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Workshop aims to put power back in citizen’s hands

The workshop was titled “Taking Action 101: Simple Ways You Can Change Your World.”

ROCK ISLAND, Illinois-- One local group is helping the Quad City community take action on the direction of the country.

Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG) held a non-partisan workshop on March 26th, 2017 at the Plumbers and Pipefitters Union Hall in Rock Island.

"People are wondering what's going on, they are overwhelmed by what's going on and they want to know how they can make a difference," says Alex Lemke, workshop volunteer.

President of the PACG says they've prepared today's event to make it easy as 1, 2, 3.

"We've prepared a handbook for people that has a lot of these actions in it," says Price, "for example we want to teach people how easy it is to call your member of congress."

Price says calling your elected officials is the best way to make sure your voice gets heard.

"It's very effective to call your member of congress. Just as an example last week the Affordable Care Act was saved, and why was it saved? Because of millions of phone calls people have made that they wanted to keep the affordable care act," says Price.

The group says the calls made out to save the Affordable Care Act were 50 to 1.

"Fifty people that really wanted to save it versus that one person who didn't, so you see there is a huge difference that shows the power and the fact that many people are coming together in this country," says workshop volunteer Alex Lemke.

Along with a step by step process PACG also invited more than fifteen local organizations help connect people to issues they care about.

"We'll be talking about civil rights, economic justice the environment, healthcare reform. People will learn about those issues but more importantly learn how to take action on them," says Price.

People received their own binders filled with over one hundred ways to take action along with a script that could be tweaked to each person's agenda.

"One of the key pieces that we have is something that we call the power of three where people will come up with actions to take in the next three hours the next three days, next three weeks, next three months and so on so when they leave here they will have their own personal action plan," says Price.

"We know it can be a tough thing for people so what we've done today is that we're going to give people a good script that they can follow to make it easy. We're going to give them all the tools that they need to have at their finger tips to make it a seamless part of their day," says Lemke.

Price says they hope after today's workshop people will feel more comfortable calling their local officials and feel confident speaking about the issues.

"The biggest thing we want people to take away is we really want them to know how to make a phone call to their member of congress. That's the most critical thing they can do and we've seen that it makes the most difference," says Price.

 

 

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