I am writing to return to a message I sent in the days following the October 7th attack on Israel, and to continue the line of thought I shared yesterday. In that message, I condemned the rape of Jewish women by Hamas. I also said that sexual abuse inside movements is unacceptable. I framed this through John Mohawk’s work on utopian legacies, which examines how movements reproduce harm when they fail to account for the violence they carry within them.

Clarifying What Has Been Mischaracterized

I also want to be clear about something that has been repeatedly mischaracterized. I am not a supporter of Hamas. At the same time, I believe that the actions of the state of Israel are genocidal. These are not contradictory positions. They reflect a consistent orientation: harm does not become acceptable based on who commits it. And just as Jewish people are not reducible to the actions of the Israeli state, we in the United States are not reducible to the actions of our government.

Lived Experience and Formation

I also shared that this is not abstract for me: that my father was part of the labor movement in Honduras, that he raped my mother, and that I am the pregnancy that came from that. My birth set me up for a life shaped by predation and violence within patriarchy.

For some, that was enough to withdraw, to distance, or to reject what I said outright. Some went further and said that by making that statement, I was pro-genocide. The consequences were severe. I was cancelled at the university where I had designed and built a PhD program and redesigned a Master’s program, and ultimately left that work. The consequences were also intense for the communities connected to that work.

This experience was not unique to that institution. I have encountered similar dynamics across philanthropy and within movement organizations, which points to a broader structural pattern rather than an isolated event. And yet, after my departure, members of the superclass of change makers were able to fill in, restoring continuity of form while leaving unaddressed the deeper rupture underneath.

Terrenal Formation and System Response

What I am naming here is directly connected to what I described yesterday. The dynamics I am describing are not separate from Terrenal formation—they are how systems respond to it. The capacity to name contradiction, to hold coherence under pressure, and to refuse alignment when it produces fragmentation are part of what Terrenales carry. What I am describing here is what happens when those capacities encounter systems that cannot hold them.

A Non-Negotiable Line

I want to be clear. I am not going to revise that position. Sexual violence is unacceptable. It does not become acceptable because of who commits it, what cause they claim, or what history they are part of. If a movement cannot hold that line, then it is not carrying what it says it is carrying.

I spoke then from lived experience. I am doing the same now. To be told that I am pro-genocide for condemning rape is not just inaccurate. It is macabre. It means that someone whose life begins inside an act of sexual violence—and who continues to live within conditions shaped by that violence—is being recoded as aligned with harm precisely for refusing to justify that harm anywhere.

It also means that lived experience, even when named directly, does not hold—and that institutions can remove the person naming the contradiction while preserving the appearance of continuity through substitution.

A Cross-Sector Cultural Pattern

Unfortunately, the normalization of sexual objectification continues in movements domestically and internationally. This is not incidental. It is one of the ways that harm is allowed to persist without being named, and one of the conditions that makes it possible for movements to reproduce the very forms of domination they claim to oppose.

It is a broader cultural pattern that can be found across sectors, including religious institutions, government, philanthropy, and beyond. The forms may differ, but the underlying dynamic is the same: harm is managed, obscured, or displaced in order to preserve continuity, authority, and legitimacy.

What I am naming here is an example of Terrenal awareness—the capacity to recognize patterns of harm and continuity across domains that are often treated as separate, and to locate them within the longer histories that produced them. It does not isolate incidents. It traces how they move, how they are carried, and how they repeat.

Silence, Dissent, and Control

This pattern of silence does not apply only to sexual violence. It applies to dissent more broadly. When voices that introduce contradiction are dismissed, recoded, or removed, what is being protected is not integrity but coherence of narrative. This points to a more concerning pattern: movements and institutions that cannot hold internal contradiction begin to reproduce the very forms of control they claim to resist.

I have also heard this pattern expressed directly in response to calls for accountability: “we have to stick together, otherwise the right wing will win.” When I push for accountability, I am met with a different question—often unspoken but present: accountability for whom, and for what? If accountability is conditional, if it is selectively applied depending on political alignment, then it is not accountability. It is strategy.

Efficiency vs. Accountability

Dissent is often treated as a threat to movement efficiency. But what is being protected in those moments is not the work itself, but the speed and coherence of its presentation. Suppressing dissent may create the appearance of efficiency in the short term, but it does so by removing the very signals that would allow a movement to correct itself and remain accountable over time.

Over time, this dynamic compounds. When dissent is repeatedly suppressed, recoded, or removed, movements lose the capacity to recognize contradiction altogether. What begins as discomfort becomes incapacity. Dissent is no longer engaged—it is preemptively neutralized. The system becomes increasingly self-reinforcing, more dependent on alignment, and less able to correct itself.

Movement Weakness and Loss of Capacity

This is how movements drift away from the realities they claim to represent while maintaining the appearance of coherence. This is one of the primary reasons our movements are weak and failing. When the capacity to recognize and engage contradiction is lost, movements lose their ability to correct course, to remain accountable to reality, and to sustain integrity over time.

What remains may still look coherent, but it is increasingly disconnected from the conditions it claims to address. This is not a problem that can be resolved by resourcing alone. No amount of funding can compensate for the loss of a movement’s capacity to recognize and engage contradiction. This is an example of why Terrenal leadership is necessary.

Leadership Formation Across Sectors

I have also experienced leader fragility when faced with critique—responses that prioritize the protection of identity, role, or authority over engagement with what is being named. When this fragility is not addressed, it becomes structural. It shapes how decisions are made, how dissent is received, and who is allowed to remain within the work.

