“One Battle After Another” is not just the name of a main Oscar contender this award season. It seems like a motto of progressive groups nationally and in the Quad Cities, as they work together to fight what they consider to be immoral, illegal cases of federal abuse of power.
Representatives of many of those organizations met Tuesday night – at a “Power To the People” event in East Moline (in a local carpenters’ union hall), which attracted over 200 members of the public. Speakers and ordinary people vented their frustrations and sought ways to successfully counter a threatening government, especially following the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of an unarmed female motorist in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer.
Formal speakers represented Indivisible Quad Cities, ACLU of Illinois, Clock Inc. LGBTQ Community Center, NAACP Rock Island County branch, Quad Cities Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees (QCAIR), and the QC chapter of the Alliance of Retired Americans, as well as Illinois State Rep. Gregg Johnson.
Carol Morris, event planner for Indivisible QC, aimed to bring people together to discuss the issues and possible solutions. This was two days after the local group organized a protest in Moline Sunday afternoon, that brought over 400 people out to protest actions of ICE officers in Minneapolis, one of whom shot and killed a U.S. citizen, 37-year-old mother Renee Good on Jan. 7.
“It just seems like every single day, we’re waking up to some other chaos that’s been created by Donald Trump and his lawless administration,” Democratic State Rep. Johnson said Tuesday.
Actions they’re taking “are designed to exhaust us,” he said. “We know when we go to events like this, Sunday in Moline, we start seeing new faces. That’s how we organize.”
Illinois Democrats are pushing back on this administration “every single chance we get,” Johnson said. “Here in Illinois, there will always be a safe place for everyone.”
Minnesota and Illinois sued the Trump administration on Monday (Jan. 12), seeking to block a surge of immigration-enforcement officers into their states, following the fatal shooting of a Minnesota woman by an ICE officer last week.
The lawsuit brought by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison names as defendants U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and several U.S. immigration officials, asking a federal court in Minnesota to declare the surge unconstitutional and unlawful.
Johnson said his job is to take the public’s stories to Springfield, to fight for their rights.
“We need to document things; we need to take videos,” Johnson said of ICE and other illegal or immoral actions, for people to be held accountable. “We’re taking notes of everything that happens during this time.”
“Those who have continued to commit these acts, we will have an opportunity to go after them,” he said. “I know it seems bleak at times. It was Martin Luther King who said, the arc of history does bend toward justice. We will be on the other side of this. It’s gonna seem like a long time to us. But when history writes its story many years from now, it will be just a chapter. And we will come out on the other side.”
“Clearly, what Trump is doing is designed to give us that feeling of helplessness. We cannot feel helpless,” Johnson said. “Pushing this rock up the hill, and some days you're too exhausted, but believe me, if you're resting, someone else is going to push that rock up the hill.”
“We will come out on the bright side of history in this,” he said. “His poll numbers are dropping rapidly because while he thinks he's marginalizing more people, he's bringing more friends to the table for all of us.”
“I want you to have a state government that has a moral compass, that fights for everybody,” Johnson said. “And if we keep doing the work, you are going to have that. So we can't afford to get down. We’ve got to continue to fight, fight, fight.”
Students and young adults are against what this administration is doing, he said of a recent visit to United Township High School.
“They have seen enough. This is not the world that they want to grow up in. And they do not want those that come behind them to grow up in,” Johnson said. “So remember them when we leave these rooms.”
He recommended creating response teams or networks in the communities that would be prepared to respond if ICE comes to the QC area.
“This is a whole new escalation,” Johnson said of federal agents going door to door, pulling people from cars and stores. “Every time they hit rock bottom, we find they go lower. “They’re basically busting into homes and these warrants are not valid. It’s absolutely frightening to see.”
Challenges faced by immigrants
Daniela Flores, case manager for QCAIR, who’s from Ecuador, spoke of paralyzing fear felt by immigrants nationwide.
“Many families are afraid to go to the hospital to see things for an illness. Even in emergency situations, when a loved one is in the hospital, they're not available to go,” she said. “Parents who are seeking medical care because they don't know if doing so is going to put them at a very high risk. Others are afraid to send their children to school, a place that should be safe and full of opportunities.
“We also see families who have decided to stop attending to cultural events, community celebrations and even church spaces that want to provide support, hope and unity,” Flores said. “Fear has forced many people into isolation, breaking the bonds that strengthen our community.”
