How PACG began...
By Cath Bolkcom
An important moment in my life as a community organizer was the Pleasant Valley School Board's decision to limit the use of young author James Howe’s well-known book The Misfits because one of the young people in the book was gay. I didn’t imagine that this could actually happen in November 2004 in Iowa. I went to the board meeting, where in fact it did happen, and I decided at that moment that I could help the affected teachers and the parents appeal this decision to the Iowa Department of Education.
We filed an appeal and proved our case very effectively in an administrative hearing. The board did not rule in our favor, but we felt that we had accomplished virtually all we had set out to do by changing the minds and hearts of people in the community. There were waiting lists at libraries to borrow the book and bookstores to buy it. We got a grant to buy 100 copies and donated them to local schools and libraries. Eventually, we brought award-winning and best-selling author James Howe to town. Three hundred people attended his presentation at North High School in Davenport to learn how we can better support gay youth.
We filed an appeal and proved our case very effectively in an administrative hearing. The board did not rule in our favor, but we felt that we had accomplished virtually all we had set out to do by changing the minds and hearts of people in the community. There were waiting lists at libraries to borrow the book and bookstores to buy it. We got a grant to buy 100 copies and donated them to local schools and libraries. Eventually, we brought award-winning and best-selling author James Howe to town. Three hundred people attended his presentation at North High School in Davenport to learn how we can better support gay youth.
A result of this dispute was the organizing of what would become Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG).
George Bush had been reelected president in November of 2004, which was frustrating and of grave concern. The Misfits book suppression at Pleasant Valley High School came right on the heels of his election. The effort to ban a book that featured a gay child made it clear that the religious right had successfully organized to elect people with fundamentalist religious views to all levels of government, including our school boards.
It became obvious to me that progressives had been out-organized and that we needed to do something about it. I set out to create a coalition of progressives in the QC to remedy this. The first person I met with was Roger Butts, then minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davenport. I hoped he might be able to offer financial support. He could not, but what he did offer was more essential: his own participation and, very importantly, a place for our new community to gather and plan our activism. I invited people with whom I had worked in the MoveOn GOTV (Get Out the Vote) effort and people I knew from 30 years of working and organizing in the QC to the first meeting. Everyone invited was also asked to reach out to progressives they knew and encourage them to get involved. In January of 2005 we began meeting weekly. Email and the US Postal Service were the only tools available to reach out to folks in volume. We began with an effort at each meeting to have attendees send personal letters through the mail to at least 10 people they knew and to ask those ten people to reach out to ten more people.
I was amazed by the response at the early meetings. We started with one meeting a week at noon and quickly added a second meeting in the evening for working folks. We chose the name for the fledgling group in a group meeting. I wanted the words “progressive,” “common good” and “action” to be included in our name. It was a lot, but we made it work!!
We decided to hold the first PACG Summit to launch our organization in April and draw people in to begin to identify the issues they wanted to address. On April 16, 2005, 450 people attended this gathering at Augustana College! This was an amazing turnout given the short time frame for planning. It demonstrated the concern people felt in the wake of the 2004 election. Folks came committed to work on a variety of issues - civil rights, equal rights, protecting Social Security, economic justice, women’s issues, racial healing, healthcare, the environment and sustainability, corporate reform, poverty and housing, peace and justice and more. (Other topics around which forums would eventually be organized included immigration, election reform, youth leaders and others).
We came up with the idea of Issue Forums, which has continued to be an important part of the present day success of PACG. I knew from my organizing experience that we could not support work on a variety of issues without staff, but we did not have money. We suggested that anyone willing to work on a particular issue could establish a forum as long as they would take responsibility to chair it and build it. We knew that individuals would not want to (or be able to) work on every issue, or even agree with all of the intentions of the forums. The idea was that we could work on our biggest concerns and then come together as a larger organization to effect change.
Here’s how the current PACG website explains Issue Forums:
PACG is a multi-issue organization built around our Issue Forums. As progressives, we all care about many different issues. Those who feel more strongly about a given issue can join others to work specifically on that issue as a core member of an Issue Forum. Members of an Issue Forum meet to plan events and actions. Issue Forums reach out to other PACG members to take action or attend events the core members of the Issue Forum have planned. That way PACG members can help promote causes they care about, even if they can't attend regular meetings to work on that issue.
