Blog Archives

Hands Off! Happy Hour is back! PACG Event

2/11/2023

Join us for Hands Off! Happy Hour
Tuesday, February 21st at 5:00 pm

Tony's Chicago Style Pizzeria
1321 5th AV
Moline, IL (map)

Gender Equity Forum

We have decided to do something similar to what our friends in the PACG Environmental Forum have been successfully sponsoring for many years. They offer a monthly educational meeting called Green Drinks.

Hands Off! Happy Hour will meet in-person monthly to discuss how we can more effectively coordinate our action groups to create educational actions and events that meet our purpose. We hope to alternate venues on either side of the river.

Please join us on February 21st at 5:00 pm for noshing and strategizing.

Alta Price

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LGBTQ+ Prayer Vigil - What You Can Do Now

2/7/2023

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Prayer Vigil for our LGBTQ+ Neighbors
Friday, February 10th at 6:30 pm

Metropolitan Community Church of the Quad Cities
2930 W Locust ST
Davenport, IA 52804 (map)

One Human Family - QCA

Here is a link to an article in Saturday, February 4th's QC Times about how the Davenport police foiled a plot to violently attack the QCA’s LGBTQ+ community. The threat of a mass shooting event has come to our town! There is no underestimating the seriousness of this threat!

This is a time when we need to stand in solidarity with our LGBTQ+ neighbors. One way is by attending a Prayer Vigil that will be held next Friday (February 10th) at the Metropolitan Community Church, starting at 6:30 p.m. Since the Prayer Vigil has been scheduled at the same time as the Jewish community’s weekly Shabbat evening service, unfortunately, many from the Jewish community will be unable to attend. Please do not take the absence of Jews at the Prayer Vigil to mean that the Jewish community does not care about this issue. The Jews of the Quad Cities stand in firm solidarity with our LGBTQ+ neighbors.

Rabbi Henry Karp
One Human Family - QCA

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Donations needed for immigrants - What You Can Do Now

2/5/2023

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Donations needed for Immigrant Families - Action Alert

1800 7th AV
Suites 5 and 6
Moline, IL 61265 (map)

QCAIR - Quad Cities Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees

On Jan 25, an arsonist set fire to the Timber Knoll Apartments in Moline, Illinois. Sixteen units were burned and several individuals were hospitalized.

Four immigrant families were victims of this fire. They lost everything they owned and are currently staying with friends and families. QCAIR is doing what they can to help them through this crisis.

Donations are being accepted at the QCAIR office. Donations can also be made via Go Fund Me: https://www.gofund.me/27cdccf1.

Susan Leuthauser

Amy Dehaven
563-594-0854

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PACG Immigration and Refugee Summit - PACG Event

2/4/2023

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Immigration and Refugee Summit - Navigating Complex Policies within a Broken System
Saturday, February 25th from 10:00 am to noon

Eastern Iowa Community College
Rooms W 116/117
101 West 3rd Street
Davenport, IA (map)

PACG Civil Rights Forum and co-sponsored by One Human Family and Quad Cities Interfaith

Join PACG and our co-sponsors One Human Family-QCA and Quad Cities Interfaith as we present "Navigating Complex Policies within a Broken System" on Saturday, February 25th from 10:00 am to noon at Eastern Iowa Community College in Davenport, IA.

The purpose of the summit is to inform participants of the various laws and regulations that affect immigrants and refugees, including visa processing, granting asylum, entrance quotas, available resources, and protections. Updates on current legislation as well as challenges with implementation will be discussed.

Spanish translation will be provided.

Our panelists (below) will inform the audience from their unique perspectives and experiences. They will participate in a Q&A session to discuss specific problems with the current laws in order to identify potential solutions that can be acted upon.

