Tarana Burke Quotes

I don't want young people to think they can't make a difference because they don't have money.

When I started Teach For America as a college senior, I sensed that there were thousands of talented, driven college students and recent grads who were searching for a way to make a real difference in the world.

I want our millennials and our young people to do what they started out doing with meet-ups, to talk about what is going on, and spread the education.

Public service and community organizing and movement building is such a part of my DNA that it's really hard to separate it.

The consciousness-raising, the advocacy, the passion, the youth of your movement is so critical.

I was inspired by what students have done in some schools organizing walkouts protesting the lack of funding and that sort of thing. There are opportunities for students to engage in those types of protests - taking to the streets - but there is also writing poetry, writing music, beginning to express themselves, holding forums, educating each other, the whole range.

I spent ridiculous amounts of time as an activist and volunteer and was a teacher for 20 years.

Kids are meeting in coffee shops and basements figuring out what's unsustainable in their communities. That's the future.

I was always interested in social change but never actually did anything about it.

There's no shortage of great young activists.

I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me.

It's very important that people who are feeling the need to do something... get activated.

Few cities have more skilled, experienced organizers and activists and grassroots organizations than St. Louis and Philadelphia.

My mother informed me that the way to be a change agent to create change, the first line of defense, or however you want to phrase that, is politics and government.

I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.

Get involved in your neighborhood. That's how I got really, really committed to the immigrant rights movement.

We're seeing young people find their own voices and find their activism.

We are intent on building a movement. The next step is grassroots town meetings. We must keep alive the dialogue around the covenants.

I'll have 15 letters today from mostly young kids who don't like what's going on and want to do something about it, and [they ask me] if I can give them some advice as to what they should do, or can I tell them what to read or something.

We have got to mobilize people and rethink our commitment in terms of what our role is in the political process.

Young people are this country [America], and we need to speak out.

I was getting mad at the system or the politicians or the government, and then I realized someone should talk about this stuff, and I have a big, multinational global-youth platform of kids who are going to change the world. So I was like, "I should be doing that. I should be showing this to people. That's my job." And since that time, I've been very happy.

I admire young people who are concerned with the affairs of their community and nation perhaps because I also became involved in struggle whist I was still at school.

I had been a Girl Scout from the time I was 8 to the time I was 18 years old. I had belonged to my church organization and youth groups. But, you never really found a way that you could make a change.

Young people have been at the forefront of every great social movement in our country's history.