With many incredible colleagues who came to the table from January to April of 2005, we began to build an organization that could work effectively across a dozen issue groups to effect change and to apply political power.
At the time of the first PACG Summit, we had not yet incorporated but at the April Summit people were giving money to me to support our efforts. With help from Rich Hendricks, who was a lawyer in a previous life, we organized our first PACG Board of Directors. Among the very early leaders were Alta Price, Roger Butts, Ron Quay, Rich Hendricks, Lisa Killinger, Joyce (Basler) Chamberlin, Karen Metcalf, Dick Fallow, Rick Schloemer, Caryn Unsicker, John and Kathy Bowman, James Lee, Molly Regan, Caroline Vernon, Kriss Wells, John Downing, Rachel Griffiths, Dave and Carol Brown, Chris Dunn, Linda Pratt, Cliff Day, Beth Wehrman, Len and Connie Sauer-Adams, Joyce Wiley, Tom Benge, Julie Ross, Ann Berger, Shirley Johnson, Dr. John Hoffman, Carol West, Sally Paustian, Maria Mejia-Caballo, Olenka, Maria Cummings, and Karl Rhomberg. There are certainly others whose names I have not included. Dr. Alta Price, Bill and Maria Bribriesco, Catherine Wiedeman, Michael Liebbe, Martha Easter-Wells, and Dr. Walter Neiswanger were incredibly generous early financial donors.
The issue forums met independently, scheduling their regular meetings and developing their own agendas and action plans (see my list below of the first active forums). The larger community gathered once a month for a Council meeting to hear reports from the forums and make plans for PACG as a whole.
What is incredible and very unusual for a truly grassroots organization is that PACG is still alive and well 20 years later! And that is due to leadership that has stayed active and true for all these years. I am not one of those people (I realized that I like to start things). I honor the folks that were at the table at the very beginning and are still at it these years later. There is a natural ebb and flow to grass roots organizing. It’s very difficult to sustain over time, particularly without full-time paid staff. PACG has defied the odds by working so effectively on so many issues for two decades.
Here are my recollections of the first regular forums we established:
The Reclaiming Moral Values Forum
Rev. Ron Quay had moved from New Jersey to the Quad Cities to take the Churches United Executive Director job. He was one of our early leaders and board members. He and James Lee led the Reclaiming Moral Values form to address the fallacy that the Religious Right had a corner on what “moral values” or “family values” were.
Ron Quay and Roger Butts worked with the other progressive clergy to address any issue that came up in the community about which one would hope to hear from faith leaders. We did some amazing interfaith organizing with Rabbi Karp, Dr. Lisa Killinger, a leader in the Muslim community, and Rev. Rich Hendricks from the Metropolitan Community Church and a leader in the LGBTQ+ community. They organized a quick and public response to every issue, problem or crisis which happened in the world for years. Muslims and Jews along with all kinds of people gathered together at the Mosque for the first time in QC history.
The Civil Rights Forum
Rich Hendricks and I co-led the PACG Civil Rights Forum. We were keenly focused on racial healing and marriage equality. We organized political and community support for marriage equality for 5 years and were delighted when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, one of only three states to do so (the other two being on opposite coasts, Washington and Vermont). Rich and I were also very fortunate to be wedding officiants at this time and involved in some of the marriage ceremonies of the thousands of couples who traveled to Iowa to be legally wed.
One of the coolest events I was involved in was “Hands Across the Table for Racial Healing” a potluck to bring together Quad Citians to share their heritage, the food of their country of origin, and to share stories of their family’s immigration story. Though we only had 40 RSVP’s, Rich Hendricks and his helpers from MCCQC confidently set up for 300 guests and the tables were full! Eleven different languages were spoken by the guests.
