Latest / The Audacity CAT / The Voices of AudacityCAT - Origins of a Grassroots Community
Transcript
- Speaker 1: If we're going to fix things, it's going to have to be us. Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes. It is really, it is up to us. And I think that's one of the beauties of audacity because that's how it's basically what we're talking about, how it's grown. Because you have an idea, okay, make it happen. You make, do whatever you have to do to make it happen. And that's what's worked. Speaker 1: We are the people that... Speaker 2: Good morning. Speaker 1: Good morning, Lyn. Here we are. We have this day, we have this time. Speaker 2: you a lot of us know you, know your story, but a lot of people who watch this don't have any idea who you are. Who is James Cook? How did you get to come to where you are now? Speaker 1: Who is James Cook? Who is anybody? Well, okay, so I have ⁓ training as a sociologist. have a ⁓ PhD from the University of Arizona in ⁓ sociology and ⁓ I spent 30 years as a sociologist. ⁓ Until ⁓ my effective date of resignation as a tenured professor of sociology was the day after inauguration of Trump's second. Speaker 2: Well, I remember celebrating your tenure when you got it and then, wow, things kind of unraveled. Speaker 1: Well, we saw ⁓ those of us who were paying attention, we saw the writing of the wall. is that ⁓ social sciences in particular, empirical ⁓ approaches that ⁓ teach about how to measure reality and compare it to claims, not very popular in the moment. ⁓ And so ⁓ actually now I'm ⁓ in my day job, a manager of a charity thrift shop. ⁓ and I use applied sociology all the time. But ⁓ one of the things that I learned in my time as a sociologist is that when we ask who is somebody, that identity is ⁓ really a set of role performances. So where a role might be as a say a father or as a student or ⁓ as a worker, as a friend. These are all all things that that ⁓ we try to do. ⁓ And so some of the identity that I bring in here is from sociology. ⁓ And my PhD in sociology was centered in two areas, ⁓ one of which is social network analysis, ⁓ the study of patterns of interaction of individuals and how the way that people interact with one another ⁓ affects their experience. And the second is in political sociology, which is ⁓ the study of how groups and institutions ⁓ work together to create ⁓ policies, policy understandings, political realities, and that includes both what happens in government and then also what happens in non-governmental zones. Speaker 2: Well, it really strikes me how without knowing where you would be all these years later when you chose those topics of concentration in your doctorate, how perfectly suited that foundation is for what you're doing now. Speaker 1: ⁓ We each bring whatever experience we have to the table. And I think there are lot of ⁓ perfect ways for people to ⁓ participate. And there's a lot of different kinds of leadership, but this is what I'm doing now. Yeah. Yeah. And ⁓ so I studied under David Snow, who ⁓ looked at patterns of religious movements. ⁓ and political movements and how recruitment worked and also Doug McAdam who studied Freedom Summer, which was an example of high risk activism in which you ask the question, who was it that signs up for this Freedom Summer experience? White. ⁓ usually comfortable college students heading down to the south to help with ⁓ voter registration ⁓ at a time when that was dangerous and some folks were killed as a result. And then who actually follows through and does that? ⁓ So ⁓ I'd had some of that ⁓ academic experience. But had also been involved in social movements ever since I was about 18 years old and I'm not 18 anymore. So it's been a while. The first social movement action I went to was for Sane Freeze in Cleveland, Ohio. And that was a movement to limit the severity and the spread, the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. But so I've been involved in social movements for a long time and I'd studied them. And that affects ⁓ sort of how I thought of the moment when we saw Donald Trump winning a second term and making all kinds of very specific promises about what he was going to do. Speaker 2: When I met you ⁓ around his first term and the loosely connected Indivisible, we really were a renegade member of Indivisible. But that's where I met you. I have no recollection of how I found my way to that group. Not a glimmer of a recollection, but there you were. And then Sarah and Holland. ⁓ What a dynamic, small but dynamic organization that turned out to be. And I look back at how excited we were at, I mean, we'd have 20 people in front of a courthouse. I mean, we're there every Tuesday, five o'clock, but never big crowds. 20 was a big deal. And then we did the march from Thomas to in Thomaston and that was 275 or something like that and we thought that was fantastic. ⁓ Speaker 1: The numbers have been a lot larger this time around. But it started right after inauguration with a heck of a lot of silence. So really for a few months. ⁓ remember the day after. Speaker 2: I'm about second one, second one or. Speaker 1: Yes, with the second term, there was a lot of folks who said, I'm not ready yet. I'm not even ready to confront the second Trump administration. I know that those of us who were responding to the first one, once we got past the January 6th moment, we felt like, okay, our work is done here. We can dissolve. Speaker 2: And it dissolved, Speaker 1: But knowing that we had a much more difficult time in the second administration coming forward, although I don't think we even anticipated how bad it