
And I'll never forget the feeling, I could not shake it for a very long time that they let those babies die. Like, not just let them die, but that our response as a country that there was just not a national morning in a way that was it like 26 first graders, like, you know, so like the ways in which that we don't care for children in this country are so so so it's just. beyond comprehension to me.

Tarana Burke
22:07 - 22:37
So gun violence would probably be the next thing to sexual violence or as adjacent to sexual violence. But there's so much evidence of how little we care for our children. And I would say, and I've seen both in my experience growing up, both gun violence and sexual violence against children in the communities that I grew up in. And it's just, I can't comprehend how we don't care for our children.

Tarana Burke
22:37 - 23:07
The difference is with gun violence, and I use this analogy often because I grew up in urban community, when gun violence happens against children, there is an immediate, response at the very least in the community, right? People can recognize this is not okay, and they say, I want to keep my children safe, and they rally, and they say, what do we need to do, right? At the very least, there's an immediate response. There's a visceral reaction that says this is not okay.

Tarana Burke
23:08 - 23:31
Children shouldn't die, right? When a child is sexually abused in a community, it's the opposite. There's a retraction. there's an immediate retraction, there's an immediate, we have to strategize how to both protect this child's, protect the family, protect the community, right?

Tarana Burke
23:32 - 24:00
And all that just translates into shame for the child, right? To keep shame from, I mean, you know, we understand how this operates, but there isn't a similar response that says, wait a minute, Even if the response was, we have to keep the other children in the community safe, right? And I think we have to push ourselves to, we have to reimagine safety for our communities. If there's gun violence in the community, the community isn't safe.

Tarana Burke
24:00 - 24:14
If there's sexual violence in the community, the community isn't safe. If one child is being sexually abused in your community, your community is not safe. And we have, yeah, we have that wrong.

Prentis Hemphill
24:14 - 24:41
I think there's something, so it's like hitting me so hard on what you're saying. It's just like how much is held together by the shame of children, especially around sexual violence? Like how much adults who harm children in this way rely on the shame mechanism that exists in children? Because for children, you know, if I don't belong, that's it really is life or death.

Prentis Hemphill
24:42 - 24:58
If I, it really, everything kind of boils down to that when you're a kid, because you, you can't, you are dependent on your family for a number of things. So shame is a real immobilizing force for a child. And you're relying on that.

Tarana Burke
24:58 - 25:17
I get, They absolutely rely on it. When I think about this, and I'm in my head about it a lot, but I'm just like, we don't even know each other. We don't know each other. We know the versions that have we created to protect ourselves when we were six and seven and eight years old.

Tarana Burke
25:17 - 25:49
We don't know who we were supposed to be. I created a version of myself so that I could feel accepted in the world. I remember, and I talk freely about Kaia, my daughter, my child's abuse and what happened because they allow me to. But as a parent, I remember very, a parent and a survivor, I remember very clearly the shift happening before and after Kaia, What happened to Kaia happened at five.

Tarana Burke
25:50 - 26:22
The Kaia before was bold and too bold, like would climb things and would, you know, would just like always be adventurous and always just a big, big, big personality. And the kaya after, I started seeing a little bit of this shrinking. And I recognized the attempt to be bold versus the actual boldness. So it was like, I know this is who I was, and I need to try to keep up to be who I was so that people don't know.

Tarana Burke
26:23 - 27:00
But I watched a hesitation before the boldness, whereas before it would be like, I'm just doing it. And it was just because I was always trying to be attuned to what was happening with my kid for these same reasons. but I had missed the moment of protecting them because we were in a space that I thought was safe. But I just, I'm just saying to say, like, you know, I've told the story many times, but I think about that because I think about so much of the before and after, and so many of us who just grow into adults in that character, in that person who

Tarana Burke
27:00 - 27:16
we created to carry the things, you know, carry this ourselves for, the person we created to protect ourselves and left that little person behind. It's just, we're just the walking wounded, so many of us.

Prentis Hemphill
27:16 - 27:16
So many.

Tarana Burke
27:17 - 27:17
Most.

