I want to share a conversation that was released today with Laura Bonetzky-Gaffney, someone whose work and way of being I deeply respect.

Laura and I talked for more than an hour about truth-telling, Poetic Futurism, political and racial rupture, domestic violence, colonialism, generational trauma, solidarity, friendship across political difference, and what it means to remain in relationship while living inside very real consequence.

This conversation also arrives during a broader reckoning with what happens when cultures, institutions, and movements protect people, leadership, or political alignment at the expense of those carrying the consequences of harm. Earlier this year, in On What We Refuse to Name, I wrote about the danger of selective accountability and about what happens when harm is obscured, minimized, or displaced in order to preserve the coherence of a group, movement, or institution.

The consequence does not disappear. Someone carries it.

That is part of what makes this conversation feel timely to me. We are living in a moment when sexual abuse and violence can continue while meaningful accountability remains elusive, and when people who cause harm are often able to move forward while those they harmed carry the consequences for years. The question is larger than punishment. It is whether our communities and institutions can tell the truth about harm, locate responsibility where it belongs, and resist making those with the least power carry the cost of everyone else’s refusal to act.

What I appreciated about the conversation is that it gave me space to speak about these ideas outside of the formal language of the books and essays. Much of my writing asks us to think carefully about responsibility, consequence, coherence, power, and the kinds of relationships that make a different future possible. In this conversation, those questions emerge through lived experience.

Laura brings a deeply relational, spiritual, and trauma-informed lens to this work. I am grateful for the care, seriousness, and openness she brought to our exchange. I think the conversation is richer because our bodies of practice meet one another without needing to become the same.

For those of you who have been reading the Poetic Futurism work, this may offer another way into it. For those who are newer to the ideas, I hope it provides a more conversational entry point into some of the questions we are holding together: How do we tell the truth about the conditions we are living in? What responsibilities arise from the consequences we create and inherit? What happens when institutions and communities protect coherence by refusing to name harm? How do we remain human across difference? And what kinds of relationships must we build if we are serious about a loving future?

You can watch the conversation here.