Common Ground

Build Back Better: Erik Forman

Featuring Forman and Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper

 

2 p.m. Eastern / 11 a.m. Pacific

Union organizer and entrepreneur Erik Forman joins Rail Editor-at-Large Donna Schaper for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Cole Swensen.

In this talk

Please note this conversation will take place at 2pm ET.

Erik Forman

A portrait of Erik Forman
Union organizer turned teacher turned social(ist) entrepreneur Erik Forman is co-founder of The Drivers Cooperative, the first driver-owned rideshare platform cooperative in the United States, as well as People’s Choice Communications, the world’s first worker-owned ISP, launched by striking cable technicians. Before turning toward cooperative development as a strategy for system change, Erik was active in the labor movement for over 15 years, leading groundbreaking unionization campaigns in the fast food industry and conducting organizing trainings and workshops across the world.

Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper

A photo of 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 Cole Swensen reading.

Cole Swensen

A black and white photo of poet Cole Swensen.
Photo by Anthony Hayward
Poet Cole Swensen is the author of 17 volumes of poetry and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. A book of hybrid poem-essays, Art in Time, was published by Nightboat in 2021. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over 20 volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and won the 2004 PEN USA Award in Literary Translation.

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