What is emerging here is not only a movement problem. It is a leadership formation problem across sectors. Across philanthropy, academia, government, and nonprofit spaces, a class of leaders has been formed to maintain coherence, alignment, and continuity across systems. Their legitimacy depends on their ability to stabilize narratives, translate complexity into something legible, and sustain relationships across institutions.

They are rewarded for clarity, consistency, and forward motion. Dissent is experienced as disruption rather than information. Critique is interpreted as threat rather than signal. Over time, leaders are trained—often implicitly—to manage risk rather than to metabolize contradiction.

In this formation, identity becomes fused with role. To question the work, or to name harm within it, is experienced as questioning the leader themselves. This is where fragility emerges—not as an individual failing, but as a predictable outcome of the conditions under which leadership is formed and sustained.

As a result, when contradiction appears, the response is often to contain, recode, or remove it, rather than to engage and transform. This allows systems to preserve continuity, but at the cost of coherence.

Misdiagnosing the Terrain

There is also a related pattern that is becoming more visible. Some movement leaders have begun to describe the working class as unable to meet its potential—pointing to disorganization, fragmentation, or internal dysfunction as the central barrier to change.

But when contradiction, dissent, and harm are consistently interpreted as signs that communities or movements are failing, rather than as signals of reality that must be engaged, something critical is lost. The terrain itself is misread. What is treated as dysfunction may, in fact, be information. What is dismissed as fragmentation may be the expression of conditions that have not been accounted for. And what is framed as failure may be the result of systems that cannot metabolize contradiction, rather than communities that cannot act.

When this misdiagnosis takes hold, the burden shifts downward. Communities are asked to become more coherent, more aligned, more disciplined—while the conditions that produce contradiction remain unaddressed. This reinforces the very dynamic it seeks to resolve.

Historical Continuity

This is part of the history of movements across the Americas. We are now also seeing this surface publicly in relation to César Chávez and Dolores Huerta. What is being named there is difficult, and it destabilizes long-held narratives. But it is not an anomaly. It is part of a pattern that has been present across many movements, often unspoken, often carried by women and families in silence.

The Question Before Us

The question in front of us is not whether we feel comfortable naming this. The question is whether we are willing to be consistent. If we condemn sexual violence when it is committed by those we oppose, but hesitate or retreat when it is committed within movements we are part of, then what we are practicing is not ethics. It is alignment.

I am not interested in alignment without integrity. I am also not interested in participating in spaces where this cannot be said without consequence. If this position creates distance between us, then that distance is already telling us something about what we are able, or unwilling, to hold together.

What This Requires

For those who remain, I am asking for something simple and difficult: that we hold the same line everywhere, that we do not make exceptions for our own, and that we understand that what is not named does not disappear. It is carried, often by those with the least power to refuse it.

And I want to offer a few concrete directions for those who are serious about this. Movements must build the capacity to name harm internally without collapsing into defensiveness or expulsion. Movements must refuse the protection of leadership at the expense of those harmed. Movements must treat dissent as a signal, not a threat. Movements must recognize that what is carried in silence does not disappear. Movements must be willing to lose coherence of narrative in order to maintain coherence of truth.

Signs of Incoherence

There are also clear signs when movements and leaders are unable to hold truth. We see this when dissent is recoded as harm rather than engaged, when lived experience is dismissed or treated as a threat, when moral language is used to isolate rather than clarify, when leadership is protected while those naming harm are displaced, and when continuity of the work is prioritized over integrity of the conditions that make the work possible.

This does not apply only to men in leadership. In my experience, many of these enabling and protective behaviors have also been carried by women leaders. This is not about gender. It is about the conditions under which power is held and maintained, and the ways those conditions can reproduce harm regardless of who occupies the role.

To Those Carrying Consequence

For those who are survivors and are reading this, I want to say this clearly: your experience is not incidental. It is not something to be managed quietly so that others can continue uninterrupted. You are often carrying what has not been named, what has not been addressed, and what others have not been willing to face.

That does not make you a problem. It makes you a site of truth within systems that depend on partial narratives. You are not required to remain in spaces that cannot hold what you know. You are not required to translate your experience into something more comfortable for others. You are not required to accept displacement in order to preserve the appearance of continuity.

Where possible, find and build relationships and spaces where your experience can be held without recoding, without minimization, and without consequence for naming what is real.

Coherence as Practice

For me, the creation of coherence is not an abstract principle or a professional orientation. It is a necessity of my life. In these moments, protecting your own coherence is not separate from the work. It is part of what allows any work to remain grounded in reality.

These are also the dynamics that shape how we choose to partner and with whom we choose to collaborate. This stance is shared by our board of directors, partners, and collaborators. This is not separate from the work. It is the work.

What Is Being Revealed

It is becoming increasingly clear that the creation of coherence is central to this work. The conditions we are living through are placing greater demands on our ability to hold complexity, remain accountable to reality, and sustain continuity over time.

What is being revealed right now through the public reckoning around César Chávez and Dolores Huerta points to a need for profound cultural transformation—one that goes well beyond compliance frameworks or harassment training within HR. It points to the creation of coherence as a key aspect of organizational life: the capacity to name harm, hold contradiction, and remain accountable across time, not just within policy.

Seen in this way, these are not isolated incidents but cultural, cross-sectoral dynamics. Naming them as such is, in part, an effort to bring relief to those who have been carrying consequence without relief, often in isolation and without recognition.