Blog Archives

August 2025 Green Drinks - The Living Building

7/29/2025

August Green Drinks - The Living Building - Stanley Center
Thursday, August 7th at 5:00 pm via Zoom

Environmental Forum

Find out how Stanley Center converted the former Muscatine Public Library into a green and sustainable building. It is on track to be the world’s second building renovation to achieve full Living Building certification from the International Living Future Institute. You'll also learn how the work performed inside the building impacts world peace and security.

Register for a Zoom link here.

Susan Leuthauser (she/her)

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Announcing the PACG Trivia Contest! 20th Anniversary Gala PACG Event

7/29/2025

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Announcing the PACG Trivia Contest!

Anniversary Planning Committee

As part of our upcoming 20th Anniversary Gala the evening of Sunday, October 19th, we will be playing PACG Trivia. To give you all a head start (as well as a nostalgic look back at some of our past events), we will have Progressive Action Update (PAU) posts about a past event, action or concern.

Here's the first in this series:
Question: The results of the US Presidential election of 2016 left most of us astonished and frustrated that the progressive efforts of the previous 8 years would be coming to an end. What grand event did PACG organize in March of 2017 to help us unite our community and continue our work under such difficult circumstances?

Answer: Taking Action 101 - Simple Ways You Can Change Your World.

Each attendee got an informative manual to take home after the event (see the pdf below). Read our After Action Report here. Over two hundred people showed up! Two hundred and twenty-two post cards were written! Each of our forums created a Power of 3 Action Plan to give our community members suggestions of things they could do to resist.

Civil Rights Forum Action Plan
Economic Justice Power of 3 Action Plan
Environmental Forum Power of 3 Action Plan
Healthcare Reform Forum Power of 3 Action Plan

If you wish to study ahead so that you can ace the Trivia Contest at the Gala in October, go to our Blog on our website here. You can use the Search Bar (window) to look for a past event or action, or you can scroll through our Archives to the right by date or topic.

pacg_taking_action_101_handbook.pdf
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US views on immigration have changed - No Hate in Our States

7/29/2025

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How US views of immigration have changed

Franciscan Peace Center

Months after President Donald Trump took office amid a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, the share of U.S. adults saying immigration is a "good thing" has jumped substantially, including among Republicans, according to a new Gallup Poll. About eight in 10 Americans — 79 percent — say immigration is good for the country, an increase from the 64 percent a year ago and a high point in the nearly 25-year trend. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now, down from 32% last year. Read the Associated Press article here.

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PACG History - Our communications have changed!

7/24/2025

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PACG History - Our communications have changed a lot!

In the past our communications were sent out via Constant Contact, sometimes with reference to our old website. These messages were sent as events and meetings arose and were not done with any official schedule.

We are proud of the changes we have made to getting our messages out to our community in a more consistent way with a uniform message system. This costs us more money than in the olden days but we feel that it is well worth the time and effort to keep our community informed in a timely manner

Here's a blog post link to one of our old emails (with a slightly updated formatting). It's interesting to look back to April 3, 2012.

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Current State of Immigration - Immigration Coalition of QC

7/20/2025

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The Current State of Immigration

Immigration Coalition QC

Here are where things are as of July 8th, 2025:

From January to July, there have been many changes to the immigration system. These rapid changes have completely reformed the immigration landscape and have been so numerous that it is difficult to keep track of them all! Here are where things are as of July 8th, 2025:

Deportation

At least 56,000 immigrants are currently being held in ICE detention centers
- Almost 30,000 of those detained have no criminal record
- The number of immigrants detained without a criminal record has nearly doubled since May
The Trump Administration has a goal of making 3,000 ICE arrests a day
- For reference, on June 3rd, 2025 ICE made the most arrests ever in a single day at 2,200.
The Supreme Court has blocked a lower court order that required 15 days’ notice to individuals the Trump Administration is trying to deport to countries other than their own. Potential deportees now are not guaranteed time to contact their lawyers and present evidence showing their lives would be in danger if deported to their own or third countries. This has resulted in deportations to third countries being conducted within 24 hours.

