Newsletter #6: We Launched. Now Let’s Organize!
The Audacity: Creative Action Together | AudacityCAT.com
Newsletter #6, March 6 2025
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Contents:
MEETING REPORT AND WORKING TOWARD A TOWN HALL: Report from March 1
OFFLINE ACTION COMING UP
ORGANIZE: Call for a Coordinating Committee and Group Wranglers
EXPRESS YOURSELF: Share Your Creativity Publicly in The Audacity Space
TESTIFY: Video interviews of you and your approach to creative activism
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1. Meeting, Singing, and March to the Courthouse on March 1, and Working Toward a Town Hall
We had a productive meeting at the Universalist Church in Rockland with roughly 60 members and newcomers in attendance ahead of our singing demonstration and march to the Knox County Courthouse on the same day. Our working groups now include enough member support to add a Brass Band group, a Civil Disobedience group, a Media group, a Networking with Allies team, an Outreach to Opponents team, a Civil Law group, a Dance Party group, a Media group. These join our already existing Benefit Concert, Button-Making, Fundraising, Local Government, Protest Singing, Theater, Visual Art, and Website groups.
If you are already signed up as a member of one of these working groups, expect an email to come your way soon with options for you to get involved.
If you'd like to join one of these working groups to help organize The Audacity and you aren't signed up for a group already, send an email to contact@audacitycat.com and we'll add you in! By next week, we hope to have a sign-up form online for working groups that includes all the new groups along with the pre-existing groups.
After we met, we gathered at Noon at Park and Main Street in Rockland to sing out danger, a warning, and love for all all over this land. 131 singers joined us, a new high mark. We had a joyously good time, as this video of us crooning "This Little Light of Mine" shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xjbk6_HZmw
At 12:30 PM, we gathered at the steps of the Knox County Courthouse to read out 75 sources of grief from the first 40 days of the new Trump administration. We made a video recording of the assembly, posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R53r77B4syc . After each grievance, we called out to Rep. Chellie Pingree, Senator Angus King, and Senator Susan Collins: "You Work For Us! What Have You Done About It?"
These grievances and a copy of the video will be sent tomorrow to each of our members of Congress, with a request for a response on each point.
What's next? We're going to build support for a Town Hall nearby. As part of that effort, we are collecting signatures. We call on all Mainers of conscience to TAKE ACTION and SIGN OUR PETITION FOR A PUBLIC TOWN HALL in Knox County with our members of Congress, Representative Chellie Pingree, Senator Angus King, and Senator Susan Collins. When we reach 1,000 signatures, we will deliver our petition to each of our representatives for a prompt response.
Here's the petition link: https://audacityspace.org/petition-for-an-open-public-town-hall-in-knox-county-maine-with-our-congressional-representatives/
Share that petition everywhere you can. Let's get those thousand signatures to give our request a good oomph of popular legitimacy, and then let's put out the call to our members of Congress. We have something to say, and we need them to listen!
2. Offline Action Coming Up
There's quite a bit of social movement activity coming up, with meetings and readings and viewings and singing protest all around:
Friday, March 7, 5:00 PM: Reading Group Organizing Meeting
Saturday, March 8, 10:30 AM: Lincoln County Indivisible General Meeting (Second Congregational Church in Newcastle)
Saturday, March 8, NOON: and EVERY Saturday at Noon: Public Square Sing-Out in Rockland (Park & Main)
Sunday, March 9, 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM: Gather at 443 Camden Road in Hope to make posters, design scarves, and produce buttons
Tuesday, March 11, 6:00 PM: Knox County Democratic Party open meeting, 6pm, Rockland Public Library
Friday, March 14, 6:30 PM: Watch the documentary The Singing Revolution at The Neighborhood UCC in Bath, then join in group protest singing afterward
Saturday, March 15, NOON: and EVERY Saturday at Noon: Public Square Sing-Out in Rockland (Park & Main)
Wednesday, March 19, 6:00 PM: Night of Poetry for International Women's Day at the Belfast Free Library
To find more details on these events, visit The Audacity's events page at https://www.audacitycat.com/events . We also have the month's upcoming events regularly updated in calendar format at our Resistance Links page: https://www.audacitycat.com/maine-resistance-links .
Do you have or know of a social movement event that's coming up around these parts but that isn't on this list? Let us know by sending an e-mail to contact@audacitycat.com .
3. Let's Organize! Call for a Coordinating Committee and Group Wranglers
For the last two weekends in a row, the Audacity has had multiple activities, and we've added many supporters. Now's the time for us to organize ourselves a bit better.
This means two things. First, we need to set up a coordinating committee to keep the working groups and the main organization in sync and in support of one another. We don't have to meet long, but we should check in regularly to make sure we're all headed in the same general direction while preserving creative autonomy. This group should consist of someone from each working group and some general leadership outside of the working groups as well.
To join the Audacity Coordinating Committee ("ACC!"), email contact@audacitycat.com and introduce yourself. All are welcome.
We also need "wranglers," people who send out regular communication to members of working groups, for the following groups: Brass Band group, Civil Disobedience group, Local Government group, Media group, Networking with Allies group, Outreach to Opponents, a Civil Law, Dance Party group, and Media group. If you are a member of these groups, look for an email message this week asking for someone to step up a "wrangler" and someone to step up to join the Audacity Coordinating Committee -- or for one person to do both if they're so inclined.
4. Express Yourself: Share Your Creativity Publicly in The Audacity Space.
Eager to get your original political information, visual art, performances, and writing out into a public space? Visit our new secondary website The Audacity Space at http://audacityspace.org . Request a free account and you can start sharing your work with the world for free online, and enter into discussions and responses to others' work too. To request an account and start adding your voice to The Audacity Space online, visit https://audacityspace.org/join-the-audacity-space/ .
5. Testify!
Activism is storytelling. On our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@TheAudacityCAT we're telling the story of ourselves through videos, mostly with song so far. But there is one member interview (thanks, Beedy Parker!) and it's relatively popular; see it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qmweFZl2og on YouTube. The more we can connect our individual experiences to the struggle of the nation, the better we'll do in bringing people on board. If you'd like to have a video interview for The Audacity's YouTube channel, send an email to contact@audacitycat.com and we'll find a time.
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There's a lot going on now -- but there are even more people hurting. If you feel the urgency of the moment, please don't just read this email. Take some opportunity for organizing and action -- one described above, or one with another group. Singly we can't make anything happen. Together, we can move mountains.
Best,
James Cook
Facilitator, The Audacity
