The Commons 2025
Civil Leadership Cohort

COMMON GRIEF • COMMON GROUND • COMMON FUTURE

February 2025 – January 2026
Twice monthly sessions + 3 in-person retreats
$5000 stipend provided
Application Deadline January 17, 2025

COHORT DESCRIPTION

Western States Center’s The Commons cohort is an opportunity for connectors, organizers, bridge-builders, and community leaders to learn, vision, and build for a shared future. 

The last decade has seen a renewed focus on efforts to undermine our shared institutions of democracy – a rise in hate crimes, efforts to restrict access to the ballot, and widespread misinformation that sows distrust in the foundations of our system of governance. The Pacific Northwest and the Bay Area in particular have been laboratories for anti-democracy misinformation, movements and actors seeking to build power. The fuels that drive these efforts – antisemitism, racism, and white and Christian nationalism – are also on the rise in this region and across the country, including in the Bay Area. 

Launching in February 2025, this cohort creates space for participants to wrestle with the big questions that undergird our democratic society and movements for justice and equity: How do we define the moment we’re working in? How did we get here? What vision for justice and equity are we working toward? What and who do we need to get there? What stands in our way?  

Our work together will include collective efforts to address the areas where movements for inclusive democracy and racial justice movements are most vulnerable and subject to wedge attacks: our understanding of race, antisemitism, nationalism, and religious bigotry. This cohort’s focus on the Portland, Seattle, and Bay Area metropolitans is intended to foster collaboration, shared learning and strategy development, and joint action. In addition to the provided stipend, travel opportunities, and cohort facilitation, Western States Center will provide capacity to identify opportunities to act together, thought partnership to develop strategy, and training and communications support to advance your work.  

The Commons Cohort is a project of our Common Good program, which since 2018 has worked to build awareness of the role of antisemitism in white nationalist and anti-democracy movements, its relationship to racism and white supremacy, and the threat these ideologies pose to all Americans. Our cohorts, programs, and initiatives all work to build understanding of, skills for, and a commitment to dismantling the forces of antisemitism, racism, and white and Christian nationalism.