Category: LGBTQ+ - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

"Elite Capture" of Identity Politics - No Hate In Our States

12/6/2022

Confronting the “Elite Capture” of Identity Politics in Our Movement Spaces

Truthout

The Truthout mission statement includes: Truthout is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues. Kelly Hayes is the host of the Truthout podcast, Movement Memos, which she describes as: a Truthout podcast about solidarity, organizing and the work of making change.

From the podcast website:

"We have to be politically serious about how much agreement and how much alignment we’re going to require in a world of a resurging far-right fascist movement across the globe,” says philosopher and author Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò.

In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Táíwò and host Kelly Hayes discuss the lessons of Táíwò’s book, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else).

Find a complete transcript and listen to the podcast here:
https://truthout.org/audio/confronting-the-elite-capture-of-identity-politics-in-our-movement-spaces/

Dee VanThournout

Book Club November 21st at 4:30 pm - " This Is How It Always Is"

10/30/2022

PACG Book Club - This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Monday, November 21st at 4:30 pm (in person)

Davenport Public Library
Fairmount Street Branch
3000 N Fairmount St, Davenport, IA (map)

Book Club

We have decided to meet in person in November and go back to Zoom for the winter months. We will skip December since it is too close to the holidays.

Our November book will be This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. We will meet on Monday, November 21st at 4:30 pm at the Fairmount Street branch of the Davenport Public Library.

Here is some information about the book from Goodreads:

This is how a family keeps a secret…and how that secret ends up keeping them.

This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

You can RSVP at our Facebook Event (not required). Contact me with any questions.

Alta Price

Honoring Matthew Shepard - No Hate In Our States

10/7/2022

Honoring Matthew Shepard

No Hate in Our States

From the Matthew Shepard Foundation website:

On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally attacked and tied to a fence in a field outside of Laramie, Wyoming and left to die. On October 12, Matt succumbed to his wounds in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado.

In the aftermath of Matt’s death, his parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, started the Matthew Shepard Foundation to honor his life and aspirations. Inspired by the tragedy they endured, the initial purpose of the Foundation was to teach parents with children who may be questioning their sexuality to love and accept them for who they are, and to not throw them away.

Our Mission
The Matthew Shepard Foundation’s mission is to amplify the story of Matthew Shepard to inspire individuals, organizations, and communities to embrace the dignity and equality of all people. Through local, regional, and national outreach, we empower individuals to find their voice to create change and challenge communities to identify and address hate that lives within our schools, neighborhoods, and homes.
Our work is an extension of Matt’s passion to foster a more caring and just world. We share his story and embody his vigor for civil rights to change the hearts and minds of others to accept everyone as they are.

The documentary Matthew Shepard is a Friend of Mine can be rented on Amazon for $2.99 or viewed on various other platforms.

PACG recently created a forum to work on LGBTQ+ issues. To get involved, contact our Gender Equity Forum.

PACG Webmaster

"Fight Injustice in Iowa" campaign goes live in August

8/14/2022

"Fight Injustice in Iowa" - OHF QCA billboard campaign goes live in August

One Human Family QCA

Our “Fight Injustice in Iowa” billboard campaign will soon be in place!

Here are the locations and dates of posting for our billboards:

2814 State Street, Bettendorf (map) – August 15
400 West 2nd Street, Davenport (map) – August 15
53rd Street east of Brady, Davenport (map) -September 12
621 East Kimberly, Davenport (map) – September 19

We do not as of now know which signs will be up at which locations. But as of tomorrow, you can start checking them!

Rabbi Henry Jay Karp
One Human Family QCA

Gender Equity Forum Meeting - After Action Report

7/24/2022

Gender Equity Forum First Meeting - July 19th - After Action Report

Gender Equity Forum

The Gender Equity Forum held its first meeting on Tuesday, July 19th at the Bettendorf Library. Thirty-five people were in attendance. While we normally won't share a forum meeting update as an After Action Report, this was our first one and we were very pleased with the turnout.

Although there were technical issues with hooking up the computer to the Gilbert Room's system, the forum facilitators were able to "wing-it" in fine form. We began with a discussion of what we had planned for the meeting and then broke into two meetings to brainstorm ideas for actions to be taken in both Illinois and in Iowa.

Here's the PowerPoint presentation that we had hoped to share. You will probably see something similar to this in a future meeting.

Alta Price
Carolyn Martin

2022.07.19_gender_equity_forum_meeting.pptx
File Size:	166 kb
File Type:	pptx

Introducing Hands Off! Happy Hour - PACG Event

7/17/2022

Introducing ✋ Hands Off Happy Hour🤚 !
Wednesday, August 10th from 5:00 to 7:00 pm

Rozz-Tox
2108 3rd AV
Rock Island, IL 61201 (map)

PACG Gender Equity Forum

One of our new forum's goals is education about issues impacting women and non-binary people. We have decided to follow in the footsteps of our very active and successful Environmental Forum and do a monthly educational, social gathering for the Gender Equity Forum. If you are unfamiliar with Green Drinks, the PACG Environmental Forum has been holding these monthly meetings since February of 2019. Green Drinks usually offers one guest speaker who discusses their particular area of environmental expertise at the meeting. You can see a complete list of all of the PACG-hosted Green Drinks meetings here.