was going to be, ⁓ the first reaction was a lot of reluctance. So eventually after about a month, ⁓ I was able to, I think I used Facebook to basically make a call locally to folks who said they would be willing to meet around a kitchen table. ⁓ Speaker 2: Yes, I was and and I thought it was closer to the election than a month. don't but I don't know for sure. But I remember thinking I ⁓ can't even breathe here without help. I think at this point I can't get through this alone. I wonder what James is doing and reached out to you to say, we get a group of people together? And you said, oh, you're on the list come Thursday night at whatever time it was. And they think there were like nine of us that first time and then 15 the next week. And here we are. Speaker 1: And here we are. But the first few meetings, the first three or four meetings were right in around my dining room table. And we went. We had sheets on the wall. Speaker 2: Sun your walls, Wow, did we brainstorm. Speaker 1: We sure did. And one of the pieces of difficulty we had was trying to find points of commonality. So one of the first questions was, well, what's the most important issue here? And we just went around this group of nine folks ⁓ in that first meeting ⁓ and everybody had a different issue. ⁓ Speaker 2: Everybody was different Speaker 1: So we thought, okay, well, we haven't our common point. Let's try that again. We met again and we still couldn't find a common point. And ⁓ at least ⁓ one ⁓ clear vision that says, this the top issue. It is the most important thing. We all agree to work on ⁓ this. ⁓ And eventually that became a ⁓ And it was so frustrating that for a brief period I thought well, we're just gonna have to We're just gonna have to call this off this idea of organizing until We got to a realization that we didn't have to agree on on an ordering list of from top to bottom of what Speaker 2: that was, it could be inclusive of everybody. Speaker 1: that it could be inclusive of a wide variety. And then in January and then our through, which was when we had our first ⁓ public, everyone is welcome meeting ⁓ that came through again. But we realized that we had ⁓ three things that we could be for, three things that we agreed that we could stand against. And these are very broad. then one commitment in approach. so those are the three things that we were for. ⁓ We're ⁓ an inclusive democracy, equity and freedom. And then the ABC that we were against authoritarianism, bigotry and corruption. And then we agreed to a commitment in our actions to nonviolent action. Speaker 2: Freedom. Speaker 1: We couldn't agree on anything else. We had lots of- Speaker 2: I think we came up with a name from around before the general meeting because that I remember being at your house and debating art how are we going to name this and finally just went for is it the audacity or audacity Speaker 1: I mean, still, people say different things. I know. It was an idea of audacity. Speaker 2: That came from the kitchen table meetings. Speaker 1: It did, it did. And then also a subtitle, which is describing our approach. Right. Which is to creative in action together. We're not alone. We're doing something. We're not just speaking. And we're going to be creative about it. And that's the genesis of the idea of the audacity. And it's grown since then. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the ways that I've watched it grow that you've instigated and followed through on is somebody will come up with some great idea for something and then you will invite them to take charge of that and make it happen. And how many subgroups have come from you doing that, yeah. Speaker 1: Well, and that's how leadership has grown. So it started around my dining room table with me convening people and saying, hey, we have to do something. ⁓ But since then, leadership has really spread out according to the principle that leadership comes when somebody says not only somebody should do something, I will organize this thing. Speaker 2: But I can. Speaker 1: And ⁓ within the boundaries that we set, the three things were for, the three things were against, and nonviolence. If there's any idea and there's enough people to say, yep, we're going to work on it, then it happens. that's with that kind of ⁓ approach that invites people to put a little bit of their own personal stake in it. There's a lot of leaders in the audacity now who have that leadership authority because they are the people who have said, I will make this happen. I will work with other people to make this happen. And then they find ways. that's wonderful. And you're one of those folks working on podcasts. So. Speaker 2: Thank you. Well, yes, but what happened for me was by April, ⁓ my health began to just tank and went way downhill. I'm, you know, the no Kings is the first outdoor protests that I've been able to get to since way back in more, almost a year. So what I can do and what I've been doing has been very limited. by or constrained by what I can do physically, but the podcast group is fun. And I went to that saying, well, I bring no technology, you know, no experience. I like to talk. And this just seems like a good idea. And it leads me to say to you, all right, well, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, and I know you've been talking about it is, What do you see? Where do you see audacity going? We've got, you know, he's still in office. They are still running the show. So we have that to contend with, but that's not going to be forever. We hope. What happens with audacity then? What's our job? Do we have a community commitment beyond