Category: PACG Event - PACG - Progressive Action for the Common Good

June Green Drinks - Helping Pollinators

5/31/2022

June Green Drinks - How Can We Help Our Local Pollinators?
Tuesday, June 7th at 5 pm

Speaker: Rebecca Baugh, Naturalist,
Wapsi River Education Center

One out of every three bites of food we eat is there because of pollinators and pollinator populations are declining.

Becky Baugh, Naturalist at the Wapsi River Environmental Education Center, will share about our local pollinators, discuss the cause and effect of the decline in their populations, and what you can do to support them.

RSVP for this Zoom meeting by registering at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcoduGpqTIsH9fD6ssFCjEteY09ZHZ41w6m

Download a flyer of this blog post below to share with your family and friends.

Susan Leuthauser

june_-_beckybaugh_pollinators.pdf
File Size:	904 kb
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Earth Day Fair 2022 - PACG Event

4/26/2022

Earth Day Fair 2022
Saturday, May 7th from 9:00 am to 2:00pm

Freight House Farmers Market
421 W River Drive
Davenport, Iowa (map)

Environmental Forum

Join us on Saturday, May 7th to celebrate Earth Day 2022. The theme this year is "Invest in Our Planet.” You'll learn what local groups are doing to invest in the planet and in the Quad City community. There will be live music and children’s activities. This event is family-friendly and free.

Susan Leuthauser

Actions for Earth Month Week 3 - What You Can Do Now

4/19/2022

Earth Month Actions - Week 3

Environmental Forum

Read our blog post about Earth Month Actions - Week 2 here.
Read our blog post about Earth Month Actions - Week 1 here.

Lori McCollum

Journey the World - After Action Report

4/12/2022

Journey the World - After Action Report

QC Waterfront Center
2021 State ST
Bettendorf, IA 52722 (map)

Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois

On Saturday, April 9th, the PACG Environmental Forum hosted a table at the Journey the World event, sponsored by the Girls Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois. Over 500 Scouts participated in this annual activity, whose goal is to celebrate world cultures and highlight global movements.

Our forum's table focused on plastic pollution and the 4 Rs (Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle). Participants were offered various activities, stickers, bookmarks, and the opportunity to learn about the recent Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative.

Lori McCollum

Make Meds Affordable Campaign Artwork - PACG Event

3/29/2022

Make Meds Affordable Campaign Artwork online now!

Health Care Reform Forum

You may have seen an animated version of an image similar to this online recently! We have been working with Richard Iavarone, Business Development Manager for The Quad-City Times and his team.

We wanted to spread the word about the Make Meds Affordable campaign, so we hired some expert help! We have had quite an education about things like target audience, impressions vs. those that lead to action, how our mobile devices are tracked, and how people’s search behavior is tracked. Our forum is new to the concepts of marketing, so this was a steep learning curve for us.

Mr. Iavarone and his team offered a Zoom crash course in marketing which was very helpful in learning how to narrow our geographic target to Scott and Clinton counties, focus on the age range of 24 - 64 years old, and establish clear goals for the campaign.

Letters to the editor reach a significant number of people, but we wanted to learn how to contact those who get their news electronically. We recognized that this group represents the majority of the population in the Quad Cities and surrounding areas. With a limited budget, we have been pleased with the outcome to date.

Our primary goal is to get people to click through and sign the petition or write a letter to President Biden. Both links are on our blog post here. Our secondary goal is to raise awareness about PACG.

Your actions can Make Meds Affordable and spread the word about PACG as an organization. This is how the Health Care Reform forum is doing work for the common good.

Deb Sperry

May Book Club - "Home Made"

3/22/2022

"Home Made" - PACG Book Club Meeting via Zoom
Monday, May 16th at 5:30 pm

PACG Book Club

For our May book we are reading Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up - and What we Make When We Make Dinner by Liz Hauck.

Here's an excerpt from the Good Reads review: An intimate account of humorous and heartbreaking conversations, and a vivid account of the clumsy choreography of cooking with other people, Home Made is a sharply observed and honestly told story about how a kitchen can be both safe and dangerous; how even the short journey from kitchen to table can be perilous. Each chapter explores the interconnectedness of flavor, memory, culture, and life and offers a glimpse into the ways we behave when we are hungry and the food we crave when we seek comfort. Home Made is a tender and vivid portrait of poverty and abundance, vulnerability and strength, estrangement and connection. It is a memoir about the radical grace we discover when we consider ourselves bound together in community and a piercing investigation of the essential question: Who are we to each other?

Contact Alta Price or Julie Ross for a Zoom link to this meeting.

