James Cook Applied Sociology Project Six: Creative Action Together with The Audacity
The Audacity is a local activist community making a space for taking Creative Action Together, organizing using social science principles for movement organization.
The meeting and decision-making structure of The Audacity applies insights regarding recruitment, commitment and community building from classic community sociologists Georg Simmel, Doug McAdam and Ronald Breiger, who emphasize the importance of a web of overlapping affiliations and social network recruitment in establishing group stability.
The Audacity also adopts recommendations by political scientist Hahrie Han, who emphasizes the importance of identifying, integrating, and developing skills of grassroots members as a way of cultivating authentic and effective community action.
In this way, The Audacity can be seen as an off-campus, civic culture application of the same principles that Dr. Cook has used to invigorate the UMA Community Garden and to relaunch the Midcoast Community Chorus after the coronavirus pandemic.
The Audacity is a local activist community centered in Midcoast Maine welcoming all looking for a place to:
learn, educate, connect, strategize, plan, create, and act in community with others
pool skills and resources online and in meetings (with the goal of establishing a civic engagement maker space)
identify, describe, and resist the current wave of fascism, bigotry, violence, and willful ignorance
respect one another and work together across differences in philosophy, values, and methods within a broad commitment to nonviolent resistance
culminating in the manifestation of public demonstrations, performances, exhibitions, and other visible actions