To push further south affecting South West England and wales. Anymore rainfall here welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. In our warp speed online culture, is extremely unwelcome. Todays trending topic is often lots of showers tomorrows forgotten hashtag. Piling into scotland. Not so with me too, an expression of understanding and solidarity wintry on the hills. Milder across the south. That weather front pushing from women to women driven by a determination southwards and eastwards to expose the truth into saturday, bringing an unwelcome band of rain but further north, it stays very windy indeed. About Sexual Violence. A squeeze in the isobars with lots of showers. Piling into much of well, my guest today, tarana burke, first coined the phrase, scotland, some heavy me too, long before and thundery, snow on the hills and maybe bllizard conditions as well with the the Harvey Weinstein case. Strength of the wind. Another mild day in the south but colder further north. And she continues to reach out as we move through saturday night, to marginalised women and girls. But what difference has that me too this next feature runs Movement Made to the Bigger Picture . Into england and wales bring a spell of unwelcome rain. Further north, windy and further showers but at least the good news, through sunday, the rain should clear away quite quickly and the skies brighten up with plenty of sunshine so a welcome date brighten up with plenty of sunshine so a welcome day of drier and brighter weather but it will feel a bit colder. That settled spell of weather will be short lived because across tarana burke, welcome to hardtalk. The atlantic we will see the next deep area thank you for having me. Of low pressure moving in on monday. I want to begin with those two words, me too. Pushing towards the north it was a phrase, as i said, you coined it long before Harvey Weinstein, bringing a spread of severe before the me too went viral. Gales and a further rain. With more rain in the forecast, flooding could be further issue so head on line to the bbc weather website to check out the weather and warnings. Did you feel, in a way, you lost control of that phrase . Well, ithought, you know, in the first days when me too went viral, it was very nerve racking for a person like me. I was not known, i wasnt in the spotlight, and so i thought that it would be lost. I thought its original cause would be lost, and its purpose. And i think it took a very, very short period of time for me to realise that this was sort of an evolution of what i started, and not necessarily it being lost. So i shifted quickly from the nerves to sing opportunity. The actress who, i think, put the hashtag on it and originated that sort of 2017 viral phenomenon, was alyssa milano. Yes. And she said she wasnt aware that you had used this phrase, with regard to your activism on the Sexual Violence issue, for years beforehand. Did you then talk to her to find out exactly what happened and how she came upon this phrase . Yes, she reached out to me. She was made aware, pretty quickly after she put the tweet out, and she reached out to me within 24 48 hours to say, i didnt know, im so excited to meet you. And then she tweeted it out to her followers that this is the person who originated the phrase and she put my, you know, our website up and things like that. And then we started a friendship. Mm, because, the big difference, i suppose, both post the weinstein allegations hitting the newspapers in october 2017, many of the women who spoke out were really pretty high profile, well known, well connected women. Your work, of course, which we can trace back to the 1990s, was mostly with disadvantaged women in communities very, very far from the public eye. So there was a real fundamental difference. Absolutely. Did you, in a sense, feel that your point was being lost there . So, like i said, it was an evolution of it. And so my point was to support survivors. Im Sharanjit Leyl we started out with in singapore. The headlines black and brown girls in the deep south and the United States. And those girls had gone through very similar things to the grown women who had come an exclusive report forward in the weinstein case. How a prisoner and her guard fled north korea. And so the thing, the beauty, they tell us about their i think, and the magic of me too is that its a unifier in that way, and its where remarkable escape. Survivors find community. Donald trumps former adviser gets a 3 year sentence for lying to congress and so i definitely, but the president is already the Mainstream Media kept the focus on the actresses talking about a pardon. And hollywood and that idea, im Lewis Vaughan jones in london. Also in the programme but at its core, the women who came tens of thousands of forward were really no different germans attend vigils for the nine victims murdered than those girls who i served by a far right extremist. In the communities ten years before. And a life sentence in new zealand for the man well, interesting, the only difference, who murdered british really, is that, frankly, Wider Society seemed to engage more. 0h, absolutely. With the experiences backpacker grace millane. Of their well connected and the high profile than they did with the sort of voices you were reporting on. Absolutely. And that seems to me an area where there might be a good deal of resentment on your part. No, let me tell you what i feel. This is not resentment. This is what ive experienced. And i think most people who look like me have experienced a similar thing. We have been socialised to respond to and to Pay Attention to rich, white, wealthy, famous people in general, and particularly these women. But i dont blame the women for that. I blame the media for that. I blame the media who will constantly. You know, these women are survivors and they came forward to tell their stories. And even though