The Peace and Justice Forum:
The peace work that we did opposing the Iraq war in the early days of PACG was really important. Our colleague Caryn Unsicker deserves most of the credit. I tried to infuse the effort with an ethic of love and nonviolence rather than anger and hate. One of the marches we did through Davenport was on a very cold winter day, intentionally in silence. Someone walked along with us and beat a drum solemnly. This didn’t end the war, of course, but it was a strong demonstration that unless we act in the strength of peace and love, nothing changes. We also worked to reclaim the US flag from the right. Caryn, as the mother of a service member in Iraq, was a powerful and passionate activist and leader to end the war. This included leading bi-weekly anti-war protests in the QC for many years. Caryn also traveled to Texas to attend a 26-day protest outside Pres. Bush’s ranch in Texas in August, 2005. This protest was organized by Cindy Sheehan, an Iraq War Gold Star mom, who then led a nationwide protest in DC. A bus trip to the Sept 24th DC protest was our first action event organized by PACG.
George Bush had been reelected president in November of 2004, which was frustrating and of grave concern. The Misfits book suppression at Pleasant Valley High School came right on the heels of his election. The effort to ban a book that featured a gay child made it clear that the religious right had successfully organized to elect people with fundamentalist religious views to all levels of government, including our school boards.
It became obvious to me that progressives had been out-organized and that we needed to do something about it. I set out to create a coalition of progressives in the QC to remedy this. The first person I met with was Roger Butts, then minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davenport. I hoped he might be able to offer financial support. He could not, but what he did offer was more essential: his own participation and, very importantly, a place for our new community to gather and plan our activism. I invited people with whom I had worked in the MoveOn GOTV (Get Out the Vote) effort and people I knew from 30 years of working and organizing in the QC to the first meeting. Everyone invited was also asked to reach out to progressives they knew and encourage them to get involved. In January of 2005 we began meeting weekly. Email and the US Postal Service were the only tools available to reach out to folks in volume. We began with an effort at each meeting to have attendees send personal letters through the mail to at least 10 people they knew and to ask those ten people to reach out to ten more people.
I was amazed by the response at the early meetings. We started with one meeting a week at noon and quickly added a second meeting in the evening for working folks. We chose the name for the fledgling group in a group meeting. I wanted the words “progressive,” “common good” and “action” to be included in our name. It was a lot, but we made it work!!
We decided to hold the first PACG Summit to launch our organization in April and draw people in to begin to identify the issues they wanted to address. On April 16, 2005, 450 people attended this gathering at Augustana College! This was an amazing turnout given the short time frame for planning. It demonstrated the concern people felt in the wake of the 2004 election. Folks came committed to work on a variety of issues - civil rights, equal rights, protecting Social Security, economic justice, women’s issues, racial healing, healthcare, the environment and sustainability, corporate reform, poverty and housing, peace and justice and more. (Other topics around which forums would eventually be organized included immigration, election reform, youth leaders and others).
We came up with the idea of Issue Forums, which has continued to be an important part of the present day success of PACG. I knew from my organizing experience that we could not support work on a variety of issues without staff, but we did not have money. We suggested that anyone willing to work on a particular issue could establish a forum as long as they would take responsibility to chair it and build it. We knew that individuals would not want to (or be able to) work on every issue, or even agree with all of the intentions of the forums. The idea was that we could work on our biggest concerns and then come together as a larger organization to effect change.
Here’s how the current PACG website explains Issue Forums:
PACG is a multi-issue organization built around our Issue Forums. As progressives, we all care about many different issues. Those who feel more strongly about a given issue can join others to work specifically on that issue as a core member of an Issue Forum. Members of an Issue Forum meet to plan events and actions. Issue Forums reach out to other PACG members to take action or attend events the core members of the Issue Forum have planned. That way PACG members can help promote causes they care about, even if they can't attend regular meetings to work on that issue.
With many incredible colleagues who came to the table from January to April of 2005, we began to build an organization that could work effectively across a dozen issue groups to effect change and to apply political power.