PACG Book Club for April - PACG Event

3/22/2022

"Klara and the Sun" - PACG Book Club Meeting via Zoom
Monday, April 18th at 5:30 pm

PACG Book Club

Our next meeting is Monday, April 18th at 5:30 pm, and we will be discussing Klara and the Sun by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. This is a work of science fiction. In PACG Book Club we alternate between fiction and nonfiction each month.

From the Goodreads review about Klara and the Sun: From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

If you would like to read ahead, our book for May is Home Made: A Story of Grief, Groceries, Showing Up - and What We Make When We Make Dinner by Liz Hauk. We will meet on Zoom on Monday, May 16th. Read more at our May Book Club blog post here.

Contact the PACG Webmaster for the Zoom link for this meeting.

Alta Price

Make Meds Affordable Campaign - 4 Easy Steps

3/10/2022

Make Meds Affordable Campaign - Update

Note: Although PACG's Health Care Reform Forum has completed its paid Make Meds Affordable (MMA) project, the campaign is still going on nationwide. If you have not yet done so, it is not too late to take action with the four things listed below.

40,000 US citizens die each year because
they can’t afford their medication. *
The prostate cancer drug, Xtandi, costs $520 a day
in the US but only $84 a day in Japan.

Help us fix this.

Do four simple things:

Read the facts.
Watch the video.
Sign the petition.
Write to President Biden.

1.  Read the Facts
Americans pay more for prescription drugs than citizens of other countries (on average four times more) while drug companies post record profits and use their drug patent rights and other tactics to limit competition and raise prices. In spite of public protests, Congress has failed to act, yielding instead to Big Pharma’s lobbying dollars.

The Make Meds Affordable campaign has documented that the president and the Department of Health and Human Services have tools under existing legislation to take executive action to lower the cost of many prescription drugs. They have this authority because many drugs have been developed using taxpayer funds, and/or because companies have illegally restricted competition. Read more about this at the "March-in" Rights blog below.

We, as citizens and taxpayers, must demand that these long-ignored tools be used to help lower drug prices now.

2.  Watch the Video
For more information and documentation on this issue go to
https://bit.ly/MakeMedsAffordable. In this informative video, Senator Elizabeth Warren explains how the plan would work. After watching, contact President Biden and DHHS Secretary Becerra and urge them to take action now to Make Meds Affordable!

3. Sign the petition
Make your voice heard! Sign this petition: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/make-meds-affordable

NOTE: When you fill out this form (email address and zip code) and click "Add Your Name," you will be directed to a page called "Social Security Works." You do not have to contribute money to this campaign! Your signature has already been entered into the petition. No contribution is necessary.

4. Contact the President
Tell President Biden to support the Make Meds Affordable campaign. Contact the White House through this website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

For more information about Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG) and its Health Care Reform forum, read about us here. And learn about our ongoing work to Make Meds Affordable. We have also written several other blog posts regarding the campaign:

Support the upcoming documentary, “Pay or Die,” about the high price of insulin
Make Meds Affordable – Pay or Die documentary

What are “March-in” Rights and Why Should You Care?
Make Meds Affordable - What are "march-in" rights?

We will keep updating you on recent news on the Make Meds Affordable campaign. Here's a great article.

Deb Sperry

* per CDC/WHO data

March Green Drinks - Biofuels in Low Carbon Transportation

2/22/2022

March Green Drinks - The Role of Biofuels in Low Carbon Transportation
Tuesday, March 1st at 5:00 pm

via Zoom

Environmental Forum

Join us for Green Drinks on Tuesday, March 1st from 5 - 7 pm. Matt Herman from the Clean Fuels Alliance America will talk to us about biofuels.

Please register in advance at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcoduGpqTIsH9fD6ssFCjEteY09ZHZ41w6m

Susan Leuthauser

I Am the Future: Standing On the Shoulders of the Past - PACG Event

2/14/2022

"I Am The Future" - Standing On the Shoulders of the Past
A PACG Black History Month Project

As her PACG presidency begin in January, Glenda Guster decided that she wanted to interview acquaintances of hers who had important social justice experiences in the mid-20th century. So, PACG did what it often does - we established a committee to work on this idea!

It was decided that our goals for this project included

preserving local Black history
educating our communities, and
inspiring our membership in activism.

With this in mind, we approached four of Glenda's friends and asked if we could interview them about their experiences.

The following individuals agreed to speak to us about their experiences. These are short bios that help explain who they are:

Rev. Gabriel Barber III
Gabriel Barber was born in Clarksville, Missouri and came to the Quad Cities as a young man.

A World War II veteran, he was a US Army truck driver late in the war, eventually ending up in Bremerhaven, Germany. He remembers the winter weather being so cold the drivers could never turn off the motors of the trucks, and he still laughs about the challenges that presented.

Reverend Barber worked for International Harvester at the Farmall Plant in Rock Island for 30 years. He was the pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Davenport for 46 years. An active member of the Rock Island County Nursing Home Board, he ran a health care center and nursing home.

