Blog Archives - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

December Green Drinks - "Urban Gardening in the Quad Cities" PACG Event

11/25/2023

December Green Drinks - Urban Gardening in the Quad Cities
Thursday, December 7th at 5 pm - Canceled

Huckleberry’s Pizza
223 18 th Street
Rock Island, IL (map)

Environmental Forum

Note: this event has been canceled for December. Our next Green Drinks meeting will be in January of 2024.

Join us for an evening of conversation as we look at the Quad Cities urban environment. Heather Ballou, the Director of Education at the Quad City Botanical Center will discuss community gardens, and the relevance of plant diversity and invasive species to your backyard and neighborhood.

Come and meet like-minded folks, make new friends. Admission is free. Bring a friend.

Susan Leuthauser

Save the Date - "I Am the Future" at the Figge January 11, 2024

11/25/2023

Save the Date - I Am the Future at the Figge
Thursday, January 11th from 5:00 to 8:00 pm

Figge Art Museum
225 W 2nd ST
Davenport, IA (map)

A Message from the Board

Save the date for our next showing of I Am the Future at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport. We will have a social hour with light hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar from 5:00 to 6:00. The showing of our film will be followed by a Legacy Panel discussion featuring MacArthur Cotton and other civil rights activists, including those in our video. More details will follow.

We also need volunteers to help with this event.

Glenda Guster

A simple quiz from GLAAD - No Hate In Our States

11/21/2023

Take this simple quiz from GLAAD

Every year, GLAAD measures the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ characters in films released by major motion picture studios in our annual Studio Responsibility Index.

Can you guess which genre had the highest percentage of LGBTQ-inclusive films this year?

A. Drama

B. Animated/Family

C. Action/Sci-Fi/Fantasy

D. Comedy

E. Horror

F. Documentary

Over the last 10 years, LGBTQ-inclusive films grew 50%. This milestone wouldn’t have been possible without your support. As we look to the next decade of change, we are thankful to have you by our side.

Thank you for making this progress possible. Together, we will achieve 100% LGBTQ acceptance.

P.S. GLAAD has created this document, Where We Are on TV 20-23 that’s worth a look.

PACG Webmaster

GLAAD at the Emmy Awards

11/21/2023

GLAAD to receive award at Emmy Awards ceremony

Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)

We have exciting news to share. The Television Academy announced today that GLAAD was selected to receive the Governors Award during the 75th Annual Primetime Emmy® Awards ceremony! GLAAD’s President and CEO will accept the award live onstage on January 15, 2024. This is a major milestone in GLAAD’s history and an achievement that wouldn’t have been possible without your support.

The Governors Award is not given every year and is only bestowed at the discretion of the Television Academy to recognize profound, transformational, and long-lasting contributions to television. For over four decades, supporters like you made it possible to transform how the LGBTQ community is represented in television, educating everyday Americans – directly from their living room – about who LGBTQ people are beyond the stereotypes.

This work is especially critical today. We’ve seen a record-hitting 550+ anti-LGBTQ bills proposed across the country this year, all of which feed on misinformation and lack of awareness about LGBTQ people and issues. Television has the unique power to tell human stories that grow empathy and acceptance, mending the compassion gap one word, one image, one story at a time.

Maggie, thank you for being an advocate for LGBTQ equality. This honor is just the latest example of the impact your support has made towards 100% LGBTQ acceptance.

To learn more about how GLAAD tracks the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ representation while also informing our own advocacy to hold the television industry accountable, read our latest Where We Are on TV 20-23 report.

PACG Webmaster

Join Clock for Clocks-giving - Of Interest to Our Forum Members

11/21/2023

Clocks-giving
Thursday, November 23rd from noon to 3:00 pm

Clock Inc LGBTQ+ Community Center
4102 46th AV
Rock Island, IL 61201

Clock Inc and Free Mom Hugs - QC

Clock and Free Mom Hugs - QC is cohosting Clocksgiving! We're opening on Thanksgiving Day to make sure that every single member of our big LGBT+ family has a safe and affirming place to gather. We'll be providing turkey and drinks - you bring the sides and dessert! Register here.

