Tarana Burke And ‘me too.’ Aim To Disrupt Systems Around Sexual Violence With A New Initiative

A world without sexual violence shouldn’t be hard to envision. Tarana Burke has been working hard to make that a reality.

The me too. International cofounder has just launched the Disruptor’s Council, a collective of influential public figures across various fields who have united to advance the fight against sexual violence for the next decade. The advisors include Gabrielle Union, Viola Davis, Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Marley Dias, and others. 

Burke, who founded the organization in 2006, told NewsOne Managing Editor Monique Judge that the council will act as ambassadors who will help carry the me too. message and disrupt sexual and gender-based violence.

“There’s so much silence because there’s so much shame and there’s so much disinterest, quite frankly,” the Bronx-born activist said. “We have a plethora of disinterest in the issue generally, and so part of what the goal of the Disruptor’s Council is about is to have voices that have an audience and influence that can disrupt the popular discourse. They can disrupt the misinformation.”

According to the United Nations, 1 in 3 women and girls around the world experiences physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. 

“At me too., we believe this is a solvable issue,” Burke said in the interview. “We believe that we don’t have to live in a world with sexual and gender-based violence. These are choices that are made, systems that are entrenched, and so anything that is done can be undone. And there are things that are working in the world, but they need to be resourced and scaled.”

This initiative comes eight years after the hashtag of the same name went viral. And though we’re still far from the reality she’s working towards, Burke acknowledged the progress that’s been made. Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial, for example, may not have ended with the survivors getting the justice they deserved, but there’s victory in the fact that the case made it to a courtroom, Burke said.

Still, there’s work that needs to be done, which is why Burke believes disruptors are so important. And disrupting doesn’t start or end on the celebrity level for real change to happen.

“We are all disruptors. Everybody has a sphere of influence, whether it’s your group chat, whether it’s your Mahjong group, whatever it is,” Burke said. “How you become a disruptor is the sphere of influence you have and disrupting that.”

For communities where talking about sexual and gender-based violence can be taboo, Burke shares some sobering statistics about just how devastating the status quo is.

“We have ways that we can disrupt the narratives that we hear. One of the things we know, particularly in the Black community, is that there’s so much shame in the topic of sexual violence,” she said. “Yet, Black women have the second-highest rate of sexual violence in this country. One in 10 Black children will experience sexual violence before they reach the age of 18. That’s affecting our children.”

In this exclusive interview, Burke discusses me too.’s new initiative, progress since the hashtag went viral, and what changes she hopes to see in the coming years.

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