Category: Gender Equity - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

Medicaid cuts to gender-affirming care-No Hate in Our States

6/10/2025

Proposed Medicaid cuts to gender-affirming care

Gender Equity Forum

The Big Bucks for Billionaires Bill (aka the One Big Beautiful Bill) makes drastic cuts to Medicaid. A late night amendment before the bill passed the House also bans gender-affirming care for anyone on Medicaid or in the Affordable Care Marketplace. This affects an estimated 185,000 trans people on Medicaid.

The Gender Equity Forum joins the Healthcare Reform Forum in opposition to these Medicaid cuts. Read more about the specific cuts to gender-affirming care in this article from them.

Alta Price (she/her)

The Bathroom that Ends the World-No Hate in Our States

6/10/2025

The Bathroom That Ends the World

Rev. Sean substack.com/@civicgrace

How a Single Gender-Neutral Bathroom Revealed the Gentleness Hidden Behind All Their Fear
Our new church building has a gender-neutral washroom, and before we opened the doors, we held our breath. Would people accept it? Would they understand?

In many ways, this single room represents everything certain politicians claim to fear most: gender boundaries dissolving, children exposed to "confusion," traditional values under siege. Here, in one modest space with sinks and stalls, we've apparently built the apocalypse they've been warning about—a place where the rigid categories that once seemed natural and eternal simply... don't matter.

And you know what? They're right to be afraid. Not because our bathroom poses any actual danger, but because it reveals how unnecessary their fortress walls really are.

Read the rest of this article on Substack.

Kat Fitzgerald (she/her)

Pride Month 2025 - What You Can Do Now

5/23/2025

Pride Month 2025 in the Quad Cities

Gender Equity Forum

As usual, our friends at Clock, Inc are doing great work listing various Pride events in the Quad Cities. This link to their website will continue to be updated. As of now they begin on May 28th with the acceptance of the City of Davenport's Pride Proclamation.

There are also a lot of Community Calendars that PACG links to on our website. Check those for other activities.

Clock, Inc was one of the recipients of the Dick Fallow Endowment for Social Justice that we presented at our Annual Holiday Party in December of 2025. Their work is important for our LGBTQ+ community.

Visit their website here and sign up for their newsletter at the bottom of the page.

Alta Price (she/her)

The Reality of Project 2025-Of Interest to Our Community

4/29/2025

The Reality of Project 2025

Red Wine and Blue

A grassroots organization Red Wine & Blue has been keeping track of the implementation of 2025 projects. They also provide recommendations on how we can fight back. For more information go here,

You can contact them or subscribe to their email update here,

Red Wine & Blue

Hands Off rally has huge turnout - After Action Report

4/5/2025

Hands Off! An estimated 2000 Quad Cities activists fight back

Mass Mobilization on Saturday, April 5th

PACG joined thousands of protesters at the "Hands Off!" Rally at Friends of MLK Park and Interpretive Center in Davenport, IA, on Saturday April 5th from 11 am to 1:00 pm. This is one of many such events held across the country opposing the actions taken by the president and his staff on human rights, employment, civil rights, immigration, education, the environment, and many other issues that affect the daily lives of all Americans. On this chilly morning, concerned citizens with signs and voices filled the park to listen to speakers and to rally the traffic on both sides of Brady Street from the bottom of the hill to the top. Cars driving by honked their support of the event. We are making an impact!

Twelve hundred rallies were organized by Indivisible and other groups, and every state in the union had at least one rally. We published this post about the plans for the Davenport rally earlier this week.

Here's the first bit of press about our rally: Hands Off rally draws big crowd in Davenport by Ed Tibbetts.

We are also using two videos by Stella Roeser. Here is the crowd driving up Brady. Here is a walking view of some of the crowd.

The images below were from Stella and Kyle Roeser and Ann McCluskey. Thank you!

Hands Off Mobilization - Action Alert

4/1/2025

Hands Off! Quad Cities Fights Back Action Alert!
Saturday, April 5th at 11:00 am

MLK Interpretive Center
501 Brady St
Davenport, IA (map)

Indivisible QC POP People Over Politics (East Moline)

PACG encourages everyone to participate in this nation-wide April 5th Hands Off! protest. The East Moline Indivisible chapter, QC POP People Over Politics, is organizing the Quad Cities peaceful protest rally. You can find them at the Indivisible home page by scrolling down to Find A Group and searching for Indivisible QC POP People over Politics.

Make a Hands Off sign and come to the rally!

Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. Quad Cities is fighting back!

They're taking everything they can get their hands on - our health care, our data, our jobs, our services - and daring the world to stop them. This is a crisis, and the time to act is now.

