Railroad worker and organizer Rachel Bergman reads aloud her essay "Empathy Training: A Young, Queer Femme on an Old, Man's Railroad." Some names in the essay have been changed.

Afterwards, Griffy and Rachel discuss life on the railroad, organizing (and connecting) across personal and political differences, the joys and anxieties of writing non-fiction, and Spinoza's definition of "joy"—a felt expansion of one's capabilities—as described in the book Joyful Militancy by carla bergman (no relation) and Nick Montgomery.

Rachel Bergman is a revolutionary socialist and railroad worker in Western Minnesota. A former PhD student in sociology, she has previously written about labor organizing and the financialization of international aid. She once wrote an innuendo-filled song for her college comedy group about a mortician falling in love with a corpse. It never made it to the stage.

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