ICE and Immigration Enforcement Strategies

ICE is now the largest law enforcement agency in the country, with a budget of $170 billion
- $45 billion has been allocated to expand their detention capabilities to at least 116,000 beds
- $30 billion has been allocated for transportation and removals, and to hire 10,000 new deportation officers
- $46.5 billion has been allocated to complete a wall along the US-Mexico border
Top Health and Human Services officials directed the Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services to share data with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about millions of Medicaid recipients for the purposes of immigration enforcement. The data already shared pertained to residents of California, Illinois, Washington, and Washington D.C..
The Department of Agriculture has told states that they need to turn over names, social security numbers, addresses, and dates of birth for all those who applied for SNAP benefits in the past five years or risk losing federal funding. DHS has also brokered agreements with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to get data on noncitizens.
In order to raise arrest numbers, DHS is now asking for immigration cases to be dismissed and arresting immigrants immediately at the courthouse.

Asylum, Temporary Legal Protections, and Naturalized Citizenship

In an executive order signed in January, seeking asylum through our southern border has been completely halted – meaning all claims are denied.
- In July, a federal judge ruled that this order is unlawful. This decision is being appealed.
The Trump Administration has ended or attempted to end temporary legal protections for migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Haiti, and Venezuela.
The Justice Department has been directed to prioritize denaturalization in cases involving immigrants who have gained their citizenship but committed certain crimes (or at the discretion of the Justice Department).

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QC Civic Conversations - Defending the Rule of Law - PACG Event

7/15/2025

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The Importance of Defending the Rule of Law
Friday, August 8th at 12:00 noon

Western Illinois University - Quad Cities
Riverfront Hall Room 103
3300 River Drive
Moline, IL (map)

Quad Cities Civic Conversations

The program will focus on the importance of the Rule of Law: current threats to democratic government in the United States, including the rise of authoritarianism, polarization, the spread of disinformation, electoral corruption, advocacy of violence toward political adversaries, and the politicization of independent institutions. It will also explore democracy's defense against these threats through efforts to uphold the rule of law, promote transparency and accountability, protect free and fair elections, counter disinformation and violence, and reinforce safeguards of democratic institutions.

Presenter, Sally Frank, is a Professor of Law at Drake University, primarily in the legal clinic with students representing clients in family law, domestic abuse, and guardianship cases. She also teaches seminars in Women and the Law, Women in the Hebrew Scriptures, and is an activist on many peace, civil rights and civil liberties issues.

Everyone is welcome. Thanks to an anonymous donor, a box-style lunch will be available at no charge to the first fifty pre-registered attendees on a "first come, first served" basis.

Please RSVP. Individual registration by name and email address are necessary for each attendee.

Questions regarding food should be addressed to [email protected] at least three days prior to the event.

Gail Karp
[email protected]

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13th Annual Picnic and Pie Auction - After Action Report

7/9/2025

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13rh Annual Picnic and Pie Auction After Action Report

PACG Board of Directors

Sixty-six of the eighty registered people braved the heat to attend our 13th Annual Picnic and Pie Auction on Sunday, June 29th in Davenport. Big Thanks to Glenda Guster, who headed up our picnic committee this year, and to committee members Allison, David, Ann, Alta and Caryn for all their hard work.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, which was catered by the Mantra restaurant in Davenport, along with a nice breeze which added to our collective comfort. Chris Dunn played his great music again this year. Thank you so much, Chris!

Once again, the pie auction was a great success thanks to professional auctioneer, Jen Broders, and her husband and PACG Board Member, Ed Broders, who registered and numbered all the pies and passed out auction numbers to bidders, among other things. We owe them many thanks.

Most of all, we thank everyone who was able to attend this year, as well as those who registered but couldn't make it, for your continued support of PACG over the years. One of the most enjoyable things about our annual picnic/pie auction and other events is that old friends and new get to sit down and visit with other progressive minded folks and share their stories and concerns in a friendly, relaxed environment. That said, we hope to see you at our 20th Anniversary Thank You Gala on October 19th at the Rock Island Holiday Inn. (Don't we go back a ways?) Save the date!

Caryn Unsicker (she,her)

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Go Plastic Free in July - What You Can Do Now

7/2/2025

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Be part of the solution - Plastic Free July

Environmental Forum

Plastic Free Foundation

Join the Plastic Free July Movement. Be part of the solution to beat plastic pollution. Here are some tips and ideas to reduce plastic waste. Take a look at this link to learn what you can do!

Susan Leuthauser (she/her)

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How PACG began by Cath Bolkcom

7/1/2025

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How PACG began...

By Cath Bolkcom

An important moment in my life as a community organizer was the Pleasant Valley School Board's decision to limit the use of young author James Howe’s well-known book The Misfits because one of the young people in the book was gay. I didn’t imagine that this could actually happen in November 2004 in Iowa. I went to the board meeting, where in fact it did happen, and I decided at that moment that I could help the affected teachers and the parents appeal this decision to the Iowa Department of Education.

