Blog Archives - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Immigration and Refugee Summit - After Action Report

2/28/2023

Immigration and Refugee Summit After Action Report

Civil Rights Forum
One Human Family-QCA and Quad Cities Interfaith, co-sponsors

The PACG Civil Rights Forum worked with our friends at One Human Family and Quad Cities Interfaith to present an educational summit dealing with the problems that both immigrants and refugees face today. "Navigating Complex Policies Within a Broken System" was well-attended.

We held our event at Eastern Iowa Community College in Davenport on Saturday, February 25th and were able to use the school's media equipment to allow one presenter to attend via Zoom.

We were excited to bring together a panel of people who could share the diverse experiences they have working with immigrant and refugee populations. Read about our six panelists here. Their unique backgrounds and experiences made the gathering even more powerful. They shared heartfelt experiences from their own lives and from the work they do to help immigrants and refugees in order to educate the attendees on the various obstacles and challenges faced by these people. After the panelists spoke, the audience engaged in meaningful discussion on ways we can work to make a difference overcoming these challenges and obstacles.

The panelists were well received and the audience was very energized. The Civil Rights forum will be following up on various ideas shared about action we can take.

WQAD sent a reporter to our event and you can view their news story here.

You may view a recording of our summit here.

Allison Ambrose

PACG Book Club for March 2023 - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

2/26/2023

**PACG Book Club - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown (first 10 chapters)
Monday, March 20th at 4:30 pm via Zoom**

The PACG Book Club decided to further explore the history of our country’s treatment of its indigenous peoples by reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown. Since the book is long, we will read and discuss the first ten chapters in March and finish the book in April.

More about the book from Goodreads:

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages…

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.”

We hope you can join us! Click on my name for a link to the March discussion, which will be by Zoom.

Alta Price

More changes to our PAU - A Message to Our Members

2/21/2023

Changes to our Progressive Action Update

A Message to Our Members

In the spring of 2022, PACG made significant changes to our weekly email. We renamed it the Progressive Action Update (PAU), changed the formatting, added new sections, and tried to streamline it for easier reading. We try to have less information inside the email by including links to our actions, events and information. Most of those links go to our website.

We have been carrying this information at the bottom of our PAU and have now decided that our readership knows this information. Even though we continue to use this heading coding, you will no longer see this explanation at the bottom of the email. Instead, the email will link to this blog post.

Progressive Action Update (PAU) Headings Legend:
New This Week
Older Post
Updated Post (with new information in green)
After Action Report

Although we schedule the our weekly Progressive Action Update (PAU) email for Tuesday morning delivery, submissions to the it are due by noon on the Sunday before publication.

We are always interested in your suggestions or ideas regarding our communications with you. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

PACG Webmaster

Health care discrimination for queer people - No Hate In Our States

2/21/2023

Queer people face discrimination in health care - Here are the people changing that

No Hate In Our States

LGBTQ Nation

LGBTQ Nation is an online news magazine, reporting on issues relevant to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer community.

Many barriers exist for queer people and health care discrimination causes serious harm to the LGBTQIA+ community. Happily, things are changing for the better. This article dives into a range of queer people inspired by their experiences to become health care advocates and providers. Read it here.

Dee VanThournout

Medical help without insurance - Of Interest to Our Forum Members

2/21/2023

Get medical help without insurance: An Arm and a Leg

Health Care Reform Forum

This Kaiser Health News podcast discusses ways people can get medical help when out of a job or when they lack the money needed for health insurance. It’s titled ‘An Arm and a Leg’: No Money, No Job, No Health Care? Not Always.

It runs about 26 minutes, but there’s also a transcript of the episode available at this link.

Frank Samuelson

Avoiding hospice fraud - Of Interest to Our Forum Members

2/21/2023

How to avoid hospice fraud

Health Care Reform Forum

Frank Samuelson’s Letter to the Editor was published in the Quad City Times on February 12, 2023. Our forum believes this is an important article in that it helps us understand Hospice fraud and how to avoid it. Read it here.

If you’d like to learn more, please go to this ProPublica link for three articles:
1. Congress and Industry Leaders Call for Crackdown on Hospice Fraud
2. How to Research Your Hospice and Avoid Hospice Fraud
3. Endgame: How the Visionary Hospice Movement Became a For-Profit Hustle.

Frank Samuelson

Federal bill to lower drug prices - What You Can Do Now

2/20/2023

Bi-partisan federal bill to lower drug prices

Health Care Reform Forum

PACG’s Health Care Reform forum works to promote the idea of health care as a right for all, not a privilege for a few.

