Our first event! the PACG Summit
April 16, 2005
PACG's first official community event was the PACG Summit held at Augustana College on April 16, 2005. Fifty-four people pre-registered for it but over 400 people showed up! PACG Co-Founder and current Board of Directors member, Alta Price, recalls people being so excited about a new progressive group organizing to take action that they were shoving cash into the hands of Co-Founder Cath Bolkcom. It was an encouraging start!
Cath Bolkcom, PACG co-founder, made the following opening remarks:
Opening remarks
Cathy Bolkcom
Progressive Action for Common Good
Organizing for the Common Good: Promoting Progressive Values
My name is Cathy Bolkcom and I welcome you to the first of many Quad City Summits of Progressive Action for the Common Good. It is so appropriate to be in this former reading room at the Augustana Library where I studied social work under that great community organizer, Lucien Zamorski, 30 years ago. He was a champion of social justice, especially juvenile justice and he inspired me to the work I’ve done. I am also thinking this morning of Joseph W. Smith, who taught many local organizers everything we know about organizing and this was his vision – bringing together people from both sides of the rivers, all walks of life, clergy and union people to work for a better, more just community. And we are thinking of Kathy Kirschbaum this morning, who was such a great citizen and leader for so many years.
I am here today because I am disturbed about what is happening in our country: a preemptive war, attacks on Social Security; the burgeoning deficit, marginalization of our homosexual brothers and sisters. Many of us are angry; some of us are in despair at the assaults on our civil rights, the blurring of lines between church and state, between the branches of government, the intrusion of the government and its imposition of narrow religious views into the private personal decision of our families.
Many of us worked very hard on the last election. I believe that the election was a test of whether negative energy and anger would carry the day for us. It was not. Now the news grows more unsettling by the day. So, what are we called to do?
The Religious Right and the radicals in the current administration are very well organized. We will not prevail against them using their tactics. Fear and loathing- justified as they may seem- will not advance our goals. If we stay angry and focused on them, we give them power. So, what are we called to do?
Three short months ago, we began meeting to talk about how we can come together to rebuild our democracy from the ground up.
We must reclaim what it means to be citizens, to have faith, to live our values, to promote policies which serve the best interests of the entire community. We call ourselves Progressive Action for the Common Good. We believe in racial and economic justice, peace, equality of all our citizens, human rights, a preserved environment and a reinvigorated democracy. We seek to empower people to take action – to ask not “what’s in it for me?” but "what is best for my community?.” Some of you will say, “But I’m not a leader – I’m not an activist.” Yet all of us can do some things to make this world the kind of place we want it to be.
Paul Loeb tells the story of that great heroine of civil rights Rosa Parks. Rosa did not simply decide one day not to give up her seat on her bus. She had been going to local civil rights meetings for over a year. She knew of the boycotts in other cities. She had been to trainings on non-violence. She was working with other people of courage and vision.
We must be willing to do the same – to step above our own interests, one step above the issues about which we feel most passionately. We will never speak with one voice on any given issues. We are progressives – independent, opinionated. We don’t speak with one voice. This has been a great strength as well as a weakness. We must be willing to come together – to gather our strength - without expecting to agree on every issue. We must be willing to work together because this is what our community calls us to – to work together for the common good.
We owe no less to our planet, to our children, to our democracy.
Cath Bolkcom, PACG co-founder, made the following opening remarks:
Opening remarks
Cathy Bolkcom
Progressive Action for Common Good
Organizing for the Common Good: Promoting Progressive Values
My name is Cathy Bolkcom and I welcome you to the first of many Quad City Summits of Progressive Action for the Common Good. It is so appropriate to be in this former reading room at the Augustana Library where I studied social work under that great community organizer, Lucien Zamorski, 30 years ago. He was a champion of social justice, especially juvenile justice and he inspired me to the work I’ve done. I am also thinking this morning of Joseph W. Smith, who taught many local organizers everything we know about organizing and this was his vision – bringing together people from both sides of the rivers, all walks of life, clergy and union people to work for a better, more just community. And we are thinking of Kathy Kirschbaum this morning, who was such a great citizen and leader for so many years.
I am here today because I am disturbed about what is happening in our country: a preemptive war, attacks on Social Security; the burgeoning deficit, marginalization of our homosexual brothers and sisters. Many of us are angry; some of us are in despair at the assaults on our civil rights, the blurring of lines between church and state, between the branches of government, the intrusion of the government and its imposition of narrow religious views into the private personal decision of our families.
Many of us worked very hard on the last election. I believe that the election was a test of whether negative energy and anger would carry the day for us. It was not. Now the news grows more unsettling by the day. So, what are we called to do?
The Religious Right and the radicals in the current administration are very well organized. We will not prevail against them using their tactics. Fear and loathing- justified as they may seem- will not advance our goals. If we stay angry and focused on them, we give them power. So, what are we called to do?
Three short months ago, we began meeting to talk about how we can come together to rebuild our democracy from the ground up.
We must reclaim what it means to be citizens, to have faith, to live our values, to promote policies which serve the best interests of the entire community. We call ourselves Progressive Action for the Common Good. We believe in racial and economic justice, peace, equality of all our citizens, human rights, a preserved environment and a reinvigorated democracy. We seek to empower people to take action – to ask not “what’s in it for me?” but "what is best for my community?.” Some of you will say, “But I’m not a leader – I’m not an activist.” Yet all of us can do some things to make this world the kind of place we want it to be.
Paul Loeb tells the story of that great heroine of civil rights Rosa Parks. Rosa did not simply decide one day not to give up her seat on her bus. She had been going to local civil rights meetings for over a year. She knew of the boycotts in other cities. She had been to trainings on non-violence. She was working with other people of courage and vision.
We must be willing to do the same – to step above our own interests, one step above the issues about which we feel most passionately. We will never speak with one voice on any given issues. We are progressives – independent, opinionated. We don’t speak with one voice. This has been a great strength as well as a weakness. We must be willing to come together – to gather our strength - without expecting to agree on every issue. We must be willing to work together because this is what our community calls us to – to work together for the common good.
We owe no less to our planet, to our children, to our democracy.
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