Midcoast Group The Audacity to Welcome Camden Conference With Songs of Democracy

Pen Bay Pilot, 2/20/2025, 7:56 PM

On Saturday, February 22, members of the local artistic social movement group called The Audacity will interact with visitors to the Camden Conference in two places at once. 

This year's conference theme has long been planned to be "Democracy Under Threat: A Global Perspective," but events over the last month have highlighted the need for Americans to also bring pro-democracy movements home, according to a news release from the group.

In Rockland, residents of towns from throughout the Midcoast area will meet at the corner of Park and Main streets at noon, rehearsing songs of democracy for a half hour that they have been practicing for the past two weeks. 

At 12:30 p.m., they will walk to the Strand Theater to greet simulcast conference goers who will be breaking for lunch.

The Audacity will serenade conference-goers with pro-democracy, anti-dictator songs, hand out a flier (included as a separate file along with this press release), and welcome conference-goers to join them in song. 

In Camden, a similarly-themed welcome with a different approach will be offered to the in-person attendees of the conference.

“This is not a protest of the Camden Conference,” said James Cook of Rockport, a facilitator of The Audacity, in the release. “We prefer to think of it as a public demonstration,  a way to show that the residents of the Midcoast are public allies of the conference’s concerns about democracy at a time when American democratic traditions are under assault.”

The Audacity is a new local group that formed in January 2025 to plan and implement creative collective action to counter the erosion of democracy, equity, and inclusion in the United States. 

The group works together across differences in philosophy, values, and methods within a broad commitment to nonviolent resistance. 

All members of the public who support democracy and who oppose the current turn toward bigotry, corruption, exclusion, and authoritarianism are welcome to join the group online at audacitycat.com or by emailing contact@audacitycat.com.