Currently, we are working to inform the community of critical federal legislation being moved through the Senate that would help lower drug prices. This is a bi-partisan effort involving Senator Chuck Grassley, (R-IA), and Senator Amy Klobuchar, (D-MN). Contact your Senators and encourage them to support this life saving legislation.

“Our bipartisan legislation deters practices such as pay-for-delay and sham petitions that undermine competition and limit Americans’ access to affordable and life-saving drugs...," said Senator Klobuchar.

"...I’m glad to see these bipartisan bills receive committee approval, and the full Senate ought to take action on them without delay,” said Grassley.

Read more from a recent news release here.

Past efforts of our Health Care Reform Forum have included the Make Meds Affordable campaign. Click here to read more.

Frank Samuelson

March Green Drinks - Climate Stories -PACG Event

2/19/2023

March Green Drinks - Climate Stories: From Diversity to Bridges
Tuesday, March 7th at 5:00 pm

El Patron Mexican Restaurant
1806, 2nd Avenue
Rock Island, IL (map)

Environmental Forum

Most Americans recognize humanity's role in climate change; however, an increasingly vast and conflicting array of stories are being told about specific causes, consequences, and interventions. Some are demonstrably misleading, aiming primarily to extend the status quo, while more accurate examples tend to be less widely considered.

Dr. Hamner, Professor of English and the Liberal Arts and Sciences coordinator at the Western Illinois University, will offer a quickly moving, upper-atmosphere tour of both commonplace and under-appreciated climate tales in popular media, literature, and cinema. Asking especially about the central problems and solutions that they imagine, he will contend that the stories we hear, digest, and amplify about our unfolding long emergency are crucial to the actions we undertake. These narratives can be the propaganda of would-be oligarchs, but they can also become bridges toward
tangible solutions.

To make sure that we have enough space for our meeting, we like to give El Patron a
head count prior to the meeting. Please RSVP here.

Susan Leuthauser

"I Am the Future" gets a makeover! - A Message from the Board

2/14/2023

Announcing I Am the Future gets a WQPT PBS makeover!
Thursday, February 23rd at 7:00 pm

PACG Board of Directors

We are thrilled to let you know that our Black History Month video has been updated thanks to WQPT PBS! Please join us as we watch this together on PBS at the MLK Interpretive Center in Davenport on Thursday, February 23rd at 7:00. The show starts at 7:30 but we ask that you arrive early.

About a year ago when our new PACG president, Glenda Guster, took the helm of the organization, she had the idea of interviewing Quad City residents who had been personally impacted during the 1960s by Rev. Martin Luther King and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Typical of PACG, we organized a committee to get this project off the ground and the result was a 12-minute video we named I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past. Read about the original project here. And you may view that video on the PACG YouTube Channel: I Am the Future - Standing on the Shoulders of the Past here.

You have read a lot about this project over the past year because Glenda - on her own - has reached out to various groups and libraries to show our video. She gathers all of our featured speakers and hosts a discussion with them, addressing questions from the audience, after each showing. These have been very popular events.

In the fall of 2022, Glenda contacted WQPT PBS in Moline about our video. Lora Adams, WQPT Director of Marketing and Local Content, was extremely interested in seeing all of the raw footage we had and meeting many of our participants. She volunteered to rework our video, adding more than 15 minutes of new material and made some additional changes that we had originally wanted. WQPT did this editing for free!! (Have you donated to PBS this year? Do it now.)

We are honored that PBS was willing to update our video, making it something they will show for Black History Month, 2023. We are really proud that a local news organization saw the value of not just our video but of PACG itself. And none of this would have happened without the hard work of our current president.

Thank you Glenda for your continued devotion to this project!

If you are unable to join us in Davenport, watch on WQPT from home! Record it on your DVR, share with your friends and family, and keep an eye out for further showings. Their outreach will really help spread the word about the common good that PACG continues to do for our community.

Allison Ambrose

Police policies that resulted in Tyre Nichols murder - No Hate In Our States

2/13/2023

“Broken Windows Policing” Gave Rise to SCORPION Unit That Killed Tyre Nichols

Truthout

Broken windows policing reflects racialized assumptions about what is disorder and which communities are disorderly.

From the Truthout website: Truthout is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues. Since our founding in 2001, we have anchored our work in principles of accuracy, transparency, and independence from the influence of corporate and political forces.

Read their article about the murder of Tyre Nichols.

PACG IT Specialist