Summer Allchin has been a solo practitioner with Allchin Law Office, PLLC in Muscatine, Iowa since 2012. Summer practices exclusively in immigration law, focusing primarily on family-based immigration, consular processing, waivers, citizenship applications, and domestic abuse issues, such as Violence Against Women (VAWA) and U visas (nonimmigrant victims of abuse that occurred within the US) cases. Prior to opening her own law firm, Summer was an Associate Attorney with a small immigration law firm in St. Paul, Minnesota. She also worked as a family and immigration staff attorney with Mid-Minnesota Legal Services in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Summer received her law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law in 2007, where she was very active in the immigration clinic and received the “Michelle R. Bennet Award for Outstanding Client Services.” She received her B.A. in International Relations and Nordic Area Studies from Augsburg College in 2002. Summer is admitted to practice law in Iowa and Minnesota. She is an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and regularly volunteers with the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice immigration clinic in Columbus Junction, Iowa. Ms. Alchin will talk about her work and the obstacles her clients face.

Karina Garnica and Gricelda Garnica are Immigration Counselors at the Catholic Diocese of Davenport. They have more than 20 years of experience in legal family reunification and also help DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients. They will discuss their work and obstacles that affect the communities they serve.

Mayra Hernandez was born in Mexico and came to live in the United States when she was four years old. She is a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient. Mayra is a first-generation college student and received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Iowa. Currently, she is a Community Organizer with Quad Cities Interfaith and her main goal is to identify and develop leaders in the QCA to use their voices and their stories to be powerful. She will talk about her own personal experiences, policies that affect DACA, and what needs to happen in the future.

Ratko Rastovic is the Program Director for World Relief Quad Cities. He arrived in Davenport as a refugee from the former Yugoslavia in 1999 and has been employed by World Relief Quad Cities since 2000, presently as Program Director. He is a partially Accredited Representative for the Department of Justice, which allows him to represent individuals before the Department of Homeland Security.

Fred Tsao is the Senior Policy Counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). In this position, he provides technical support, trainings, and presentations on immigration-related topics to service providers, immigrant community organizations, and others who work with immigrants. He also provides updates and analysis of changes in immigration policies and procedures to ICIRR members and allies, and assists with the coalition's legislative advocacy efforts. A self-described “recovering attorney,” Fred practiced law at the Rockford office of Prairie State Legal Services, where he worked after receiving his law degree from the University of Michigan. He has also worked with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation, and the Missouri Public Interest. Mr. Tsao will speak in depth about what the ICIRR does and some of the current issues that affect immigrant and refugee rights.

We are really excited to bring this group of panelists who have diverse experiences with immigrant and refugee populations to educate the public on the various obstacles and challenges faced by these populations. Our hope is that with a better understanding of what these populations face, we can work to make a difference.

Allison Ambrose

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PACG welcomes new Board members! - A Message from the President

2/4/2023

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Welcome to our new Board of Directors members!

A Message from the President

PACG is excited to announce that we have two new members on our Board of Directors! Please welcome Sharita Lacy and Laronda Bennett! Both women can be contacted from the About section of our website here.

Sharita Lacy

Sharita has worked for the Davenport school system as an Attendance Secretary for three years, and she loves her job! She enjoys her interactions with students as well as the staff. She calls herself an onsite mentor for students. The devoted mother of three children is also busy with their school and other activities. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends. Sharita grew up watching her mother, Glenda Guster, work in the community for the common good. She is looking forward to working with PACG members.

Laronda Bennett

Laronda Bennett is from Kansas City, Missouri and moved to Rock Island in 2017. She joined Tabernacle Baptist Church, where she met her husband, Greg.

Laronda works for Churches United of the Quad City Area in Bettendorf. As the Administrative Assistant, her role in the office is to support the Executive and Associate Director with the daily operation of the office. That could be from answering phones and writing and distributing emails. The job can be rewarding and challenging! She helps everyone who contacts the office for assistance with, food, rent, utilities, and shelter.

The achievement for which Laronda is most proud is deciding to go to school later in life to get her Associate Degree in Logistics Management.

She loves to sew and make cards, finding both very relaxing.