Prentis Hemphill
27:18 - 27:19
I really believe most.

Tarana Burke
27:19 - 27:19
Most.

Prentis Hemphill
27:19 - 27:47
I really believe most. First of all, every time I hear you just talk about that and talk about it so openly, it really impacts me and touches me that you just have that ability to reflect and just parent your child that way. acknowledge and acknowledge how prevalent, how much this is happening as a survivor and a mother. It's just the complexity of it all.

Prentis Hemphill
27:47 - 28:01
So just acknowledge that. And I've been, I think I left you a voice memo a couple of months ago. I was like, Tarana, I want to talk to you. You must have woke up with it on your heart.

Tarana Burke
28:01 - 28:01
I did.

Prentis Hemphill
28:01 - 28:12
I was like, I need to talk to you about this. And we're already kind of in, you know, talking about it. But I've been looking around at this kind of political moment. And this episode isn't going to come out right away.

Prentis Hemphill
28:12 - 28:59
But as we're recording this, there's the whole the the news story about is the list going to come out the Epstein list is going to come out who's on the list, the emails and all this stuff. And we can get into that or not get into that. But my the thing that I'm most I've become most aware of that I think probably you already know and understand in a different way is that this unconscious, if I think about it from that perspective, from like my therapy training, the kind of unconscious stuff that's around the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse, the prevalence of people abusing other people that way, that we don't talk about it, but it's just under the surface.

Prentis Hemphill
29:00 - 29:31
I think about all the conspiracies that have been fueled by finding out who the abusers are, who the pedophiles are, and how deeply involved people have gotten in those stories. And for a long time, I was just like, you know, people like conspiracies. But more and more as these stories are like, I mean, they're kind of almost a central feature of this era of US politics. I'm like, actually, there's something here that exists.

Prentis Hemphill
29:31 - 30:10
There's so many survivors who have not processed, who've been holding on shame, whatever it might be, that it seems to me are channeling some of their experience, some of their rightful anger. some of the horror of what they've experienced into these big names and all of that. And I think what's untouched is really, I think the power of what survivors know and have experienced. I think what you're doing with Me Too, the stories that people tell, that it actually has the power to upend everything.

Prentis Hemphill
30:10 - 30:25
if we really give those stories and survivors the room and space, because I see it upending everything, but in a diverted way, rather than in a community way.

Tarana Burke
30:26 - 30:43
Yeah, I think that you, I think you're onto something there. I think, you know, it's the same reason why so many of us watch Law & Order SVU like an addiction, right? It's just, it's funny. I remember when it was coming, when that show was coming out and I thought, that's a horrible idea, right?

Tarana Burke
30:43 - 31:18
Like, oh my gosh, why would you want to subject us to, as a, in my mind, as a survivor, I was just like, oh my God, I don't. And then I watched it and I was, I was, I was like hooked. I'm like, there was something cathartic about watching the capture and watching the hunt and watching, and I'm, you know, anti-carceral and all the things as the movement Tarana, but as the survivor Tarana, I was like, this is great. And I have, this is my, I love the show, right?

Tarana Burke
31:18 - 31:50
I'm not even afraid to say it anymore, but, So I think there's some of that in there, right? Because it is much easier, it feels better to lean into the scarcity of fear and the comfort of the little bit of something that may feel like it masks itself as accountability, because it's not. really, right? It's just the pretense of something that you think that you know you'll never get.

Tarana Burke
31:50 - 32:18
I remember when Weinstein was first arrested and I was on CNN when they did his perp walk. I forget the person who was the anchor, who was like, wow, that's something, huh? Like, never thought we'd see that. And I said something to the effect of like, this is gonna be really helpful and cathartic for a lot of survivors to see, but we can't mistake this for movement and this for healing, right?

Tarana Burke
32:18 - 32:42
Like this is all of it, all of these men, these singular men who we see, caught doing something, arrested in these big spectacle cases, I think there are survivors around the country who see that and they feel really good, right? Momentarily, it's like, oh, this is a win. We need a win. And I get that.