other people if you think about it, the people who made me too go viral wont those people. The people that made me too go viral were everyday folks, millions from around the world who got online and told their truth. And weve built this movement on the backs of those people, but we dont get to hear those peoples stories. Indeed. And before we get to sort of the fallout from the weinstein case, i do want to actually want to focus on the work youve been doing for years. Wonderful. Because you have this capacity, it seems, to sit down with women and, indeed, girls as well, and get them to discuss and listen to their stories in ways that others havent, and you open them up and get their truth. How do you do it . You know, i dont think that its like magic. I think theres so many people, and, again, this is not just for women and girls, people who have survived Sexual Violence in general so many of us are shamed into silence that there arent very many spaces where we can open up, where we can tell our stories, where we can reveal our truth that when you provide that opportunity or create that community, people eager to do that. Once me too went viral, i mean, what i saw when me too went viral is the same thing i saw when i went into Community Centres and did workshops, you know, and with smaller numbers of people, is that people want to be seen, they want to be heard and they want be believed. Youre a new yorker. Iam. But i think one of the most shocking experiences you had, just from recollecting a memory you had of it was sitting down with a bunch of girls in selma, alabama. Yes. And i think you asked them to raise their hands if they had had an experience of Sexual Violence. And you could not believe how many in that room. So we never ask people to raise their hands publicly. Let me tell you how it happens. Because we dont want people to out themselves if theyre not comfortable, we ask folks to write it down. And so in this instance, wed given all the girls a sheet of paper after the workshop and said, you know, give us three things you learned at this workshop. And, if youre so inclined, right me too at the bottom of the page if youre a survivor and if you want help. And so we collected those papers and went back to the hotel room, and when i dumped them out and began to read one after another after another after another, it was shocking how many, really, the majority of the room had an experience with Sexual Violence. And its something that i had seen over and over again. But, you know, seeing it in writing, in paper wasjust. It was definitely shocking. Do you think it would be pretty much the same experience today . Absolutely. So, in that sense, were going to talk a lot what me too has achieved, but it hasnt changed that much on that sort of systemic structural level. No, but you also were dealing with something that is centuries old. Were dealing with an epidemic that has been affecting people around the world since the beginning. I mean, is biblical, right. And so theres no way that a hashtag going viral two years ago is going to dismantle structures and systems in such a short period of time. What weve done is weve opened up the space to talk about it in ways that we havent been able to talk about it and to say this is not about individuals, this is about systems and about structures and this is the pathway forward. Do you think there is a race issue here as well . That the voices of black girls and women are not heard in way that the voices of white females in the United States are . Oh, i think its a race issue, i think its a gender issue, i think its a sexuality issue. I think marginalised people, as usual, are the last voices that we hear. And so you have stories about black and brown women, stories about queer and trans people, about disabled folks, that never rise to the top, that never get the attention. So coming back to the weinstein case, and i should make it quite clear that were talking while the jury is deliberating. We do not know which way the verdict is going to go in the weinstein case. Yeah. But nonetheless, it has raised all sorts of interesting questions. Heres what one black woman activist, whom i know you know very well, april rain, has said about the weinstein case. She said, white women have not been as supportive as they could have been of women of colour, and that is one lesson that we can take away from the fallout from the whole Harvey Weinstein situation. Do you sympathise with that . You know, i think that theres always been this schism between white feminists, black feminists, and particularly online. There was a fallout when me too went viral about it, and a lot of black women felt not seen and not heard in that moment because of this long history. And so i think theres a lot for white women and non black women, non women of colour. Women who are. White women to learn about how to help amplify the voices of those who dont often get heard, which is women of colour, black women in particular. It does raise questions about the way in which the response has been targeted on personal stories. And its notjust weinstein, because that hit the media in october 2017. After that, there were a host of other famous men who then faced allegations of, at the very least, inappropriate and sometimes outright sexually violent behaviours. Yeah. But they were all told as sort of personal narratives. You followed those stories very closely, but your message appeared to be let us not get too involved in the personnel, in the private, because this is a much deeper structural question. Right. You know, at some point, and at the end of 2017, the beginning of 2018, i felt like i was playing whack a mole. Every week, there would be a new accusation and a new person in the media and all of the attention would be on whoever this next person was. And, one, we would never hear about the survivor and what happened with the survivor