“The impact on the children is already very painful. Many children are now living without one or both parents due to either danger or deportation,” she said. “These children are facing emotional trauma, anxiety, depression and drastic changes in behavior. Some struggling to sleep, others have difficulty concentrating at school. And many live with the constant fear of losing the parent who is still with them. No child should grow up with this level of uncertainty and pain.”
“Parents, grandparents and caregivers are forced to make impossible choices,” Flores said. “While they're trying to maintain the stability for their families, older adults are also suffering. Many grandparents were unable to share the holiday season with their families because they no longer feel safe to travel long distance. Celebrations that were once filled with love and togetherness now are marked by absence and sadness.”
“Our community deserves to live with dignity, without fear and without insecurity,” she said.
Similar struggles by Black Americans
Bonnie Ballard, president of the NAACP Rock Island County branch, agreed people need to speak up.
“Every generation has had to decide whether we would remain silent or rise to defend democracy. Every day we are witnessing the dangerous concentration of power to the federal government,” she said. “Efforts to weaken voting rights, intimidate defenders and target communities of color and immigrants.
“History teaches us what happens when power goes unchecked. Democracy and freedom are weakened or lost,” she said. “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The NAACP is here to make sure that the promise of equal justice under the law is not just written in the Constitution, but lived in our communities. We will defend the vote. We will protect our free vote. We will hold power accountable. This moment demands more than concern. It demands participation. We need you.”
“We need you to stay informed. To protect the vote, to defend one another, to support the institutions that defend us,” Ballard said. “This is not about politics. It's about justice. The fight is not coming. It is here, and it belongs to all of us. NAACP and ACLU will continue to work together.”
Attacks on trans people
Mary Francis, event and program coordinator for Clock Inc. in Rock Island, noted last February, Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill that removed transgender individuals from state civil rights protections.
“Iowa is ranked number three nationally to have the most anti-trans bills,” she said. “They are really focusing on this 1% of our population right now. So us at our community center, we make sure we show up with gender-affirming care. We have access to free mental health services, a binder closet to show up for our community and our community shows up for us as well. This is not the first time we have fought this and this will not be the last. But what's great is we have always won this fight.”
The Trump Administration is trying to blackmail hospitals and other health-care facilities that offer gender-affirming care to anyone 18 and under, that they would lose Medicare and Medicaid funding, Francis said.
“How we can show up is we can show these people that we do not want this. This is not something you should be able to do,” she said. “And this is funding that everyone deserves because this now affects our elderly, this affects our disabled, this affects our low-income. It's what they're doing to just try to come for transgender, gender-affirming care under the age of 18.
“This care is already banned in 27 states. They are just trying to make it national right now,” Francis said. “The American Civil Liberties Union has already started lawsuits against it because this is what happens. This administration is the loudest, but we are louder.”
“I love how many of you are here. So this is how we keep showing up, showing up for our nonprofits, showing up at these events to show we don't want this,” she said. “This is not the first time we fought this fight, especially our LGBT community. That's why we are here. So please access us, please use us, please keep showing up and we're going to win this fight.”
Francis agreed it’s important to document and record federal actions, and that people should use their white privilege to their advantage.
Protecting senior citizens
Kay Pence, head of the QC chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans, currently fighting a Trump Administration pilot program that uses AI to review pre-authorization for Medicare. They’re paid more for more denials of care, she said.
“These AI corporations will be paid a fee based on the number of medical procedures denied. The more efforts procedures averted, the higher the fees prior authorization review of Medicare Advantage plan has been severely criticized for causing delays and denials of necessary care for older Americans enrolled in these plans,” Pence said.
“Medicare Advantage plans offered by for-profit insurance companies have not saved taxpayers money and in fact are costing taxpayers more money and often delivering substandard care,” she said. “It's estimated in 2025, the costs are 20% higher for someone on Medicare Advantage to the taxpayers which translates to roughly $84 billion of extra federal spending. With Project 2025, the goal was to shift everybody from traditional Medicare to a Medicare Advantage plan.
“And so when you hear Congress talk about eliminating waste, fraud and abuse and then they know they're using it to justify why they can't extend the tax credits for the people with the Affordable Care act because they don't want to give money to the insurance companies,” Pence said.
ACLU fighting for all Americans
Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for ACLU Illinois, noted the national ACLU has sued every president, but has sued the Trump Administration 220 times. “We literally have someone who believes themselves to be an autocrat in the Oval Office, and it is time for us to fight back,” he said.
“The President believes that he can bend our Constitution and our governmental system to his will. And he is trying to do that at breakneck speed,” Yohnka said. “He seems to believe that he can rewrite laws and the Constitution just with the stroke of a pen.”
