Category: Civil Rights Forum - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Civil Rights Legislative Forum - PACG Event

3/26/2025

Civil Rights Legislative Forum
Saturday, March 29th at 10:00 to 11:30 am

TMBC Lincoln Resource Center
318th E 7th ST
Davenport, IA (map)

Civil Rights Forum

The PACG Civil Rights forum encourages you to come ask your state of Iowa legislators questions at this event focused on civil rights. The event is hosted by the Davenport NAACP and co-sponsored by other local progressive groups, including our Civil Rights Forum.

Alta Price (she/her)

DOGE Privacy Act request - What You Can Do Now

3/23/2025

DOGE Privacy Act requests

Civil Rights Forum
U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin has suggested that citizens file formal demands for access to the data that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk have obtained on us.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has issued an injunction commanding DOGE to comply with citizen requests under the Freedom of Information Act. This law encompasses the Federal Privacy Act of 1974, which entitles any citizen to access personal information held in any U.S. government records system.

This newly recognized federal agency, which has been systematically accessing government computer data systems, now has an obligation to respond to specific information demands from any of the 340 million U.S. citizens who exercise their legal right to defend their privacy and establish the security of their private information.

Citizens need only download, print and fill out the form, sign it and mail it to DOGE (the address on the pdf). (Note: a Wet Signature means using pen on paper.)

Alta Price (she/her)

doge_privacy_request.pdf
File Size:	82 kb
File Type:	pdf

Legislative Visit - After Action Report

3/6/2025

Legislative Visit - After Action Report

Immigration Coalition of the Quad Cities / PACG Civil Rights Forum

Seven members of the Immigration Coalition of the Quad Cities / PACG Civil Rights Forum visited with staffers from Iowa Senators Ernst's and Grassley's and Congresswoman Miller-Meeks' offices in Davenport to discuss our concerns on the status of immigration in the country. Each staff member took notes and appeared to hear our message. We ended the meeting with three specific requests, which were shared with the staffers in writing:

1. We ask the legislators to hold a Town Hall (open to the public and the media) in the Quad Cities while on spring recess. Please inform your legislator that seven concerned constituents, representing nineteen local organizations and churches, took the time to personally come to the meeting to ask for this. Their constituents want to communicate with them directly.

2. We ask the legislators to NOT refer to immigrants using derogatory language (rapists, murders, illegals, etc.) and we challenge them to stand up to others when they hear such rhetoric. We still believe in “Iowa Nice” and have faith that our legislators will represent Iowa values when referring to other human beings.

3. We ask the legislators to be pro-active in advancing Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which we believe is a crucial way to begin addressing the immigration backlog in the country, a root cause of many immigration issues. Can your legislator sponsor a bill, bring back last year’s bill, or do anything to get immigration reform back into the legislative discussion?

Allison Ambrose

Know your rights to support immigrants - No Hate in Our States

3/6/2025

Know your rights! Talking to people about their rights

ACLU Iowa

In response to increased attacks on immigrants’ rights organizations and many others who provide know your rights information to people, our national office has put together a short guide on your rights in advocating and sharing information. Read more here from the ACLU. The guide begins this way:

You have the right to share truthful, lawfully obtained information about law enforcement and tell people about their legal rights—even if they’re in trouble. You can also advocate for changes to laws without fear, as long as you’re not directly inciting or aiding and abetting illegal activity. Understanding these protections can help you navigate conversations about our constitutional rights with confidence.

It gives five choices which include sharing info about a law enforcement incident, how you can decrease your risk when talking to people, how to support people who are fearful of law enforcement, and more.

Cindy Garcia
Communications Manager
American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa

Nonviolent Resistance training - What You Can Do Now

2/19/2025

Nonviolent Resistance and Civil Disobedience Training
Wednesday, February 26th at 8:00 am via Zoom

One Human Family

PACG encourages any of its activists interested in protest during the upcoming year to take this training from Rev. Rich Hendricks, hosted by One Human Family QC. PACG members at our events need to commit to nonviolence. Learn how to keep yourself safe while participating in the resistance.

This successful training will be repeated as often as possible. The information is the same in each class so if you have taken it one time you will know how to protest with nonviolence.

Please join on this link or from this website.

Alta Price

John Lewis Tribute Rally - PACG Event

2/16/2025

John Lewis Tribute Rally
Saturday, February 22 at noon IN PERSON

Slumberland Corner
16th St. and John Deere RD
Moline, IL 61265 (map)

Liberty And Justice Movement and PACG Civil Rights Forum

News Release:

Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG) and the Liberty And Justice Movement announce a rally to honor former US House of Representatives civil rights activist John Lewis on Saturday, February 22, 2025 at noon at the corner of 16th ST and John Deere RD in Moline. Members of Liberty And Justice will be joining PACG’s weekly Racial Equality Rally that has been ongoing since George Floyd was murdered in 2020.