or what happens in our lives, but we also didnt look at the systems around those people that allowed it to happen. Right, we can talk about Harvey Weinstein ad nauseam, but we also have to talk about what are the structures that were in place that allowed a Harvey Weinstein to thrive . If youre going to talk about Harvey Weinsteins being successful, then we have to also talk about capitalism, right, because its the love of money and the desire for people to have money and what he represented. The bottom line is people value those things more than they value the humanity of the women that he was really destroying their lives. Its about power. Its about power and its about privilege. At the end of the day, these are the two things that we have to talk about dismantling. These are not individuals, its the power and privilege that they hold. And i should say, as ive already indicated, were speaking before the jury has returned a verdict of course, Harvey Weinstein categorically denies all the charges he faces. Im. Yes. And that its important that i put that out there at this particular point in the legal process. Let us look at a few of the concrete steps that have been taken by a number of states in the United States over the last couple of years as me too notjust went viral, but became a major sort of social and cultural phenomenon. Some states have banned nondisclosure agreements concerning cases of Sexual Harassment. Other states have introduced new protections for workers, including protecting freelance and contract workers, not just staff employees. The times up Legal Defense fund has been established, many millions of dollars have been funnelled to poorer and disadvantaged women who want to pursue, through law, their allegations of Sexual Violence. Do these to you represent a real step change . Oh, absolutely. The thing thats happened. I mean, we have miles to go. But these things represent, one, that people are paying attention to the needs of survivors. For instance, the times up Legal Defense fund is about making sure that women who could not get legal representation, couldnt afford it in the past so that they could fight some of the Sexual Harassment cases they have, now have that, and so that opens up a whole other corridor for people to pursue legal action. There are different steps that people can take, that organisations can take, that Corporate America can take and governments can take. And so every bit that we chip away, every bit that we get is. I count that all as a victory for us. But tarana burke, the problem, in some ways, is that while you might achieve these significant, but relatively small victories, there is something much more overwhelming as a reality in the United States today. You have a president in the white house who we know, thanks to a leaked tape, has, in the past, carried out abusive Sexual Harassment. Yeah. Not only was he elected with the public knowing that, there is a real chance he may be re elected. Dont say that. Laughs well, thats the political reality. I know. And surely that, in terms of what it says about the United States and the political culture and the attitudes towards these issues were discussing today that says something much more damning and depressing and negative than all of the little steps youre talking about. Well, one, again, we have to count every step. Were talking about a monumental thing that we have to dismantle, but, yes, having somebody in the white house thats a self proclaimed sexual predator is definitely. Doesnt make you feel hopeful. But, you know, we started an Initiative Call me too voter this year at the second anniversary of me too going viral. And the reason why we did that is because, one, he didnt win by a large margin and there are millions of people in america who feel very strongly that we should have a different person in the white house, for several reasons, one of which is because of his past as a sexual predator. And me too voter is about people who have survived Sexual Violence being able to stand up and stand in their power and say that, im notjust a victim, im a survivor and im a constituent. But isnt there a danger in your entering the political arena with your movement me too voter and other messages . Because just looking at some survey evidence, you are really turning off a lot of white, male and largely republican voters. Theres one extraordinary yougov sponsored survey recently which showed thatjust 37 of republican self styled republican men in the us today say that they are now likely to believe women in legal cases, which hinge upon the truth of allegations of Sexual Violence. I dont know that number would have been different before me too. Well, it has actually gone down over the last couple of years. I think that. It was over 50 and now its just 37 of republican men say theyre inclined to believe women. I think that the issue we have around me too is that people dont understand what the movement is. They dont understand what our work is. And so numbers like this come from perceptions that come from the media. Theres a perception because the media says this new person is guilty of this or this new person is accused of that and they keep honing in on the individual bad actors. Its one of the reasons why we want to shift the conversation and shift the narrative away from that. But all of america was able to look in on, for example, on the nomination process in front of senators of supreme courtjustice Brett Kavanaugh. Every american was able to form their own view of that and, frankly, what people took away from it very much depended on their political perspective. You know, most republicans were absolutely sure that kava naugh deserved his place on the bench, while most democrats were equally convinced this was a man not fit to serve. Yeah. Its polarised and its become deeply political. I mean, i think the country right now is polarise