🚨 On Saturday, April 5th, we're taking to the streets to fight back with a clear message: Hands off! 🚨

Where: Friends of MLK Park and Interpretive Center, 501 Brady St, Davenport, IA

When: 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. April 5, 2025

This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies. Alongside Americans across the country, we are marching, rallying, and protesting to demand a stop the chaos and build an opposition movement against the looting of our country.

A core principle behind all Hands Off! events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.

This is the link for downloadable signs: handsoff2025.com There are signs in both English and Spanish. We encourage you to bring a sign but you do not have to.

This rally is for both Congressional District #17 for Illinois and District #1 for Iowa.

Alta Price (she/her)

Progressive calendars of events and actions in the QCA - What You Can Do Now

3/26/2025

Progressive calendars in the QCA

PACG Forums

Want to explore more ways you can get involved in progressive actions and events in the QCA? We are collecting calendars for our Community Events page! They are posted at the top of the website page, so if you are looking for information about a particular event, you will have to do some scrolling.

Here's the link for the PACG events calendar.

Our friends at One Human Family-QCA started the QC Activism calendar in 2024 and we have put it on our Community Events page. You may add events to this calendar here.

Activist Leslie DuPree, President of Quad Cities National Organization for Women (QC NOW), is single-handedly managing the QC Action Calendar as a Google Document. Her contact information is at the top of it.

Clock, Inc is dedicated to creating a safe and supportive community center, offering vital resources, mental health programs, empowerment, and advocacy for the LGBT+ community to thrive without fear of discrimination. The Clock, Inc Events calendar is here.

MainStream, formerly known as The Real Mainstream, is a progressive, intersectional, LGBTQ+ affirming publication serving Illinois and Iowa, and available online and in print. They have a number of calendars for eastern Iowa and northwest Illinois, including a filter for adults-only and spiritual Sunday gatherings. The MainStream calendar for Quad Cities Events is here.

If you know of other groups in our area who are compiling calendar events and actions, please contact us at [email protected].

Celebrate Transgender Day of Visibility - No Hate in Our States

3/10/2025

Transgender Day of Visibility
Monday, March 31st

Gender Equity Forum

From GLAAD

Each year on March 31, the world observes Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) to raise awareness about transgender people. It is a day to celebrate the lives and contributions of trans people, while also drawing attention to the poverty, discrimination, and violence the community faces.

International TDOV was created in 2010 by trans advocate Rachel Crandall. Crandall, the head of Transgender Michigan, created TDOV in response to the overwhelming majority of media stories about transgender people being focused on violence. She hoped to create a day where people could celebrate the lives of transgender people, while still acknowledging that due to discrimination, not every trans person can or wants to be visible. Read more here.

"Respect our existence or expect our resistance" - No Hate in Our States

3/6/2025

"Trouble" or This Fight Isn't Over.

from Lily Jayne (a trans woman) on Substack:

Respect our existence, or expect our resistance.
This past week, Iowa went full fascist with their poorly conceived and sloppily troublesome bill narrowly defining “man” and “woman” in a way that completely flies in the face of known science, biology, sociology and neurology understandings of the trans and intersex experience. In the case of intersex people, they’ll have to choose one of the two arbitrary boxes up to six months after birth via sex testing.

This is troublesome for a multitude of reasons and I will not elaborate on some of them because I don’t have enough understanding. But as far as the intersex community goes, that will put them in one of those boxes before they even understand who they are. As I’ve put in posts before, we know our true gender identity by age 3.

Read more here and please consider subscribing to Becoming Lily.

Hands off my pronouns - Action Alert!

2/19/2025

Hands off my pronouns! Action Alert

Gender Equity Forum

from ABC News.com (January 31, 2025)
Federal employees told to remove pronouns from email signatures by end of day
Employees at multiple federal agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News that cited two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office seeking to curb diversity and equity programs in the federal government. "Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5.p.m. ET on Friday," according to one such message sent Friday morning to CDC staff.

from Very Well Mind:
Why Are Pronouns Important?
Pronoun usage may feel important or unimportant to you personally, but on the whole, they are an important matter. That's because by using someone's correct pronouns, you validate their identity, whereas by using the wrong pronouns for someone, you may invalidate it. Using incorrect pronouns for a person can feel harmful to them.

Let's push back on the current administration's policy and show our support for the nonbinary community. Effective immediately, you will be given the opportunity to include your pronouns in your submissions to the Progressive Action Update (see my example below).

Another easy thing to do is to update your own email account signature to include your pronouns. You can search your email platform online to find directions to do this. And remember that you can include your pronouns in your Zoom name when you are at a meeting!

Alta Price (she/her)