Jeffrey Kursonis built and co-built quite a number of non-profits in New York City, including The Haven, an arts and altruism collective with 300 people gathering weekly for ten years in Manhattan. A multicultural and altruistic faith community in Harlem, still going today. The New York City New Sanctuary Movement, one of two main hubs of the national network of faith communities giving sanctuary protection to undocumented families being pursued by Federal Immigration Law Enforcement. It’s a long list that formed a network of sorts.
After my work in NYC, a nascent national organization, Emergent Village, tapped me to lead their early growing network of local cohorts seeking to organize progressive religious leaders. I formed a team and we built it up to over 100 US cities, as well as many regional gatherings and other movement training and organizing (extremely similar to CEA). This “emerging church” movement changed the face of American religion by directly moving thousands of religious leaders and their congregations to the left, spawned a whole publishing genre, helped elect Obama, helped influence our Federal same sex marriage legal structure and sadly became a focal point of the conservative backlash unleashed by Trumpism. This is the second and biggest network I built.
My third network requires some discretion as it was built across a major authoritarian country and ended after a combination of Covid and government crackdowns.
As a side note, Jeffrey is no longer religious but still deeply appreciates the proven training ground religion provides. Here is a video we produced about the national cohort network, note my name as producer in the end credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-oaU29Z4dg
Jeffrey has been an active EA’er for over two years now, doing the Intro and Advanced Fellowships and working as a Meta-Moderator for Virtual Program trainings for new facilitators and actively posting on the forum. I recently applied to be on the CEA Virtual Programs new Advisory Board.
The very active EA Anywhere #role-film-and-tv group has been meeting weekly or biweekly with a number of subgroups working on various projects. It’s become something of a mini incubator already producing a number of new org’s and other smaller projects. Jeffrey has been an important organizer and momentum builder in the group. Expect to hear of a number of new inititatives arising out of the group.
Hi Melanie, if I was a local EA group leader like you I’d feel more like you because it is awkward and something to have to deal with. But I’m welcoming the energy of it...I saw on Linked yesterday a picture of some new School of Moral Ambition enthusiasts in front of a bus that had the SMA name on it, and I knew two of them personally from EA circles and another whose name I recognized. One is an effective giving leader, the other Animal Welfare. I’m a Global Health person, and I think we are all not feeling that great in EA for the last few years as it starting leaning toward Longtermism and now AI...of course I’m glad we are doing work in those areas, but it seems like charity work has fallen to the side, and it appears Moral Ambition would move charity work back to the center.
I am encouraged that within well known EA effective giving funds, charity work is still represented, so as a bulwark infrastructure of EA, it is still there, but as for the winds of energy and movement, that all seems to be blowing toward AI right now, you can even see a post on the forum now about this dynamic. I have hopes to make a case within EA for more mental health funding in LMICs but it seems I’d be going against so many winds as to be almost an ineffective use of time...and if that were the case, you can imagine someone like me slowly fading from EA and going to Moral Ambition as a more welcoming place...but I agree with your premise that it would be better for us to work together.
The final thought is that with so many EA’s feeling shy and becoming adjacent, I think I can understand why a person starting a new movement would make the clear decision to steer clear of the name mostly in their writing, while still having good relations with people behind the scenes. I find myself holding back on EA mentions when some of them drew negative feedback/criticisms...not something a new charity needs when building.