博客存档 - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Updated Anti-Trans map-Of Interest to Our Community

7/28/2026

Updated Anti-Trans Map

Gender Equity Forum

from Erin in the Morning

The situation continues to deteriorate for transgender youth care, and the risk profile for adults has shifted as well, with Kansas now added to the “do not travel” category. For adults, expanding bathroom bans are driving much of the change—Kansas has escalated due to establishing a bathroom bounty, while Indiana’s ID policy now places it among the harshest anti-trans states in the country. One state improves: Montana, where the state court system has repeatedly blocked or enjoined anti-trans laws under the state constitution. For transgender youth, however, the national picture has grown more unstable. Federal policy shifts, institutional capitulations, and ongoing legal battles have created a volatile patchwork even in states once considered protective. Rather than attempt to track an effectively real-time capitulation crisis, I have elevated every state previously rated below “moderate” to at least moderate risk. In the current environment, no state can reasonably be considered low risk for transgender youth.
Read the complete article and subscribe on Erin's Substack here.

Alta Price (she/her)

Women's Equality Day rally to protect voting rights

7/26/2026

Women's Equality Day rally to protect voting rights
Wednesday, August 26 from 4:30 to 5:30 pm

the Fountain at
Vander Veer Park
215 W Central Park AV
Davenport, IA (map)

QC National Organization for Women (NOW) and PACG Gender Equity Forum

Join us on this Women's Equality Day to celebrate the right to vote and to continue efforts to defeat of the SAVE Act. The proposed SAVE Act would require documented proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. It could disenfranchise millions of people, especially women who changed their surname when they married. (Read the SAVE Act Bill here.)

Qualifying under the SAVE Act would require a valid U.S. passport, a certified birth certificate and a photo ID, or a naturalization certificate. Most importantly for the majority of married women, if your name does not match across those documents, additional paperwork such as a marriage certificate would also be required.

So far, the Senate failed to pass the bill, but President Trump is still pushing for it.

We need people to understand that the SAVE Act is intended to chip away at our right to vote.

So make plans to join us on August 26th. We will have signs for you to use but feel free to bring your own! Bring your friends!

Leslie DuPree and Alta Price (she/her)

Protecting the Boundary Waters-Of Interest to Our Community

7/24/2026

Fighting the Forces of Greed and Destruction
In April, Senate Republicans withdrew a moratorium on mining in the Boundary Waters. Minnesotans are fighting back.

Environmental Forum

The Progressive Magazine

Read this important article by Ruth Conniff about what Minnesotans are doing to protect the beloved Boundary Waters:
...it was a gut punch to see the U.S. Senate decide by one vote to overturn federal protections against toxic mining in the Superior National Forest, right on the edge of the Boundary Waters, this spring...The proposed copper-nickel sulfide mine would, environmentalists say, inevitably leak sulfuric acid into the interconnected waterways of the region, with devastating effects.

Susan Leuthauser (she/her)

August Green Drinks "How to respond to climate change" PACG event

7/15/2026

August Green Drinks - How to respond to climate change
Thursday, August 6th at 5 pm (hybrid meeting)

MLK Interpretive Center
501 N Brady ST
Davenport, IA (map)

Environmental Forum

Join us on Thursday, August 6 at 5 pm at the MLK Interpretive Center. Ray Wolf will explain how we can respond to climate change. He is a retired Science and Operations Officer for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) National Weather Service in Davenport.

This will be a hybrid meeting. If you would like to attend virtually, you can register for a Zoom link by scanning the QR code on the flyer, or by going to this link.

Susan Leuthauser (she/her)

Celebrate Medicare and Medicaid with us! PACG event

7/15/2026

Happy Birthday to Medicare and Medicaid!
Wednesday, July 29th from 4 to 6 pm

Davenport Public Library
Eastern Ave Branch
6000 Eastern AV
Davenport, IA (map)

Healthcare Reform Forum

Join us for cupcakes and ice cream as we express our gratitude for the Medicare and Medicaid programs that turn 61 years old on July 30th. Save the date and invite your friends to this free party sponsored by the PACG Healthcare Reform Forum, the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans, I owa Citizen Action Network, and others.

Alta Price (she/her)

Save the Date for our 14th Annual Picnic and Pie Auction

7/12/2026

Save the Date - 14th Annual Picnic and Pie Auction
Sunday, September 13 from noon to 3 pm

Longview Park
1300 17th ST
Rock Island, IL (map)

A Message from the Board

We are having our Annual Picnic and Pie Auction on Sunday, September 13th from noon to 3 pm at Longview Park in Rock Island. This is a fun event and we would love to have volunteers who are willing to help out. Join us to connect with old friends and make new ones. To volunteer, email us at [email protected]. Registration will be open soon. We look forward to seeing you there.

David Anderson (he/him)

Read "A Resistance History of the US"-Of Interest to Our Community

7/4/2026

A Resistance History of the United States

This is a good book by historian Tad Stoermer that covers the real history of the resistance efforts that helped to build our current understanding of what a democratic republic should be. Here's the review from the publisher:

An urgent, bracing new look at American history that Ava DuVernay calls "deeply necessary for this moment."

Revisit the Salem Witch Trials, the Underground Railroad, and other resistance movements of American history to get a bold new understanding of how resistance shaped our past—and how its principles can change our future.

The United States was shaped by resistance—but not in the way we’ve been taught. The Revolution did not secure liberty; it opened the door to either liberty or oppression, where only white men enjoyed all of the benefits and protections of citizenship.