Tarana Burke
32:42 - 33:24
I understand that so, so, so, so much. right, that feeling, I think it's again why we feed in some of, some of, some survivors will feed into the like, we got to get the list, we got to get the, we got to get these names, but from a very brass tacks sort of political, I'm not a political strategist either, but like political strategies kind of sense, I want to hold people's hand when I say this sometimes, like the list does not matter. And I know that's hard and probably something that people don't want to hear me say and would maybe feel harmful.

Tarana Burke
33:24 - 33:42
And I only mean that to say that, let me just say it. Maybe I should say it this way. It doesn't matter if you don't actually care about the survivors of the people on that list. It doesn't matter if you're not going to actually take action about the situations that cause the violence.

Tarana Burke
33:43 - 34:12
you know, to create the circumstance for the violence that happened by the, you know what I mean? Like getting this list of names, so you can be like, ha ha, gotcha, doesn't mean anything, that's super empty. Not to mention the fact that every one of those, I don't know if you saw the, they had the survivors of, Epstein and Maxwell did a press conference some weeks ago, and it was incredible. These women were incredible.

Tarana Burke
34:12 - 34:31
They stood up, and it was also really incredible that the media allowed them to just speak freely for a very long time. But they got up, and for the first time, they really spoke for themselves and spoke freely. And I'm thinking, I'm like, this is your list, right? These are the names to know right here.

Tarana Burke
34:32 - 34:45
These are the stories that we need to hear. We're looking at adult women right now, but these were children. I wish they had held up pictures. And some of them, I think, had pictures of themselves then.

Tarana Burke
34:46 - 35:20
You talking about skinny little prepubescent 14 and 15-year-old, no matter what Megyn Kelly says, an adult man who wants to have sex with a child, Right? Whether it's legal in some states or not, we can debate morality versus law all day. It's not okay. It's not okay because as I tell survivors all the time who ask me questions like, well, this happened to me and I don't know if I can say me too or not.

Tarana Burke
35:20 - 35:44
And I'm like, it's not about the actual facts of what happened to you. It's about what it left you with. And if those women are standing there saying that they were traumatized by these experiences, they are survivors. They are survivors at the hands of the abuse and the grooming and the trauma that that woman and that man put them through.

Prentis Hemphill
35:44 - 35:45
That's right.

Tarana Burke
35:46 - 36:04
That's right. So this list that people are demanding, right? It's the other part about this demand for the list that makes me uncomfortable is that what we do to survivors of sexual violence in this country often is make us political fodder, right? It's like political football.

Tarana Burke
36:05 - 36:29
So it's like in the Kavanaugh case, when Christine Blasey Ford came forth to testify, again, we talking about 30, whatever, 40 years later from the incident, but she was describing a bunch of teenagers at a party. She was talking about riding her bicycle. right? We're talking about a very young girl.

Tarana Burke
36:29 - 36:56
She's talking about being at a listening to music and a party and trying to find all the things that we remember and we should remember fondly about high school, about junior high school, right? She's having now to testify as an adult for about a Supreme Court justice, but all we can do, we can't, it's very difficult for people to place themselves back in that time period and say, that's not okay.

Prentis Hemphill
36:56 - 37:27
Especially when everybody and so many people are carrying blame that is undue themselves. Like, it's hard for me to empathize with what happened to a young girl when I'm carrying shame about what happened to me and blame as though it were my fault what happened to me. Then I can't extend that to somebody else. And I don't think we realize that, how much it blocks us from understanding where that person was, what they were going through, because you're holding, well, I shouldn't have been doing that.

Prentis Hemphill
37:27 - 37:28
And I shouldn't have said this.

Tarana Burke
37:30 - 37:59
For a moment in time, there is concern about sexual violence. For a moment in time, you have the Democrats coming forward, talking about this issue for this moment. Just like now with Epstein, you have some people on the left and folks in the Democratic Party who are like, release the files, release the files. Biden was in office for four whole years, We can talk about Epstein or his files.

