The Commons 2025
Civil Leadership Cohort FAQs
COMMON GRIEF • COMMON GROUND • COMMON FUTURE
March 2025 – January 2026
Twice monthly sessions + 3 in-person retreats
$5000 stipend provided
Application deadline extended to Friday, January 24, 2025
COHORT FAQS
What is the Commons cohort?
The Commons cohort is the latest offering from Western States Center’s Common Good program, intended for civic, community, and faith leaders who are committed to building powerful alliances for inclusive democracy. Participants form a year-long intensive learning community designed to build shared analysis and cooperative strategies for dismantling antisemitism, racism, and white and Christian nationalism across lines of social, ethnic, and religious difference.
How is the Commons structured?
The Commons is a year-long intensive learning cohort made up of 20-25 individuals. Starting in January and ending in December 2025, the cohort will include three in-person multi-day gatherings and twice-monthly virtual learning sessions. Each in-person gathering will explore a different core component of the Commons: Common Grief, Common Ground, and Common Futures. Virtual learning sessions will provide intermediary space for framing and debriefing these conversations, practicing new skills, and deepening ongoing analysis. Participants will each receive a $5,000 stipend to support their participation in the cohort.
Who is the Commons for?
The Commons is designed for civic, community, and faith leaders. We are looking for individuals who are positioned as leaders in their organization, community, congregation, and/or movement and who have a platform to move people (whether that’s a congregation, an organizing base, or a media profile), but who may feel siloed and are looking to be in intentional community with others facing similar challenges. In an effort to build ongoing relationships of accountability and partnerships for action, our Commons cohort has a regional focus. In 2025, we are looking for leaders from the Portland, Seattle, and Bay Area metropolitan areas to join our cohort.
What dates would I need to hold?
In-person cohort dates are currently planned for April 30-May 1st in Portland, OR; October 29-30 (Bay Area or Seattle); and February 18-19, 2026 (Bay Area, Seattle, or a potential longer international trip).
Virtual cohort dates are currently planned to occur on a semi-monthly basis from 11-12:30pm PST, starting on March 5, 2025 and continuing through February 4, 2026.
All dates are subject to change. We are committed to ensuring that our program dates and timing do not obstruct our participants' religious observance needs. A full schedule will be made available to cohort finalists.
Please note that travel expenses related to our in-person meetings will be covered by Western States Center.
Why do the Commons cohort?
Through the Commons cohort, we seek to build thought partnership between diverse stakeholders in order to:
Generate and implement tactics for anticipating and responding to efforts by the far right and anti-democracy movements to stoke division and drive wedges between communities
Strengthen our ability to understand and analyze the ways American discourse is shaped by political violence, conspiracy theories, and misinformation
Co-create strategies rooted in care, mutuality, and accountability
What is “the commons”?
“The commons” refers to shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest. We believe that all members of society across differences of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, citizenship, immigration status, national origin, and disability are equal stakeholders in the project of American democracy. Stewarding the commons in service of all its stakeholders requires building movements capable of developing and defining our collective interests. In our learning, we use the metaphor of the commons to name and grapple with the interconnectedness of our pasts, presents, and futures and the ways in which our safety and flourishing depend on one another.
Application deadline extended to Friday, January 24, 2025