Newsletter #1: Time to Meet, Create, and Act Together
The Audacity: Creative Action Together
Newsletter #1, January 21 2025
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1. Who We Are
2. Save The Date and Spread the Word: February 1 meeting 1-3 pm at the Rockland Library
3. Button Making Group Updates
4. Public Singing Group Updates
5. Website developments
6. Call for Other Working Group Updates
7. Newsletter Submissions Moving Forward
1. Who We Are
The Audacity is a group of locals in the Midcoast region of Maine who are working together to engage in creative action together, responding to the threats raised by a second Trump administration and its allies in our legislatures, courts, and communities. We’re just getting started in these early days, but it’s been so heartening to see people standing up and volunteering to take responsibility for organizing positive counter-action.
On January 21, we're in the first full day of the second Trump presidency, and the worst predictions regarding his activity are already coming to pass, with militarization, declarations of emergency, removal of childrens' citizenship, and initiation of mass deportation already underway. The mass media are soft-pedaling or ignoring these developments. It's up to us to spread the word and cultivate nonviolent resistance.
2. Save the Date and Spread the Word for our next Meeting: Saturday, Feb. 1 1-3 PM @ Rockland Public Library
The Audacity has held three meetings since the election at a farmhouse in Rockport, but as we've grown in size, we need a larger space, so we're moving to the Rockland Public Library for our next whole-group meeting. Save the date of Saturday, February 1, 1-3 PM! We'll meet in the Community Room of the Rockland Public Library (80 Union Street Rockland, ME 04841).
Please help spread the word! How?
If you can, download and print out a poster (8.5 x 11 | 11 x 17) and post it somewhere public around town.
Better yet, design your own poster promoting the meeting and post it around, too. Then upload it to our Google Drive folder so others can print and post it: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14w6i7YhrG66-2h987Nhlw8trbeQk9YeS
Write something up on social media about the meeting (which not only gets people to our meeting but also helps change the appearance of consensus around Trump and his followers). Link to our web page announcing the meeting when you’re posting, or link to the Facebook event for this page.
Send this email along to someone who you think would want to know. If they'd like to join the email list, they can email contact@audacitycat.com
Perhaps the most effective recruitment method, however, is talking to people you know one-on-one. Research shows that people tend to join social movements most often and most enduringly when they are recruited by someone they know.
(The Rockland Library policy for all meetings asks us to state that "This event/meeting is not sponsored by the Rockland Public Library and the Library is in no way affiliated with, nor liable for, the content or organization of this event." All true.)
3. Button Making Group Updates
The button/bumper sticker making group met on Jan.15 to make a bunch of buttons -- 100 buttons in all with more than a dozen designs. These were brought down to the Portland People's March on Saturday, Jan. 18, where we distributed them all to folks in attendance, who were very appreciative of this work. The result was that we've distributed our messages around southern Maine, where they'll each do their bit to shift the perception about the direction of public opinion -- one great way to budge the "Overton Window" of what the public perceives to be acceptable or unacceptable political behavior.
4. Public Singing Group Updates
The public singing group has been researching and assembling some good material. Ray has set up a Protest Song Database and so far folks in this group have added 31 songs and 7 song collections to the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Yw__9E4WK7rSO5DgU5bnh1G4HIqTEHNIaJrODnqfUU/edit?usp=sharing . We also have a folder in The Audacity's Google Drive with pdf public domain song books and a few pieces of sheet music with harmony -- https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nvpVQEd9D6JgztTQXZZ3q8V-Jzl1mL7H .
A next step for us is to figure out a place and manner to roll these songs out to help the Midcoast find its resistance voice. It did wonders in Estonia -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6A4vYooRk4 -- could it work here?
5. Website working group
Joe R. has been doing wonders developing the website at http://audacitycat.org -- please head to the website, where there are some new logo designs and a poll for you to pick your favorite. If you have ideas for functions/information that needs to be added, please drop a note to contact@audacitycat.com to let us know.
6. Call for Other Working Group Updates
After our last meeting, other working groups in drama/puppetry, a benefit concert, and local government interface got started. If you're in those working groups and have an update, please pass it along to contact@audacitycat.com.
7. Newsletter Submissions Moving Forward
This is the first of a series of weekly newsletters to come out from The Audacity moving forward. If you have social movement/protest information, The Audacity's website has a password-protected page (members have received this password by email) where you can share a blurb to include in the newsletter by heading to https://www.audacitycat.com/newsletter-submit and entering details in the online form there. You can also just send your newsletter information to contact@audacitycat.com if you'd prefer.
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Yesterday was a hard day, but the best antidote to despair, as a sign at the Saturday Portland protest put it, is a radical hope, and the best way to build a sense of radical hope in yourself is to do something. Here's to the doing!
Best,
James Cook, facilitator, The Audacity
Next Meeting, Upcoming Actions, and Work Groups
January 12, 2025
The Audacity is a group of locals in the Midcoast region of Maine who are working together to engage in creative action together, responding to the threats raised by a second Trump administration and its allies in our legislatures, courts, and communities. We’re just getting started in these early days, but it’s been so heartening to see people standing up and volunteering to take responsibility for organizing positive counter-action.
1. Save the Date for our next Meeting: Saturday, February 1 @ Rockland Public Library
The Audacity has held three meetings since the election at a farmhouse in Rockport, but as we've grown in size, we need a larger space, so we're moving to the Rockland Public Library for our next whole-group meeting. Save the date of Saturday, February 1, 1-3 PM! We'll meet in the Community Room of the Rockland Public Library (80 Union Street Rockland, ME 04841).
Please help spread the word! How?
If you can, download and print out a poster (8.5 x 11 | 11 x 17) and post it somewhere public around town.
Better yet, design your own poster promoting the meeting and post it around, too.
Write something up on social media about the meeting (which not only gets people to our meeting but also helps change the appearance of consensus around Trump and his followers). Link to this page when you’re posting, or link to the Facebook event for this page.
Perhaps the most effective recruitment method, however, is talking to people you know one-on-one. Research shows that people tend to join social movements most often and most enduringly when they are recruited by someone they know.
[This is a thumbnail image of an 8.5×11 inch poster welcoming Mainers to our organizing meeting on February 1, 2025 at the Rockland Public Library. Please download, print, and post!]
(The Rockland Library policy for all meetings asks us to state that "This event/meeting is not sponsored by the Rockland Public Library and the Library is in no way affiliated with, nor liable for, the content or organization of this event." All true.)
2. Upcoming Actions. Although Donald Trump hasn't taken his oath of office yet, actions are already afoot in Maine. Here are three of which we know:
1. People’s March Augusta: Saturday, January 18 at Noon, Maine State House, Augusta ME
2. People’s March Portland: Saturday, January 18 at 10:30 AM, Monument Square, Portland ME
3. Just Stop (demonstration against genocide in Palestine): Saturday, January 25, 1:30 pm, Corner of Elm and Chestnut Streets, Camden ME 04843
3. Call for Newsletter Items. We're going to start up a newsletter. If you're in a working group that has something to announce, if you have an upcoming organizing meeting, or if you know of a social movement action taking place, please write to contact@audacitycat.com with your news by Friday, January 17. (If you haven't joined one of the groups yet or are looking to start one of your own, fear not: you'll have a chance to get involved.)
Thanks for being audacious, friends, and keeping on in difficult times! If you’re new to The Audacity and would like to join our email list or contribute in another way, please drop a note to us on our contact page.