He was the first Black person to serve on the Rock Island County Board of Supervisors, and he served for 30 years. He is also proud to have been a longtime precinct captain of Scott County Democrats, as well as township chair and a member for 25 years.

The Gabe and Lee Barber Park in Rock Island was dedicated to Rev. Barber and his wife, Lee, in 2007.

Rev. Barber spent his life working to ensure that people of color have equal rights and educational opportunities, and he used his political and religious platforms to accomplish these things.

Mayor Bill Gluba
Bill Gluba was born in Davenport, Iowa. As a student at St. Ambrose University in the 1960s, he was active in the Young Democrats of America (YDA), the youth wing of the Democratic Party. His participation in YDA led him to attend the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 along with five other young white men.

He received a bachelor's degree in political science from St. Ambrose and a master's degree in political science from the University of Iowa.

He served on the Scott County, Iowa, Board of Supervisors as well as in the Iowa State House and Senate as a Democrat. He has unsuccessfully run for Congress in Iowa's 1st Congressional District three times, and he served as mayor of Davenport from 2008 to 2015.

Dr. Henry Brockington
Henry Brockington, the youngest of five siblings, was born in Florence, South Carolina, and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a masters in physiology from Catholic University, Washington, DC. He obtained a doctor of chiropractic degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic while teaching as a full-time faculty member. He was honored by being named the commencement speaker at his Palmer graduation.

He retired from Palmer College of Chiropractic after teaching there for 33 years. Dr. Brockington is proud to have been an educator for 40 years.

He explains: “There are two events that I participated in that I will never forget – the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and the First Inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009. Additionally, the smile on my mother’s face when I graduated from Howard University is another moment that made me very proud. She was my inspiration for as long as I can remember.”

“My philosophy involves a few things,” he says. “Pay it forward. Don’t see injustice and just close your eyes. Treat everyone as a friend until they show you otherwise. Don’t dismiss a person by anything other than their actions.”

Dr. Brockington has received numerous awards for teaching. He also received the President’s Award two times from the NAACP. A member of Scott County Democrats for 25 years, he has served as chair for every committee of the NAACP. He is currently the treasurer for the Quad City Minority Partnership.

Attorney Catherine (Kitty) Alexander
As an undergraduate student at Grinnell College in Iowa, Ms. Alexander and six other young white women went to an event in the Amana Colonies where they heard Dr. Martin Luther King speak. This encounter with Dr. King was a life-changing experience.

Ms. Alexander received her masters at Rosary College and her JD at the University of Iowa. She was an assistant city attorney for the City of Davenport and served on the Iowa Supreme Court Commission on Unauthorized Practice of Law. Her employment history includes being an apprentice labor arbitrator and a visiting lecturer for the University of Iowa, as well as working with the Iowa Women’s Political Caucus, Scott County Bar Association and the Association of Trial Lawyers of Iowa.

AbdurRahmaan Howard, Moderator
AbdurRahmaan "Abdur" Howard is a 14-year-old 9th grade student at Davenport North High school, where he is in the dual enrollment program. This will allow him to earn an associate degree from Eastern Iowa Community Colleges while attending high school.

Abdur has a love for the arts, classical music and social justice. The bulk of his time is spent in the musical arena, either at the Adler Theater, attending the symphony; at the Second Baptist Church Music & Arts Academy; or with the Quad City Youth Symphony, where he is a violinist with the String Ensemble. In his spare time Abdur does spoken word poetry at local venues.

Abdur continues to further his education. He has a multitude of career interests, with the medical field at the top of his list.

In June of 2021, Abdur was selected to be a moderator for the PACG “Race, Adolescence and Trauma” webinar, featuring Professor Kristin Henning. His demonstrated maturity and quick mind made him our choice to moderate our Black History Month project this year.

We hired Mickle Communications to videotape the interviews at the MLK Interpretive Center in Davenport. The Putnam Museum has expressed interest in showing our video as part of their Black History Month programming. We hope to be able to announce that this will be available on Sunday, February 27th.

Our project title came from a phrase that Glenda's church often uses when speaking of their children: "I'm the future." (This phrase is from the Whiney Houston song The Greatest Love Of All.)

As young men and women in the 1960s and beyond, Gabe, Bill, Henry and Kitty would have thought of themselves as the future. We are grateful to them in so many ways. As Glenda says, "I am benefiting now from these past acts of courage and sacrifice. I made sure my children knew this, and my grandchildren know now they are standing on bent down backs that were not broken by racism."

PACG Webmaster

Project moderator AbdurRahmaan Howard in front of the mural at the Friends of Martin Luther King Interpretive Center in Davenport, Iowa