John Lewis was a remarkable American who championed voting rights and civil rights. He lived with his parents and brothers and sisters in the house his father built. John took care of his family’s chickens and would calm them with his soothing manner of talking. He said this helped him as he grew to express himself calmly and nonviolently.

As a teenager, he recalled not being able to understand his parents’ acceptance of the way things were for Black people in 1955 Alabama. He was just a year older than Emmett Till who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered that August in Mississippi. This death affected young John and influenced his actions the rest of his life.

In 1961 he became one of the original 13 Freedom Riders planning to ride interstate buses from Washington DC to New Orleans. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. John and others were beaten and arrested after crossing the Selma, Alabama bridge during the Selma to Montgomery March on March 7, 1965. He continued to advocate for civil rights, equality and voting rights throughout his life, including serving 17 terms in the US House of Representatives.

Join the PACG Racial Equality Rally this Saturday as we recognize and celebrate the birth of John Lewis. Bring signs or use ours.

As progressives, PACG empowers people to take action for positive change and social justice by coordinating a network of community forums and events aimed at educating and engaging citizens to work for the common good of all. Our core values are Social Justice, Empowerment, Diversity, Sustainability and Community.

For more information about this event, please visit the Progressive Action for the Common Good website or contact Randy Flowers at [email protected]

Chilling trans military order - No Hate in Our States

2/7/2025

The Chilling Line Trump Just Crossed On Transgender People

With the latest trans military executive order, the administration has given up all pretense of "evidence-based care," and has moved to the kind of dehumanization meant to justify atrocity.

From Erin in the Morning

President Trump, in justifying his transgender military ban, leaned on a new argument for why such an action restricting the rights of transgender people was necessary: that transgender people are lesser human beings, dishonorable liars, and worse.

See from the executive order:

Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.

This marks a chilling and undeniable shift. The attacks on transgender people are no longer cloaked in the faux respectability of “evidence,” “science,” or “protecting kids.” They never truly were, but now even the pretense has been abandoned. The thin veneer provided by New York Times op-eds, SEGM’s pseudo-scientific “reviews,” and the disingenuous claims of debate is no longer required. Instead, the justification is laid bare in black and white: transgender people are “dishonorable,” “liars,” “false.” The language is stark, deliberate, and unmistakable—it dehumanizes us. This is the very rhetoric historically used to justify atrocity.

Read the article from Erin Reed's Erin in the Morning substack

Please consider signing up for Erin's Substack. She is a trans woman and a journalist covering trans rights.

Passport Gender Marker suspensions - No Hate in Our States

2/7/2025

Marco Rubio Orders Suspension of Passport Applications From Anyone Seeking to Change Gender Marker

from Them.us

Newly minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly directed his agency to freeze passport applications that contain a request for an X gender marker or a change of gender.

According to an internal State Department document obtained on Thursday by The Guardian, Rubio told staff that “sex, and not gender, shall be used” on documents like passports and overseas birth certificates. The document instructs workers to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker,” as well as “any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker,” citing President Trump’s anti-trans executive order this week: “The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”

Read the article from Them.us here and consider signing up for their terrific newsletter here.

Bishop Budde stands against hate - No Hate in Our States

1/29/2025

Bishop Budde stands up to Trump where she laid Matthew Shepard to rest

from Them.us
Amid the launch of the second Trump administration on Monday, one thing marred the new U.S. President’s week: a sermon of compassion from Bishop Mariann Budde, held in the same place she once laid Matthew Shepard to rest.

Read the article from Them.us here and consider signing up for their terrific newsletter here.

Erasing Trans people via Executive Order - No Hate in Our States

1/29/2025

What you should know about the recent Executive Order erasing trans people

from Them.us

...Trump’s anti-trans order, which was widely anticipated in the early hours of his second presidency, marks a dramatic shift from the previous administration. Among its many provisions, the document seeks to redefine gender at the federal level, erase recognition of trans people in government communications, cease the issuance of gender-corrected U.S. passports, bar incarcerated trans women from being housed in women’s prisons, deny gender-affirming medical care to trans inmates, embolden transphobia in the workplace, and block federal dollars from being used to “promote gender ideology.” It’s unclear how far the administration intends to push these policies, as many of the specifics are left undefined.

Read the article from Them.us here and consider signing up for their terrific newsletter here.