“On the very first day in office, the President signed an executive order which he proclaimed reversed the way in which the birthright citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment has been interpreted for more than 150 years in this country, because none of us could figure out what it meant until Donald Trump showed up,” he said. “The ACLU sued and next and in a couple weeks we will argue that case before the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Yohnka noted that Trump is pursuing anti-transgender policies, but the Illinois High School Association has a provision that allows trans students to get a waiver to participate in sports. Yohnka said just three students in the state sought that last year.
“That is .00009% of all the students who participate in sports in the state of Illinois,” he said. “The White House is spending time putting together events for that small of community so they can point at them and blame them for all of your problems. They are not and we should protect them, not call them out.”
“Donald Trump and his acolytes have unleashed a militarized, reckless, violent, untrained, unprofessional force across our country to terrorize people, not simply because they are undocumented, but to do it in cities that disagree with his policies and challenge his power,” Yohnka said of ICE actions.
“We witnessed that firsthand in Chicago, and the people of Minneapolis are seeing it, including, as was mentioned, the death of an American citizen at the hands of an ICE agent who is literally holding a phone in the other hand,” he said. “This is something that would never be allowed by any of our local police officials. And yet ICE is doing this kind of activity in our communities.”
“There's a common thread that holds this all together from this administration. They believe that if they continue to act in this way, they are acting with power, and that power will demonstrate to everybody that, first of all, they are right,” Yohnka said. “And secondly, that they cannot be confronted and challenged. First of all, I think their power is really just a sign of weakness. Here's how I know. Because if you're really powerful, you don't have to lie. You don't have to lie. And within three minutes of a shooting in Minneapolis, claim that a woman literally said to the officer, ‘I'm not mad at you,’ that that person is somehow a domestic “terrorist.”
But the courts aren't going to save us. And reluctantly, I suggest Congress isn't going to save us,” he said. “And no great speech by any great leader, even me, is going to save us. The only thing that is going to preserve our democracy and give us a chance to make it better, the only thing is, the greatest words in the history of the English language.”
Those are “We the People,” by working together as a unified nation, Yohnka said.
As simple as talking with friends
“Whether that's working with people like your state representative to build out the protections we put in place in Illinois; whether it's reaching out to your member of Congress, for example, and demanding that they do no more funding for DHS in any way, nor increase any funding for that agency until ICE and CBP are reformed, that's we the people,” he said. “It is something as simple as talking to your friends and neighbors and sharing with them just what you're concerned about and the reasons that matter, that is we the people working together.”
“So I urge you to find whatever your role is in that effort and pursue it to every degree that you can until we drive this administration from office,” Yohnka added.
He pointed out Trump’s hypocrisy in the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who was brought to New York to face criminal charges.
“It seems curious to me that somehow the president of Venezuela can be captured in a military raid and brought to the United States to face justice…So the president of a foreign country can be tried in the United States and held accountable, but the president of our country somehow has an inventive immunity that the Supreme Court of the United States made up,” Yohnka said.
The first thing the next Congress and administration should do is end presidential immunity from prosecution while in office, he said.
“A significant part of the reason that this president feels so uninhibited is because John Roberts and four other people invented a right that never existed in our Constitution,” Yohnka said of the Supreme Court.
“Set more hard guardrails, lawful guardrails, and have some sort of truth and reconciliation where we actually create a factual history of what this period was,” he said. “So we can never forget and have it re-erased and rewritten as we've seen just within the last week in this country.”
On Friday, Jan. 16 at 5 p.m., One Human Family QCA will host a protest, “Injust-ICE,” at Metropolitan Community Church of the Quad Cities, 2930 W Locust, Davenport.
“There is so much hate and so much willingness to use violence as a first resort, that murders like this one are more and more likely to happen,” Rev. Rich Hendricks, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of the Quad Cities, said recently. “Even after the murder (of Renee Good), ICE agents pointed a gun at a protestor, my MCC colleague, Rev. Kenny Callaghan, as they as cuffed him and sought to terrorize him, throwing him in the back of an ICE van.”
“What is even more troubling to me is the blatant racism expressed by ICE agents in their actions and language,” Hendricks said.
On Saturday, Jan. 24, at 10 a.m., there will be free training offered (including from Iowa State Rep. Ken Croken and a Chicago City Council member) on what to do when ICE finds you, held at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, 417 N. Main St., Davenport.
For more information on area activities presented by QC progressive groups, visit www.qcaction.com.
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