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3 things to know about Black History Month - No Hate In Our States

2/3/2023

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It's Black History Month. Here are 3 things to know about the annual celebration

NPR's Black History Month 2023

1. It was Negro History Week before it was Black History Month.
2. There's a new theme every year. The theme this year is "Black Resistance."
3. Recent controversies over how race is taught echo a time when Black history is often ignored.

From NPR: February marks Black History Month, a tradition that got its start in the Jim Crow era and was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the nation's bicentennial celebrations. It aims to honor the contributions that African Americans have made and to recognize their sacrifices.

Here are three things to know about Black History Month:

It was Negro History Week before it was Black History Month
In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, the scholar often referred to as the "father of Black history," established Negro History Week to focus attention on Black contributions to civilization. According to the NAACP, Woodson — at the time only the second Black American after W.E.B. Du Bois to earn a doctorate from Harvard University — "fervently believed that Black people should be proud of their heritage and [that] all Americans should understand the largely overlooked achievements of Black Americans."

Woodson, the son of former enslaved people, famously said: "If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated."

Woodson chose a week in February because of Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday was Feb. 12, and Frederick Douglass, who was born enslaved and did not know his actual birth date, but chose to celebrate it on Feb. 14.

"Those two people were central to helping to afford Black people the experience of freedom that they have now," says W. Marvin Dulaney, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), which Woodson founded in 1915 and today is the official promoter of Black History Month.

In the decades after the Civil War and through the racial violence that erupted across the country in the years following World War I, there was a concerted effort to repress the teaching of Black history.
"In the South, they tried to suppress Black history or African American history in the public schools," Dulaney says, "particularly about things like Reconstruction and slavery, literally distorting the curriculum."

At the university level, Black studies programs were almost nonexistent, he says. "California was the first state to actually mandate Black history in 1951 for the public schools."

Largely as a result of the civil rights and Black consciousness movements of the 1960s, "you saw an uptick in Black history courses," says LaGarrett King, an associate professor of social studies education at the University at Buffalo.

Read the rest of the article here.

PACG Webmaster

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"I Am the Future" showing by DYC of NAACP - What You Can Do Now

2/3/2023

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I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past showing - Update
Saturday, February 18th at 3:00 pm

Davenport Public Library
321 N Main ST
Davenport, IA 52801 (map)

Note: The venue has changed. This event will be at the main branch of the Davenport Library on North Main Street.

PACG and the NAACP Davenport Youth Council 47AA

Our Black History Month project is once again being shown at a Quad Cities library. We are very excited that the NAACP Davenport Youth Council will make this presentation.

Please join us for a viewing of the impact that the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr had on local Quad City residents.

As before, we will have at least some of the interviewees on hand for a discussion afterwards. Read more about these remarkable people from our previous blog post.

Glenda Guster

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Forward>>

Hands Off! Happy Hour is back! PACG Event

Join us for Hands Off! Happy HourTuesday, February 21st at 5:00 pm

LGBTQ+ Prayer Vigil - What You Can Do Now

Prayer Vigil for our LGBTQ+ NeighborsFriday, February 10th at 6:30 pm

Donations needed for immigrants - What You Can Do Now

Donations needed for Immigrant Families - Action Alert

PACG Immigration and Refugee Summit - PACG Event

Immigration and Refugee Summit - Navigating Complex Policies within a Broken SystemSaturday, February 25th from 10:00 am to noon

PACG welcomes new Board members! - A Message from the President

Welcome to our new Board of Directors members!

3 things to know about Black History Month - No Hate In Our States

It's Black History Month. Here are 3 things to know about the annual celebration

"I Am the Future" showing by DYC of NAACP - What You Can Do Now

I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past showing - UpdateSaturday, February 18th at 3:00 pm

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Categories

Join us for Hands Off! Happy Hour
Tuesday, February 21st at 5:00 pm

Prayer Vigil for our LGBTQ+ Neighbors
Friday, February 10th at 6:30 pm

Immigration and Refugee Summit - Navigating Complex Policies within a Broken System
Saturday, February 25th from 10:00 am to noon

I Am the Future: Standing on the Shoulders of the Past showing - Update
Saturday, February 18th at 3:00 pm