And get ready to celebrate Clockmas on December 25th. Read more here.

PACG Webmaster

A tribute to Cath Bolkcom

11/21/2023

A tribute to PACG co-founder Cath Bolkcom

A Message from the Board

by Alison McGaughey

In my latest column, read about a woman whose grassroots work had a hand in helping a certain former Illinois senator make his way to the White House.

And if you’re on the right side of the book banning debate, I promise her story will downright give you the goosebumps.

If you already know Cath Bolkcom, I hope this interview and OFFICIAL QUAD CITIZEN QUIZ will teach you something new. As she bids farewell to the QC, (trading the Quads for the Twins, if you will), I hope you enjoy learning about Cath's life and appreciating all she has contributed to the QC. Read the article here.

PACG's Holiday Party - PACG Event

11/9/2023

Register for PACG's Annual Holiday Party
Saturday, December 2nd from 5:30 to 8:00 pm

A Message from the Board

Join us at the German American Heritage Center for a meal and help us celebrate another year of PACG's activism!

We will present the annual Dick Fallow Endowment for Social Justice award to a worthy, local recipient.

The main course will be catered, with vegan and gluten-free options. Please bring a side dish or dessert to share.

We also ask that you bring your own dishware, silverware and reusable napkin, if possible. This follows our PACG environmental principle of sustainability.

Although this event is free, we need you to register. Talk to your friends, register them and bring them along!

Optional Holiday Gift: This year we are supporting Quad Cities Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees (QCAIR). Please bring a wrapped toy for a child 6 months to 12 years of age. Securely label your gift with the age (and gender, if appropriate) of the child.

If you’re one of our many new members this year, come find out how much fun we progressives have during the holiday season!

There is extra parking available in the lot just east of the museum, where the YMCA used to be.

Please register here.

PACG Webmaster

PACG Holiday Party - Save the Date!

11/8/2023

PACG’s Holiday Party - Save the Date
Saturday, December 2nd at 5:30 pm

A Message from the Board

We will have a lot more details in next week’s Progressive Action Update. For now, just mark your calendars. We hope to see you there!

Take action for housing justice! - What You Can Do Now

11/2/2023

Your Efforts are Working. The Pressure is Building! Keep Emailing HUD!

Quad Cities Interfaith

It has been only 1 week since 150 supporters showed up to the Town Hall for Housing Justice, and we have already received word from Steven Eggleston and Kimberly Dannae, the Field Office Directors at HUD for Iowa and Illinois! The pressure on HUD to meet with us in the Quad Cities is building! Mr. Eggleston reports that they have received our "multiple email messages"--at least 58 emails to be exact! He promises to get back to the community in "a reasonable amount of time." This is major headway, but whenever means never until HUD sets a date and time for a meeting.

Keep emailing. We need every Quad Citian who cares about housing justice to continue building the pressure! Please send the link to your neighbors, friends, and family. Click this link to ENSURE HUD hears our message.

As we shared at the Town Hall, the QC faces a housing shortage--we need at least 6,645 units ensure safe, decent, and affordable housing for every neighbor. Testimonies from directly impacted people powerfully demonstrate how municipal divestment from housing has catastrophic consequences for us and our neighbors. As LaShanna Dixon said: "For my cousin Branden, the cost of renting in the Quad Cities was his life. I am here today because I don't think renting should be a death sentence." We cannot let another collapse like the one at 324 Main Street happen ever again. We will continue the struggle together: "Fight, fight, fight! Housing is a Human Right!"

That's why the Quad Cities community is calling HUD to come to town. We need HUD to audit local municipal compliance with HUD standards for inspections and ensure proper investment in safe, decent, and affordable housing. If you have not emailed already, please email HUD to demand a meeting. Click this link to ENSURE HUD hears our message.

You can also take Action for Housing Justice by:

1. Sharing the email link with friends, family, and neighbors to get HUD to the QC!

2. Organizing a tenant alliance at your apartment or volunteering with the Quad Cities Tenant Alliance. Contact [email protected] or visit qcinterfaith.org to learn more

3. Voting in your local election on November 7th. Find your polling place HERE

4. Attending your City Council meetings to push our local leaders to put housing justice on the agenda. Meetings are every Wednesday at 5:30 PM at Davenport City Hall.