being a protest organization? What's our, what's our role? We've got quite a dynamic group here. What can we do? Speaker 1: Yeah. So Lyn, hear two questions in there. One is what does the audacity do after Donald Trump is no longer president and his administration is no longer in power? And then there's the question, what does the audacity do next? And I think there's a lot of steps between where we are, where we end up, and most likely years. ⁓ Especially if it happens under- Speaker 2: And where that is. ⁓ I can share. Speaker 1: Which is not guaranteed. But ⁓ what we do eventually is a wonderful question that I haven't even really given myself time to think about. But one of the great things about what we say when what is it that the audacity will do next is that there's no one person who's saying who's stage managing and saying this is what will happen. Here's the single vision. You either take it or you leave it. Speaker 2: to solve. Speaker 1: What Audacity does next is what people organizing under the Audacity who have the gumption to come up with something that fits within our bounds ⁓ decides on and decides that they are willing to work on. So for instance, last Saturday we ⁓ had a brainstorming session where we said, okay, we've been bringing people to Chapman Park every Saturday in Rockland, Maine at noon. And that's been wonderful because it's accomplished the goal of demonstrating that here in this place, in this community, it is not true what they said at the beginning of the Trump administration, that there was no opposition, that it was scattered, that it was listless, that it had no energy, that it had no people, and that Donald Trump just got a mandate that he was gonna run with. And we said, hang on there. And we've done work over a year of demonstrating that that is not the case. Not only is that not the case, but that we have as many as, ⁓ 2300 people which I think is our high watermark that we've had and and and regularly hundreds of people every week ⁓ and the ⁓ counter protest the opposition the support for Donald Trump in Knox County they've at most been able to get four people and typically one person and many weeks nobody at all to even show up to demonstrate the support from their side, but now that that numbers demonstration has worked, we're saying, what do we do next? And so we're currently in a period of brainstorming and I have some ideas about what I would like to see happen next. But ⁓ we went through about five sheets of paper in brainstorming a number of ideas of things that we could do. And we're gonna find out ⁓ through that same process we've always had, which is, okay, here's this idea, who's gonna work on it? Speaker 2: going to Because it would be a shame to see it when the impetus and the need that's driven it so far eases to see it dissolve the way the last time around did. Yes. I don't think it will. Speaker 1: We'll see what rises to the top. I don't think it will either because one of the things that's happened very clearly is that there has been a sense of two things. The first is that it's really important for us to stop the destruction of democracy, human rights, standards for ⁓ encountering corruption. ⁓ Just the naked bigotry that is going on right now and the use of power to hurt people who are the least powerful amongst us. and to stop that. But there has also been a strong strain in the work that we've done, which is to say, all right, if everything is being destroyed right now, our goal is not simply to go back to what was, but if we're going to wreck everything, if everything's going to be wrecked, we should do more. We should imagine what a society that we have in our minds that would be ideal would look like and to try to embody that in the work that we do. And so we're growing a community for the future. We're growing a group of people who are connected to each other, who trust each other, who work together from many different towns, from many different backgrounds, both political and religious and moral and ethical and professional. And we've all gotten to know each other and make friendships and alliances with each other. I think that's going to be there. Speaker 2: That's not hard. Yeah, I do too. And I think it will find an expression within the communities or that benefits the communities as well as the larger issues because I don't think we can, you know, once this, I have great faith that this administration is going to topple of its own, if not the pressures that are coming to bear on it. But I don't think we can just try and build it back the way it was. The way it was has supported the underlying fascist development for decades. It has to be different. That didn't work. That brought us here. I want to get back to here. Speaker 1: Yes, agree. One of the most, ⁓ there's so many competitors for this. So I'll just say one of the most depressing things we've seen over the last year and a bit. ⁓ Of course we expected Donald Trump to be mercenary and ⁓ reckless in his destruction of many of the, things about the United States that at least showed potential for ⁓ creating a more just society. We expected him to go about wrecking that, but it was really disheartening to see ⁓ leaders of institutions capitulate, just knuckle under and be willing to throw human rights, ⁓ human dignity, ⁓ respect for difference and rule of law ⁓ right under the bus. Our media institutions, our educational institutions, our religious institutions, and our political institutions, including the Democratic Party, have really let us down and failed to stand up. Speaker 2: Yes, it's not just MAGA. It's not just MAGA who's