With this inspirational group in mind, the Gender Equity Forum will host its first Hands Off! Happy Hour on Wednesday, August 10th at 5:00 pm at Rozz-Tox in Rock Island.

You can order a drink either inside or at the walk up window outdoors. If the weather permits, we will gather outside in the green space at the right side of the building, and, if it’s raining, we will meet inside.

This will be a social hour with no selected speaker. We will speak briefly about the importance of community, friendship and self-care during the difficult work ahead.

Please join us for the fun!

Alta Price and Carolyn Martin
Gender Equity Forum Co-Facilitators

QC Unity Pride Parade - June 18th - What You Can Do Now

5/31/2022

QC Unity Pride
Pride Parade - Saturday, June 18th at 4:00 pm
and other dates in June

Civil Rights Forum

June is Pride Month, and it was established "to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June 1969. As a result, many pride events are held during this month to recognize the impact LGBT people have had in the world." (Wikipedia)

QC Pride welcomes you to 2022 Unity Pride Week, with numerous offerings throughout June. There are several LGBTQI+ movies at the Figge and a Family Night is being planned!

The Grand Finale is the Unity Pride Parade on Saturday, June 18th at 4:00 pm. Here are more details for parade participants:

2:30 pm: Staging will occur at the TaxSlayer Center.
3:00 pm: All parade entries must be in their staging location.
3:15pm: Judges will begin scoring parade competitors.
3:30 pm: 2022 Quad Cities Unity Pride Parade kicks off

Parade will start at the TaxSlayer and will head east on River Drive, turning right (south) on 17th Street, turning right (west) on 5th Avenue, then turning right (north) on 12th Street.

Join us for these important celebrations.

Alta Price

PACG Book Club for June 2022

5/21/2022

PACG Book Club for June 2022 - Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to Marriage Equality by Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen
Monday, June 20th at 4:30 pm

We have decided to move PACG Book Club to 4:30 pm on the third Monday of the month (instead of 5:30 pm). We will meet in June but take off July and August. We have also decided to include books with social justice themes relating to women and LGBTQ+ people.

Our next discussion will be Monday, June 20th at 4:30 pm. We will read and discuss Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to Marriage Equality by Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen. This book is especially relevant to those of us in Iowa. I personally worked for marriage equality in Iowa and I'm looking forward to the read!

Here is some information from Goodreads:

"We’ve been together in sickness and in health, through the death of his mother, through the adoption of our children, through four long years of this legal battle," Jason Morgan told reporters of himself and his partner, Chuck Swaggerty. "And if being together through all of that isn’t love and commitment or isn’t family or isn’t marriage, then I don’t know what is." Just minutes earlier on that day, April 3, 2009, the justices of the Iowa Supreme Court had agreed.

The court’s decision in Varnum v. Brien made Iowa only the third state in the nation to permit same-sex couples to wed—moderate, midwestern Iowa, years before such left-leaning coastal states as California and New York. And unlike the earlier decisions in Massachusetts and Connecticut, Varnum v. Brien was unanimous and unequivocal. It catalyzed the unprecedented and rapid shift in law and public opinion that continues today.

Equal Before the Law tells the stories behind this critical battle in the fight for marriage equality and traces the decision’s impact. The struggle began in 1998 with the easy passage of Iowa’s Defense of Marriage Act and took a turn, surprising to many, in 2005, when six ordinary Iowa couples signed on to Lambda Legal’s suit against the law. Their triumph in 2009 sparked a conservative backlash against the supreme court justices, three of whom faced tough retention elections that fall.
Longtime, award-winning reporters Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen talked with and researched dozens of key figures, including opponent Bob Vander Plaats, proponents Janelle Rettig and Sharon Malheiro, attorneys Roger Kuhle, Dennis Johnson, and Camilla Taylor, and politicians Matt McCoy, Mary Lundby, and Tom Vilsack, who had to weigh their careers against their convictions. Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the decision, explains why the court had to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. At the center of the story are the six couples who sacrificed their privacy to demand public respect for their families.

Through these voices, Witosky and Hansen show that no one should have been surprised by the 2009 decision. Iowans have a long history of leadership on civil rights. Just a year after Iowa became a state, its citizens adopted as their motto the phrase, “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.” And they still do today.

Contact me for the Zoom link. (We'll continue to meet via Zoom for now. If the Covid situation improves by September, we may be able to meet in person then.)

Alta Price

Iowa Is Better Than This! Webinar - Community Event

1/30/2022

"Iowa is Better Than This! Lamenting Iowa's Discriminatory Legislation" - A Free Hybrid Webinar
Wednesday, February 16th at 5:00 pm

In Person and Via Zoom

One Human Family and Numerous Organizations

Over the past year, the Iowa Legislature has considered and/or passed legislation that does not represent "Iowa Nice" values. We need to be heard as we Lament these actions!

Join us in this statewide Lamentation so our legislators know that these policies are not acceptable in a state that cares for all people. Let your voice be heard! We have options for online participation (via Zoom) and in-person sites across the state.

We lament the past to serve as a warning for the future!

For more information, go to OneHumanFamilyQCA.org. Read their statement, attached below.

Online Zoom Registration here.

In-Person Registration here.

Allison Ambrose

iowa_is_better_than_this_statement_2022.pdf
File Size:	219 kb
File Type:	pdf