PACG Webmaster

ACLU takes fight for Trans to SCOTUS - No Hate In Our States

11/2/2023

ACLU takes fight for Trans youth health care to Supreme Court

Gender Equity Forum

ACLU: We’re determined to pursue every path available toward a brighter future for trans people and our families.

In the span of just a few years, transgender people have had their rights and lives radically reshaped by a litany of political attacks against our freedom, our dignity, and the health care many of us need to live. As part of a coordinated national effort to erode legal protections for trans people and push us out of public life, a wave of bills targeting gender-affirming health care for transgender people have effectively banned it for nearly one-third of transgender youth in the United States. These laws uproot entire families and communities, alarm doctors and medical experts, and endanger the very young people they laws claim to protect.

While the ACLU and our nationwide affiliates succeeded in the trial courts when the judges actually considered the facts, these early wins have increasingly been overturned, allowing these devastating bans to take effect. This includes the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where a three-judge panel overturned a lower court decision, which had blocked Tennessee’s ban. As a result of the Sixth Circuit decision, health care bans have gone into effect in Tennessee and Kentucky.

In each of these challenges, we are committed to exhausting every option we have with the goal of protecting the ability of our community to access this care for as long as possible. That’s why, today, we’ve asked the United States Supreme Court to review the lower court’s ruling and block these dangerous laws from further threatening transgender youth, destabilizing their families, and needlessly tying the hands of their medical providers.

In this case, we have the honor of representing LW, a 15-year-old transgender girl, and her mother Samantha Williams. Like nearly 100,000 families with transgender kids ages 13 to 17 who now live in a state that has banned their health care, LW and her parents face the risk of either being denied the care they and their doctor know is right for their daughter or leaving the only home LW has known. Tennessee’s ban — like the nearly identical laws passed in 20 other state legislatures in the last three years — directly targets LW because she is transgender.

At the core of our argument before the court are two basic constitutional claims. First, Tennessee’s law bans treatment only when that treatment is provided to transgender youth like LW who have gender dysphoria. This targeted restriction discriminates based on both sex and the fact that a person is transgender and violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Second, Tennessee’s law interferes with the ability of parents like Samantha to make medical decisions for their minor children even though their children and doctors all agree the treatment is necessary. The law substitutes the state’s judgment for that of loving parents who are following the guidance of their children and the advice of doctors. The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have certain fundamental rights concerning the care and custody of their minor children. While the rights of parents are importantly not absolute — and transgender youth have rights all their own — Tennessee’s law forces a one-fits-all approach to treatment that overrides the informed judgment of parents, adolescents, and doctors. Tennessee’s law forces parents like Samantha to “co-parent” with their state legislature. It is particularly pernicious when that legislative body has made it clear they have no interest in learning the truth about this medical care and young people like LW.

Asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision is always something we take seriously. We have witnessed this court disregard and infringe people’s bodily autonomy repeatedly, most recently with its devastating decision in Dobbs, which overturned Roe v. Wade. We take this step with full knowledge that, no matter what happens, we will have to fight for each other and use every tool in our toolbox to defend all our rights to bodily autonomy. With such critical, life-or-death health care on the line, we must continue to fight back against Tennessee’s law and exhaust every option available to us. No matter what happens, we will continue to fight thoughtfully and creatively to ensure that everyone can access the health care they need.

The last few months have been the most personally and professionally devastating of my life. My heart — and the heart of every transgender advocate fighting this fight — is heavy with the weight of the dehumanization and needless harm trans people like us are experiencing nationwide. But I also know that every out trans person has embraced the unknown in the name of living free from shame or the vice of other people’s expectations. By virtue of being a living, breathing trans person, each of us has chosen hope over despair. Regardless of any court, we will always exist in joyful defiance of efforts to limit who we are and who we can be.

The entire article is here. Cases like this are a good reason to support the ALCU.