Tarana Burke
38:00 - 38:15
We can talk about releasing them. We can talk about what these survivors deserve, right? One of Epstein's survivors is gone. This lady is gone now and was crying for help the whole time she was here.

Tarana Burke
38:16 - 38:44
So using survivors when it's convenient and politically expedient is also not okay. So that's why the demand for the list bothers me because I'm like, to what end? We cannot keep couching sexual violence inside of other things and hoping that it will be solved. We cannot keep saying that, bring it up now because you know, that sexual violence is bad and that'll bring down so-and-so and that'll get people riled up.

Tarana Burke
38:45 - 39:24
What people are doing now is using this, Epstein is only really an issue because Trump's base is upset about it. some of his base is upset about it, and it's a moment that there can be a crack in the hole that he has. And politically, I understand that, but as somebody who cares very deeply about the people who are traumatized by that, you can't keep doing that to survivors, particularly when this is an issue that crosses every single area of social justice. We won't actually, and I'm talking to us now, us, air quotes.

Tarana Burke
39:25 - 39:34
We can't allow that to happen. We got to stand 10 toes down about it or not. This is a social justice issue. This is a public health crisis.

Tarana Burke
39:35 - 39:52
And if you want to solve gun violence and environmental justice issues, if you want to deal with, you know, mass incarceration and police brutality, if you want to deal with all of the social ills of our day, you have to address sexual and gender-based violence. There's no way around it.

Prentis Hemphill
39:56 - 40:17
Well, let's talk about that some because I do, I feel like that's where we get stuck. I think with the list too, I'm like, people want the list because it's also finite and contained. I mean, if we want to make a list, there are lists that implicate people we know, people we love. Now, I think this question of like, can we really face this?

Prentis Hemphill
40:17 - 40:59
It's a big one. When we talk about, okay, we don't know, like the beginning of, I don't know if you know this, but like the history of Therapy in the very beginning when when Freud was studying trauma he Was trying to understand what they were calling, you know This hysterics and women primarily and what he found when he was researching that was basically that they were all survivors of childhood sexual abuse Mm-hmm, and it was to scrap it, right didn't they scrapped it? he tried for a little bit to talk about it, but eventually scrapped it because he was a basically revealing that all of these powerful men had been abusing these young women.

Prentis Hemphill
41:00 - 41:23
And that was too much to actually confront. So we have to go around what we already know to be true, and try to come up with some other stuff. So I think the The question of what we do about this, to me, can feel like such a daunting question. When you talk about it is connected to all these issues, it cuts across everybody.

Prentis Hemphill
41:23 - 41:38
I feel the truth in that. And then I feel, well, shit, what are we going to do? How do we begin? Because not only are people survivors, there are people who are survivors, perpetrators, there's people who are bystanders.

Prentis Hemphill
41:39 - 41:51
There's like this web that gets revealed that shows how we're all a part of this in a million different ways. So how do we start? Let me tell you. I'm ready.

Tarana Burke
41:51 - 42:37
I have this framework that I've been, I'm calling it a framework because I think that's just my favorite word at this point, but I've been working on for a minute and I call it solvability. And it's a narrative and strategic intervention around sexual and gender-based violence because what I have come to realize in this work is that we were doing some work in Me Too, an organization, a few years back. And we were talking about narrative strategy. And we were like, we need to really get the message out that sexual violence is not a foregone conclusion, that it doesn't have to be a foregone conclusion.

Tarana Burke
42:37 - 43:16
And it doesn't have to be. We raise our children, particularly our girls, to understand it as an inevitability of life. That if you think about how we treat girls in particular from a very, very young age, we start preparing them in small and big ways to keep themselves safe, to protect themselves, to separate themselves from situations that might lead to some form of sexual violence, right? And I have that, that sat with me so deeply.

Tarana Burke
43:16 - 43:29
Cause I, you know, I write about that in my book about the ways that we prepare ourselves. Like I was always prepared and told why, but I was never told why. Why do I have to live like this? Why am I?