At the time of the first PACG Summit, we had not yet incorporated but at the April Summit people were giving money to me to support our efforts. With help from Rich Hendricks, who was a lawyer in a previous life, we organized our first PACG Board of Directors. Among the very early leaders were Alta Price, Roger Butts, Ron Quay, Rich Hendricks, Lisa Killinger, Joyce (Basler) Chamberlin, Karen Metcalf, Dick Fallow, Rick Schloemer, Caryn Unsicker, John and Kathy Bowman, James Lee, Molly Regan, Caroline Vernon, Kriss Wells, John Downing, Rachel Griffiths, Dave and Carol Brown, Chris Dunn, Linda Pratt, Cliff Day, Beth Wehrman, Len and Connie Sauer-Adams, Joyce Wiley, Tom Benge, Julie Ross, Ann Berger, Shirley Johnson, Dr. John Hoffman, Carol West, Sally Paustian, Maria Mejia-Caballo, Olenka, Maria Cummings, and Karl Rhomberg. There are certainly others whose names I have not included. Dr. Alta Price, Bill and Maria Bribriesco, Catherine Wiedeman, Michael Liebbe, Martha Easter-Wells, and Dr. Walter Neiswanger were incredibly generous early financial donors.
The issue forums met independently, scheduling their regular meetings and developing their own agendas and action plans (see my list below of the first active forums). The larger community gathered once a month for a Council meeting to hear reports from the forums and make plans for PACG as a whole.
What is incredible and very unusual for a truly grassroots organization is that PACG is still alive and well 20 years later! And that is due to leadership that has stayed active and true for all these years. I am not one of those people (I realized that I like to start things). I honor the folks that were at the table at the very beginning and are still at it these years later. There is a natural ebb and flow to grass roots organizing. It’s very difficult to sustain over time, particularly without full-time paid staff. PACG has defied the odds by working so effectively on so many issues for two decades.
Here are my recollections of the first regular forums we established:
The Reclaiming Moral Values Forum
Rev. Ron Quay had moved from New Jersey to the Quad Cities to take the Churches United Executive Director job. He was one of our early leaders and board members. He and James Lee led the Reclaiming Moral Values form to address the fallacy that the Religious Right had a corner on what “moral values” or “family values” were.
Ron Quay and Roger Butts worked with the other progressive clergy to address any issue that came up in the community about which one would hope to hear from faith leaders. We did some amazing interfaith organizing with Rabbi Karp, Dr. Lisa Killinger, a leader in the Muslim community, and Rev. Rich Hendricks from the Metropolitan Community Church and a leader in the LGBTQ+ community. They organized a quick and public response to every issue, problem or crisis which happened in the world for years. Muslims and Jews along with all kinds of people gathered together at the Mosque for the first time in QC history.
The Civil Rights Forum
Rich Hendricks and I co-led the PACG Civil Rights Forum. We were keenly focused on racial healing and marriage equality. We organized political and community support for marriage equality for 5 years and were delighted when the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, one of only three states to do so (the other two being on opposite coasts, Washington and Vermont). Rich and I were also very fortunate to be wedding officiants at this time and involved in some of the marriage ceremonies of the thousands of couples who traveled to Iowa to be legally wed.
One of the coolest events I was involved in was “Hands Across the Table for Racial Healing” a potluck to bring together Quad Citians to share their heritage, the food of their country of origin, and to share stories of their family’s immigration story. Though we only had 40 RSVP’s, Rich Hendricks and his helpers from MCCQC confidently set up for 300 guests and the tables were full! Eleven different languages were spoken by the guests.
The Peace and Justice Forum:
The peace work that we did opposing the Iraq war in the early days of PACG was really important. Our colleague Caryn Unsicker deserves most of the credit. I tried to infuse the effort with an ethic of love and nonviolence rather than anger and hate. One of the marches we did through Davenport was on a very cold winter day, intentionally in silence. Someone walked along with us and beat a drum solemnly. This didn’t end the war, of course, but it was a strong demonstration that unless we act in the strength of peace and love, nothing changes. We also worked to reclaim the US flag from the right. Caryn, as the mother of a service member in Iraq, was a powerful and passionate activist and leader to end the war. This included leading bi-weekly anti-war protests in the QC for many years. Caryn also traveled to Texas to attend a 26-day protest outside Pres. Bush’s ranch in Texas in August, 2005. This protest was organized by Cindy Sheehan, an Iraq War Gold Star mom, who then led a nationwide protest in DC. A bus trip to the Sept 24th DC protest was our first action event organized by PACG.
RSS Feed