let go, I think, those who swore an oath in order to hold the positions that they have that have abandoned that. And it seems to be about the power of money to degree. Speaker 1: I'm dead. That's right. Sure. I would be a little more sympathetic. mean, there are some people who are clearly selling their souls, JD Vance, Pam Bondi, people who are willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder. But then there are leaders of nonprofit institutions, educational, religious institutions and businesses and legal societies and all the like who have in their charters a fiduciary responsibility for profit to make money, nonprofit to promote the narrow mission of a particular organization. And they've made the calculation that in order for their organization, their single organization to survive, the leaders have to get along with Donald Trump and have to give in. but the problem with that is that they are ultimately betraying the very missions that their organizations are. Speaker 2: than even. What your organization is built for. Speaker 1: So what does that leave us with? It leaves us with, you know, we can't rely on churches to get it right. We can't rely on schools to stand up for us. We can't rely on political parties like the Democratic Party, certainly the Republican Party. We can't rely on political parties to do the work for us. We can't even just rely on electing the right people to office into a machine that is promoting itself and preserving itself. to fix things. If we're going to fix things, it's going to have to be us. Speaker 2: Exactly. Yes. It is up to us. And I think that's one of the beauties of audacity because that's how it's basically what we're talking about, how it's grown. Because you have an idea, okay, make it happen. You make, do whatever you have to do to make it happen. And that's what's worked. Speaker 1: We are the people that we- And that's beautiful part of it is watching people come in often. They'll come to an event, like they'll come to a demonstration or, then they'll come to a meeting and say, I want to do more. But really what, what someone ought to do is blank, blank. And it's the moment then when you say, well, would you like to be at the start of that? Immediate reaction is, no, I'm not the person. I'm not the person that would do that. I'm, I'm not good enough. I'm just this. I'm just that I'm not enough. Speaker 2: Would you be willing to? Speaker 1: And what people I've seen over and over again have learned over time is, you know what? When the chips are down, you are enough. You can do a surprising amount, a single person with the gumption to say, you know what, I may not be perfect, but I'm going to give it a go. It's amazing what people have built in movements. We have groups that are about theater, about visual arts, about singing, in creativity. We have an infrastructure group. We have an outreach group that's working with legislatures and other organizations. We have a podcast group. All these different groups, civil disobedience group, which is- Because people said, okay, Speaker 2: the registration election group. Speaker 1: I'll try." And then finding out they have so much leadership inside them. We have so many leaders because there are so many people who've stepped up and said, I'll try. I love that. Speaker 2: I do too. I think there are two things that ⁓ come from this kind of growth. One is finding that when we step up, there is more to us, that we are so much more than we think we are. ⁓ And that when we join together, one and one make about four, not two. That's huge. ⁓ Speaker 1: Yes and people invest in each other, it multiplies because you give someone else the ability to do a little bit more and they take that energy and they don't just digest it, they beam it back out to the world and that's when you get just a little bit at the start magnifying to so much. It's beautiful to watch happen. Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly. Speaker 1: So we've maintained our independence and that independence is organizational. It's also financial. We pass the bucket around. That's how we anything that costs money. It's by people taking a couple of bucks of cash out of their own ⁓ buckets locally. We are not funded by George Soros, but one of the things we've been able to fund is a website and that is ⁓ at audacitycat.com. We also have, if you use blue sky, ⁓ We have ⁓ an audacity account there and we also have an audacity Facebook page. If you look up Audacity Maine or Audacity Maine Blue Sky ⁓ or Audacity Maine website on any ⁓ search engine ⁓ in your browser, you'll find us. the main thing to is ⁓ to join in one of those ways ⁓ and then you'll find out what's coming down the pike locally, and meetings ⁓ and office hours and ways to join in the conversation and not only to show up for events, but to help start to plan them too. If you are someone who wants to do that, ⁓ find us, find our social media accounts, find our webpage, and you'll find ways to get involved. Speaker 2: YouTube James Speaker 1: We do have a YouTube channel and it includes our podcast. And one of the things, once you find our ⁓ website, you'll find connections to all those other social media accounts as well. So that's a good place to go. Audacitycatforkreativactiontogether.com ⁓ is the place to go to get started there. Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's been quite a trip, James, starting your kitchen table. It has. has been. Yeah. It's been so good. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you, Lyn, for your time today. Speaker 2: All right, take care. Speaker 1: So long, bye bye.