Tarana Burke
43:29 - 43:49
And I think, as I started thinking more about these questions, I started thinking about these systems that exist specifically to perpetrate the violence. And it makes me think even about this fraud thing, right? This fraud situation we were just talking about. This is the father, quote unquote, of psychiatry.

Prentis Hemphill
43:50 - 43:55
So you set the standard for how we think about- I love that you called him fraud.

Tarana Burke
43:56 - 44:24
But, but like, this is supposed to be the person who set the standard for, for thinking about how we delve into our psychology. And there's an argument to be made about like, these are how these systems are created. You, we set up, these systems were set up to protect and perpetrate the violence.

Prentis Hemphill
44:25 - 44:25
Right.

Tarana Burke
44:27 - 44:33
Right. Right. And then you tell us, well, is this just how it is? So you just got to figure out how to protect yourself from it.

Tarana Burke
44:33 - 44:42
That's a lie. That's a lie. So solvability is first about dismantling the lie. It's not inevitable.

Tarana Burke
44:42 - 45:00
We don't have to live like this. And second, it's about how do we make strategic interventions into dismantling those systems? And the thing that I just resolved myself to also a few years ago is we can't do it just by saying sexual violence is wrong. We just can't.

Tarana Burke
45:00 - 45:22
People don't care enough. They don't care enough. They don't connect enough for all of the reasons we've been talking about on this podcast now and all the reasons that we know and we can talk about forever and ever. However, when you flank sexual violence, sexual and gender-based violence alongside other things that people do care about and understand.

Tarana Burke
45:23 - 45:42
For instance, when I was talking about gun violence and when you talk about reproductive justice, or when you talk about environmental justice, when you talk about these other things, and people sort of pay attention. Just the other day, I was talking about mass shootings. I was talking about this thing. I was talking about mass shootings.

Tarana Burke
45:42 - 46:09
And when I quoted that 66% of all mass shootings, mass shooters, have a history of sexual and gender-based violence, it was audible gas around the room. And I'm like, the U.S. has a mass shooter problem. We're like the top in the world or something like that. There's no way to solve that problem without addressing sexual and gender-based violence.

Tarana Burke
46:09 - 46:27
It's a root cause. So solvability is about getting at the root causes. The way we address sexual and gender-based violence right now is primary prevention, which is necessary. Because what I'm talking about are bigger, deeper visioning that's long term.

Tarana Burke
46:28 - 46:49
We have to still protect people right now, right? Primary prevention is about what are the interventions that have to be made day to day to keep people safe. What I'm talking about is what are the things that we have to start undoing Right? What are the systems that we have to start breaking apart?

Tarana Burke
46:49 - 46:59
And when you start talking about breaking apart systems, people feel like, ooh, them systems is hard. They are. They are. And we've been trying to break apart systems for a long time.

Tarana Burke
46:59 - 47:08
And I'm not saying that if you can't break them apart, you got to reconfigure them, right? You got to remix them. You have to interrupt them. You have to upend them.

Tarana Burke
47:09 - 47:14
But what I'm saying is they were made by people so that they can be unmade by people.

Prentis Hemphill
47:14 - 47:16
That's right. That's right.

Tarana Burke
47:16 - 47:26
That's the truth. I promise you, I'm going to go. You might have to put that on my daggone tombstone. Not just tombstone.

Tarana Burke
47:26 - 47:27
Because I'm going to go crazy saying that.

Prentis Hemphill
47:28 - 47:28
Yes.

Tarana Burke
47:29 - 47:39
They were made by people. And so you're not going to tell me that sexual and gender-based violence is not solvable. It is solvable. It is absolutely solvable.

Tarana Burke
47:40 - 47:59
And that is the work that Me Too International is doing now. And we're not doing it alone. We're building coalitions and networks and huge collaborations across the globe and spreading the message of solvability. Because I think as a narrative intervention, it's really, really, I just want to say this last thing about it.

Tarana Burke
48:00 - 48:21
It's really, really important that we shift the way we even talk about it. Right? Again, we were born and brought into this world to think that this is just it. At some point, literally, if you put a classroom of children, and one in 10 of those children are going to experience sexual violence before they turn 10 years old.