In A Resistance History of the United States, public historian Tad Stoermer shows how from the very beginning, that tension—between the ideals of resistance and the realities of power—has defined America more than the Enlightenment ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Utililizing powerful storytelling to focus on key—and often lesser-known—moments in American history, this book reveals the truth of how resistance movements from Colonial times have opposed the powers that be. Stoermer covers an impressive roster of pivotal movements, with each chapter identifying a key resistance movement and principle meant to inspire contemporary readers, including:

Bacon’s Rebellion/Metacomet’s War (1676)
Salem Witch Trials (1692)
The Black Loyalists (1783)
The Underground Railroad (1850)

Through these and many more examples, Stoermer dismantles the mythologies that pass for American history—exposing the curated nostalgia, moral evasions, and institutional silences that have long protected abusive power. What emerges is an essential look at how we can take lessons from the past to understand, and effectively respond to, the injustices we face today.

Cliff Day (he/him)

Read "On Courage"-Of Interest to Our Community

7/4/2026

On Courage - How to be a Dissident in an Age of Fear

PACG Book Club

As a group, we decide the books we will read throughout the year and On Courage is not on it at this point. However, this is the manual we need now in our resistance and work to regain our progressive values. It's well-written and encouraging in these difficult times. Read the publisher's comments (below) and learn about the authors at this link.

Book Club will not be meeting again until September when we will discuss The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende.

On Courage is...a deeply reported manual about how anyone can defy an authoritarian – based on original interviews with more than 100 dissidents, activists, and theorists across the world.

The United States is only the latest country to face a leader who wields fear as a weapon, punishes political enemies, disappears people off the street, and undermines free and fair elections. Today nearly three out of four people on earth live under authoritarianism, the highest rate since the late 1970s.

But even under repressive conditions, each of us holds the power to help defeat autocrats. Based on their acclaimed The New Yorker essay “So You Want to Be a Dissident?,” veteran reporter Julia Angwin and political strategist Ami Fields-Meyer give us a captivating – and profoundly hopeful – guide to courage in an age of fear.

Meet a student from Hong Kong who risked everything for democracy. A mom in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas who broke with the political movement that raised her. Cairo twentysomethings who staged a gutsy stunt to help bring down a dictator. A mild-mannered immigrant fighting to save a landmark U.S. civil rights law. People throughout the United States and across five continents who faced serious risks for dissenting in their workplace, their community, or their country. On Courage is the story of how they did it anyway – and how you can do it, too.

Blending rich, previously untold narratives with history, spirituality, and movement research, Angwin and Fields-Meyer deliver a highly accessible book full of practical lessons – an inspiring resource for anyone, anywhere, who feels the walls of history closing in on them. On Courage is a roadmap to political courage and a powerful case for how taking personal risks can help save the free world.

Alta Price (she/her)

A nation of immigrants-ICQC member statements

7/4/2026

A nation of immigrants

By Brendan O’Brien, Great Grandchild of Irish Immigrants
We’re about to mark 250 years since the founding of these United States, and it’s a good opportunity to reflect on our history. What we could really call our histories. Because the thing about this country is it has never been just one thing. Not one religion, one cuisine, or one culture. Not one story. At least not a simple one. Because you’d have to tell about the long march many took across the Sonoran Desert. And the long march many took from Auschwitz. And the long march many took along the Trail of Tears. You’d have to tell about the march across those sub-Saharan lowlands and the march across that Emerald Isle. And all we are is but a people walking. And all we are is but a people boarding a ship. Who’d been so thoroughly stalked by the specter of violence and famine and persecution that we’d eventually had to leave our beloved homeland and set out for an unknown land.

Some people feel threatened by this, like we must forget where we came from in order to be here. But we did not come here with nothing. And the Immigration Coalition of the Quad Cities recognizes that the we’re better for bringing these parts of ourselves—our music, our food, our language, our past—with us. We welcome our most recent immigrants because we were once strangers in this strange land, ourselves. Every story makes us stronger. Another stitch in the flag.

By Patricia Bird of the Immigration Coalition of the Quad Cities
On July 4,1776 the second continental congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. This document severed the colonies’ ties with Great Britain and established the United States as an independent nation.

But what does it mean to be an independent nation? Are we a country that manages without the assistance of others? Are we inhabiting the earth with no interaction or contribution from other nations?

Historically, our country has moved forward from the contributions of independents. Those who fled their homelands to build a better life not only for themselves but for the good of this country. We accepted the Albert Einsteins, the Madeleine Albrights, the Gloria Estefans – all fellow humans in need of refuge. In return, they enriched not only their own lives but our lives as well.

This is our heritage. This is our history. America is a country of independents, those who fled to this soil for equality and those born on this soil who continue to seek it.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

250 years of independence created and upheld by immigrants.

Please subscribe to Immigration Coalition of the QC's Substack here.

Allison Ambrose

Honoring the 108th Colored Troops After Action Report

7/1/2026

Honoring the 108th Colored Troops After Action Report

Civil Rights Forum

PACG President David Anderson and LTC Adhana McCarthy
at the Rock Island National Cemetery

On Juneteenth (June 19th, 2026), members of the PACG community participated in a celebration and remembrance of the 108th United States Colored Infantry Regiment that guarded Confederate prisoners at Rock Island Arsenal during the Civil War. The keynote address was given by LTC Adhana J. McCarthy MPAS, PA-C United States Army Medical Specialist. Other speakers gave the audience background and connections to families currently living in the Quad Cities. The ceremony concluded by laying flowers at the graves of soldiers of the 108th buried in Rock Island National Cemetery.

David Anderson (he/him)

Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG)
PO Box 544 Bettendorf, IA 52722
(563) 676-7580
[email protected]
PACG is a 501(c)(3) organization and your donation may be tax deductible.

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