The New Social Environment#62
Jennifer Jones Austin and JoAnne Page with Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
Featuring Austin, Page, and Schaper
to
1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific
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Child and family advocate Jennifer Jones Austin and criminal justice activist JoAnn Page join Rail Editor-at-Large Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Trace Hoard DePasse.
In this talk
Jennifer Jones Austin
A child and family advocate, Jennifer Jones Austin is Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA), an anti-poverty, policy and advocacy organization with 170 member human services agencies operating throughout New York City. Ms. Jones Austin has chaired and served on several influential boards and commissions, including serving as Co-Chair of NYC Mayor de Blasio’s Transition, Chair of the NYC Procurement Policy Board, and Co-Chair of the New York State Supermarket Commission. She currently is a Board Member of the National Action Network, the New York Blood Center, the NYC Board of Correction, and the Fund for Public Housing.
JoAnne Page
JoAnne Page has more than 45 years of experience in criminal justice, with the last 30+ at the helm of The Fortune Society, a non-profit organization that serves and advocates for formerly incarcerated individuals and people with criminal justice involvement. In 2018 JoAnne was honored by City & State New York as one of the top 50 nonprofit CEOs in New York City. In 2019 she was honored by City & State as one of the top 100 Nonprofit Power Leaders across New York State. A graduate of Yale Law School, and a former defense attorney, JoAnne Page is a frequent speaker at conferences about alternatives to incarceration, housing, and criminal justice issues.
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
Community builder Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper served as Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church from 2006 to 2021. She was formerly at Coral Gables Congregational Church in Miami and before that at Yale University, and teaches leadership at the Hartford Seminary. As an elder, she is passionately concerned about leaving the next generation well-prepared for all they have to face. She has written over 35 books including Approaching End of Life: A Practical and Spiritual Guide (2015), Grace at Table: Small Spiritual Solutions to Large Material Problems, Solving Everything (2013), to her most recent book I Heart Francis: Letters to the Pope from an Unlikely Admirer (2016), among many others. She is an Editor-at-Large at the Rail.
The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have Trace Howard DePass reading.
Trace Howard DePass
Trace Howard DePass is the author of Self-portrait as the space between us(PANK Books 2018) and editor of Scholastic’s Best Teen Writing of 2017. He served as the 2016 Teen Poet Laureate for the Borough of Queens. His work has been featured on BET Next Level, Billboard, Blavity, NPR’s The Takeaway, and also resides in literary homes: Anomalous Press (fka Drunken Boat), Entropy Magazine, Split This Rock!, The Other Side of Violet, Best Teen Writing of 2015, and the East Coast Voices Anthology. Trace aims to blur the lines between the narrative arc and what is percussive.
❤️ 🌈 We'd like to thank the The Terra Foundation for American Art for making these daily conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive.