What If Me Too. Had Been Fully Funded From Day 1?

While the me too. hashtag went viral last fall after Alyssa Milano’s tweet seeking to amplify the voices of sexual violence survivors, the work to build the me too. movement actually began over ten years ago in Selma, Alabama. In 2006, Tarana Burke launched “me too,” an initiative centering young girls of color in finding pathways to healing from sexual violence. A year later, Third Wave Fund gave me too. their first grant, helping them purchase supplies, materials, and covering travel costs for young girls of color in their programming. We chatted with me too. movement founder & organizer Tarana Burke to dive deeper into the invisible labor of Black women that brought us to where the me too. movement is today, and the importance of redirecting philanthropy away from primarily funding large-scale, trending movements.

Third Wave Fund: There's a lot of excitement when a movement peaks and becomes popular. That’s when you actually start to see big funders throwing major dollars down. But what did it actually take to get to where the me too. Movement is today? Can you speak to the labor that brought us to this present moment?

Tarana Burke: Oh yeah, for sure! This has been something that been funded, if you could call it that, out of my back pocket since the beginning. I co-founded an organization with my friend called Just Be Inc. We got a small grant from Third Wave, and you know a couple other less than $5K grants, but they were super helpful for us because we didn’t have a ton of needs. Doing the work with Just Be made it abundantly clear that we had to shift and start doing something for young girls [around sexual violence] because the young girls we saw were constantly coming up to us with stories of different kinds of sexual violence they had experienced.

TWF: What role did young people take on in the me too. initiative? What does their role look like today?

Tarana: I started at 13 years old, and so I believe very strongly in youth-led work because that's exactly who I was. Young people being trained to lead healing circles with their peers, and young people being trained to take leadership in the work to end sexual violence, can happen before any particular age. If i didn't have elders who believed strongly in a model that calls for young people to step out on their own and for adults to play a supporting role, then I would’ve either peaked too soon or I would’ve not been guided well. They were there for guidance, but they didn’t interject in ways that made us feel diminished.

TWF: You said in an interview once that this movement is more than just about centering you or Alyssa Milano, and that it’s more about the survivors when we think about where credit is due. That also makes me think about a lot of the invisible labor that goes into building a movement; Can you elaborate more on the invisible labor, especially of Black women, that went into building the me too. Movement?

Tarana: You know, at one point, I didn’t even have a car, neither me nor my partner who was helping me. We didn’t have a vehicle, and we were walking from one school to another [giving presentations], pooling our resources. There are a string of Black women who helped us along the way, from elders who gave us a couple of dollars here and there to do the work, to like, a Black woman at Kinkos. I would come on Fridays [to Kinkos] after I got paid and get a bunch of stuff copied; we wanted our stuff to look good cause we were working with young people [laughs]. So anyway, this woman at Kinkos stopped me one day and said “Is this your stuff? What is this you’re doing?” and she was really taken by it, like she wanted to cry. Next time I came up to her at her counter, she said “listen, just come during this time and this time, make sure you pay for something, and the rest is on me.” And she printed a BUNCH of our materials. Same thing with t-shirts. We were online and this woman reached out via Myspace and said “I love what you’re doing and I really just want to help, how can I help?” and we were like I don’t know, you know, cause we were still trying to figure out what we needed. Finally I said I’m trying to figure out how to get t-shirts. She said “Done, I can send you t-shirts, no problem” and this woman sent us 500 t-shirts. Amazing when I think about it. Just random Black women who wanted to support the work.

"In terms of what’s happening now, I hope that what we see are more philanthropic entities that are ready to take a chance on bright ideas. Cause this was just a bright idea that I had."
​

TWF: It really is the people [who are putting in money] that actually don’t have the money to begin with, because they understand the criticalness of all of this work. How can more people support movement-building and trust that the work has value when its smaller-scale?

Tarana: The work has to come offline and in the streets at some point. It can’t just be sustained by an online presence, that’s not realistic. Not even just because everyone is not on the internet, but, movements are about a physical, literal movement. You have to move people from one place to another. They have to see you, feel you, and connect with you, in order to trust you. That’s how you organize. You can’t organize people unless you build a real, foundational trust, and I think you can only do that in person.

TWF: And to build on that more, why is it important to redirect philanthropy to not just fund popular, large-scale movements, but powerful, small-scale grassroots work?

Tarana: If you look at the me too. Movement as a model for that, we are an initiative that started with zero funding. We were checking in with Third Wave about another grant for Just Be [for our general, leadership development work for girls] and in the excitement of talking about that, we talked to her about me too. and explained to her the premise behind it. She said, “I want to give you a discretionary grant. I think this work is amazing and we want to give you just a small grant to see if it’s helpful.” and we were like “Is it helpful? Might as well be a million dollars!” Like, we were so desperately in need for some additional resources. I think that foundations need to reach past what they know. Talk to the people who are the most affected. Invest in leadership development. If you’re at a table talking about a topic and the people you’re talking about aren’t at that table. I don’t mean just the leaders, I mean on-the-ground people, in the realest sense. Those people have to be present.

TWF: What did you learn about philanthropy from this experience?
​

"As philanthropy undergirds so much of our work, we need them to not be inhibitors but to be enablers so that we can experiment and try some things that work, fail a couple of times, come back with lessons learned, do it differently. "
​

Tarana: I’ve been in this work for almost 30 years, and so I have seen the way that philanthropy has changed. How just a slight change in what they’re doing creates a whole, ripple effect throughout organizations and issues. How people mission drift, and how foundations are not watching that happen, or taking some responsibility for that happening. In general, I’ve seen in the last several years this shifting dynamic in philanthropy where foundations are listening and taking a step back more, and really trying to understand what their role is and where they fit instead of declaring what it is and deciding where to sit. In terms of what’s happening now, I hope that what we see are more philanthropic entities that are ready to take a chance on bright ideas. Cause this was just a bright idea that I had. Invest in bright ideas and don’t be disillusioned by failure. People need the space to try and fail. ​

Tarana Burke's tweet back in October 2017 about me too's first grant from Third Wave Fund.

TWF: What is the lesson for funders from the me too. Movement? What if me too. Movement had been fully-funded from Day 1?

Tarana: My goodness! The lesson is to listen wider and be more expansive in thinking. Figure out what you want to support and what your belief system is, as a company, as an organization. Have a set of values, and fund from those values, not from what’s trending. There’s so much work to be done to move the meter around social justice in general, that we have to take chances. What we have been doing has only been moderately successful thus far and so we have to ramp it up and do something different, because we need different results. As philanthropy undergirds so much of our work, we need them to not be inhibitors but to be enablers so that we can experiment and try some things that work, fail a couple of times, come back with lessons learned, do it differently.

This moment has been amazing for us, but it’s important for people not just to see me as an individual, or just a founder, but to recognize that the me too. Movement that they see in mainstream media is not what the actual work is. The actual work is collective work that we have to do together, led by and centered on survivors.

If people want to be active, or if they want to support the movement, they should go to our website, metoomvmt.org to sign up, or, they can text the words “Me Too” to 90975.