Tarana Burke
48:23 - 48:42
That's a truth that has been ingrained in our brain. Right? Like, we have only been preparing for that data, to undo the data, not create new data. Like, I just have to believe that.

Tarana Burke
48:43 - 48:55
something is different, that there are solutions. Matter of fact, not believe there are solutions. The other part of solvability is that I know there are solutions. There are things around this world that are working.

Tarana Burke
48:55 - 49:10
They need to be scaled and they need to be resourced. The other thing that these systems do is when they see something is working, they're like, let's get that out of here. Let me get that $5 and get that. No, no, no, no.

Tarana Burke
49:10 - 49:35
The things that are working have to be scaled and resourced or else, again, which is why we have to attach ourselves to other issues so that you understand that You can get, you can try to solve this crisis, but you're going to be banging your head against the wall. An example that just came up for us was these folks were talking about workforce. This, this big funders were talking about, they did workforce development for women.

Tarana Burke
49:35 - 49:48
And they were like, we just got to get these women to work and we're going to raise them up out of poverty and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were putting all this money into it. And they were like, why is it such a low retention rate? Well, you know why it was a low retention rate?

Tarana Burke
49:49 - 50:20
because the women were experiencing so much gender-based violence that they could not keep up with their jobs. They couldn't do all these different things they were experiencing. The minute they shifted and added extra funding to deal with counseling, to provide emergency assistance, to do all this other stuff, suddenly the retention rates around the workforce stuff shifted. See, we're so focused, and especially in America, we're so focused on power, right?

Tarana Burke
50:20 - 50:34
Everything is about empowerment. And we have sold ourselves the other lie that if we just give women more power, they will be more safe. That is also not true. Power without safety is also a lie.

Tarana Burke
50:35 - 50:55
It's an absolute lie. But they have sold us a bill of goods that you just got to be more powerful, be a girl boss. No, no, let me tell you something. January 6th, 2020, you ask every single one of those women Congress persons who was at the Congress on January 6th, those are some of the most powerful women in this country.

Tarana Burke
50:56 - 51:05
Ask them how safe they felt. Their power did not save them on January 6th. So we can pass all the laws. We can do all the leadership programs.

Tarana Burke
51:05 - 51:16
We can give all the wealth empowerment that we want. If we do not focus on what safety looks like, that power makes no difference. I'm just saying.

Prentis Hemphill
51:18 - 52:06
Oh, all I can do is shake my head because I, I know when I talk to you, when I invite you on the talk and the podcast, I know that I'm about to get something that I didn't know. needed to hear is I know it's gonna come and every time it does I'm just like I Mean bar after bar, but it's not it's not even just that it's like it's um, I Hear the depth of your experience and your love inside of it all Side the way you see the world I see Deep humanity. I also hear a kind of faith and deep humanity, love, and love of community, love of our folks and our people.

Prentis Hemphill
52:06 - 52:06
I mean.

Tarana Burke
52:07 - 52:08
Oh, absolutely.

Prentis Hemphill
52:08 - 52:14
Yeah. I just feel that. And I got chills when you were talking. I think there's honestly nothing more that can be said.

Prentis Hemphill
52:14 - 52:16
It's a mic drop moment.

Tarana Burke
52:18 - 52:22
Listen, you know, I can talk to people ever and ever and ever.

Prentis Hemphill
52:22 - 52:47
I'm so appreciative. it's a specific perspective and a specific heart. I mean, it just feels like those two things together for me. I can, it's the organizer, it's the survivor, it's the person who's doing the work that is theirs to do, that is being faithful in that way.

Prentis Hemphill
52:47 - 53:02
It's all of those things that I hear. And yeah, I'm just, I'm grateful to you always. I appreciate you. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña with special production support this season by Jasmine Stein.

Prentis Hemphill
53:03 - 53:23
It's sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine. Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. If you're enjoying these conversations, Please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Apprentice Hemphill.

Prentis Hemphill
53:24 - 54:30
We are having a great time over there building community, learning together. Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming a People. [MUSIC PLAYS]