We filed an appeal and proved our case very effectively in an administrative hearing. The board did not rule in our favor, but we felt that we had accomplished virtually all we had set out to do by changing the minds and hearts of people in the community. There were waiting lists at libraries to borrow the book and bookstores to buy it. We got a grant to buy 100 copies and donated them to local schools and libraries. Eventually, we brought award-winning and best-selling author James Howe to town. Three hundred people attended his presentation at North High School in Davenport to learn how we can better support gay youth.

A result of this dispute was the organizing of what would become Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG).

George Bush had been reelected president in November of 2004, which was frustrating and of grave concern. The Misfits book suppression at Pleasant Valley High School came right on the heels of his election. The effort to ban a book that featured a gay child made it clear that the religious right had successfully organized to elect people with fundamentalist religious views to all levels of government, including our school boards.

It became obvious to me that progressives had been out-organized and that we needed to do something about it. I set out to create a coalition of progressives in the QC to remedy this. The first person I met with was Roger Butts, then minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davenport. I hoped he might be able to offer financial support. He could not, but what he did offer was more essential: his own participation and, very importantly, a place for our new community to gather and plan our activism. I invited people with whom I had worked in the MoveOn GOTV (Get Out the Vote) effort and people I knew from 30 years of working and organizing in the QC to the first meeting. Everyone invited was also asked to reach out to progressives they knew and encourage them to get involved. In January of 2005 we began meeting weekly. Email and the US Postal Service were the only tools available to reach out to folks in volume. We began with an effort at each meeting to have attendees send personal letters through the mail to at least 10 people they knew and to ask those ten people to reach out to ten more people.

I was amazed by the response at the early meetings. We started with one meeting a week at noon and quickly added a second meeting in the evening for working folks. We chose the name for the fledgling group in a group meeting. I wanted the words “progressive,” “common good” and “action” to be included in our name. It was a lot, but we made it work!!

We decided to hold the first PACG Summit to launch our organization in April and draw people in to begin to identify the issues they wanted to address. On April 16, 2005, 450 people attended this gathering at Augustana College! This was an amazing turnout given the short time frame for planning. It demonstrated the concern people felt in the wake of the 2004 election. Folks came committed to work on a variety of issues - civil rights, equal rights, protecting Social Security, economic justice, women’s issues, racial healing, healthcare, the environment and sustainability, corporate reform, poverty and housing, peace and justice and more. (Other topics around which forums would eventually be organized included immigration, election reform, youth leaders and others).

We came up with the idea of Issue Forums, which has continued to be an important part of the present day success of PACG. I knew from my organizing experience that we could not support work on a variety of issues without staff, but we did not have money. We suggested that anyone willing to work on a particular issue could establish a forum as long as they would take responsibility to chair it and build it. We knew that individuals would not want to (or be able to) work on every issue, or even agree with all of the intentions of the forums. The idea was that we could work on our biggest concerns and then come together as a larger organization to effect change.

Here’s how the current PACG website explains Issue Forums:
PACG is a multi-issue organization built around our Issue Forums. As progressives, we all care about many different issues. Those who feel more strongly about a given issue can join others to work specifically on that issue as a core member of an Issue Forum. Members of an Issue Forum meet to plan events and actions. Issue Forums reach out to other PACG members to take action or attend events the core members of the Issue Forum have planned. That way PACG members can help promote causes they care about, even if they can't attend regular meetings to work on that issue.

With many incredible colleagues who came to the table from January to April of 2005, we began to build an organization that could work effectively across a dozen issue groups to effect change and to apply political power.

At the time of the first PACG Summit, we had not yet incorporated but at the April Summit people were giving money to me to support our efforts. With help from Rich Hendricks, who was a lawyer in a previous life, we organized our first PACG Board of Directors. Among the very early leaders were Alta Price, Roger Butts, Ron Quay, Rich Hendricks, Lisa Killinger, Joyce (Basler) Chamberlin, Karen Metcalf, Dick Fallow, Rick Schloemer, Caryn Unsicker, John and Kathy Bowman, James Lee, Molly Regan, Caroline Vernon, Kriss Wells, John Downing, Rachel Griffiths, Dave and Carol Brown, Chris Dunn, Linda Pratt, Cliff Day, Beth Wehrman, Len and Connie Sauer-Adams, Joyce Wiley, Tom Benge, Julie Ross, Ann Berger, Shirley Johnson, Dr. John Hoffman, Carol West, Sally Paustian, Maria Mejia-Caballo, Olenka, Maria Cummings, and Karl Rhomberg. There are certainly others whose names I have not included. Dr. Alta Price, Bill and Maria Bribriesco, Catherine Wiedeman, Michael Liebbe, Martha Easter-Wells, and Dr. Walter Neiswanger were incredibly generous early financial donors.

