“This new case is no different than so many that we’ve seen,” Burke said, mentioning the Weinstein and Bill Cosby cases, “where you have an incredibly powerful and privileged person who decides to abuse it. The wonderful thing, though … is that because of the shift we’ve seen after #MeToo went viral, now these things are public. And now, when a person comes forward and says, ‘This person harmed me,’ people take it more seriously.”
“Power and privilege are no longer a complete cover for people who decide to abuse and harm,” Burke said. “And to the question of what’s next (for #MeToo) — this IS what’s next, the exposing of so much corruption and abuse of power and harming, What’s next is all of these laws and (other) things that have happened, and we just need to keep building and building.”
Burke was in New York on Tuesday to announce, at the Ford Foundation’s Free Future conference, her organization’s new Global Network to combat sexual and gender-based violence. The foundation has committed the initial $1 million of $5 million that ’me too.’ International is trying to raise, Burke said.
“After #MeToo went viral, I had tons of people who were reaching out from all across the world,” she said. “They were starting their own work or they were building on what they were already doing.”
And they wanted to know how they could join forces. “On the one hand, I don’t have ownership — nobody can have ownership of a social justice movement,” Burke said. “But on the other hand, there’s a particular ideology and perspective that we work under.”