The issue forums met independently, scheduling their regular meetings and developing their own agendas and action plans (see my list below of the first active forums). The larger community gathered once a month for a Council meeting to hear reports from the forums and make plans for PACG as a whole.

What is incredible and very unusual for a truly grassroots organization is that PACG is still alive and well 20 years later! And that is due to leadership that has stayed active and true for all these years. I am not one of those people (I realized that I like to start things). I honor the folks that were at the table at the very beginning and are still at it these years later. There is a natural ebb and flow to grass roots organizing. It’s very difficult to sustain over time, particularly without full-time paid staff. PACG has defied the odds by working so effectively on so many issues for two decades.

Here are my recollections of the first regular forums we established:

The Reclaiming Moral Values Forum
Rev. Ron Quay had moved from New Jersey to the Quad Cities to take the Churches United Executive Director job. He was one of our early leaders and board members. He and James Lee led the Reclaiming Moral Values form to address the fallacy that the Religious Right had a corner on what “moral values” or “family values” were.
Ron Quay and Roger Butts worked with the other progressive clergy to address any issue that came up in the community about which one would hope to hear from faith leaders. We did some amazing interfaith organizing with Rabbi Karp, Dr. Lisa Killinger, a leader in the Muslim community, and Rev. Rich Hendricks from the Metropolitan Community Church and a leader in the LGBTQ+ community. They organized a quick and public response to every issue, problem or crisis which happened in the world for years. Muslims and Jews along with all kinds of people gathered together at the Mosque for the first time in QC history.

The Civil Rights Forum
Rich Hendricks and I co-led the PACG Civil Rights Forum. We were keenly focused on racial healing and marriage equality. We organized political and community support for marriage equality for 5 years and were delighted when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, one of only three states to do so (the other two being on opposite coasts, Washington and Vermont). Rich and I were also very fortunate to be wedding officiants at this time and involved in some of the marriage ceremonies of the thousands of couples who traveled to Iowa to be legally wed.

One of the coolest events I was involved in was “Hands Across the Table for Racial Healing” a potluck to bring together Quad Citians to share their heritage, the food of their country of origin, and to share stories of their family’s immigration story. Though we only had 40 RSVP’s, Rich Hendricks and his helpers from MCCQC confidently set up for 300 guests and the tables were full! Eleven different languages were spoken by the guests.

The Peace and Justice Forum:
The peace work that we did opposing the Iraq war in the early days of PACG was really important. Our colleague Caryn Unsicker deserves most of the credit. I tried to infuse the effort with an ethic of love and nonviolence rather than anger and hate. One of the marches we did through Davenport was on a very cold winter day, intentionally in silence. Someone walked along with us and beat a drum solemnly. This didn’t end the war, of course, but it was a strong demonstration that unless we act in the strength of peace and love, nothing changes. We also worked to reclaim the US flag from the right. Caryn, as the mother of a service member in Iraq, was a powerful and passionate activist and leader to end the war. This included leading bi-weekly anti-war protests in the QC for many years. Caryn also traveled to Texas to attend a 26-day protest outside Pres. Bush’s ranch in Texas in August, 2005. This protest was organized by Cindy Sheehan, an Iraq War Gold Star mom, who then led a nationwide protest in DC. A bus trip to the Sept 24th DC protest was our first action event organized by PACG.

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August Green Drinks - The Living Building - Stanley Center Thursday, August 7th at 5:00 pm via Zoom

Announcing the PACG Trivia Contest!

How US views of immigration have changed

PACG History - Our communications have changed a lot!

The Current State of Immigration

The Importance of Defending the Rule of Law Friday, August 8th at 12:00 noon

13rh Annual Picnic and Pie Auction After Action Report

Be part of the solution - Plastic Free July

How PACG began...

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August Green Drinks - The Living Building - Stanley Center
Thursday, August 7th at 5:00 pm via Zoom

The Importance of Defending the Rule of Law
Friday, August 8th at 12:00 noon