Activist Tom Higgins to be featured speaker at Quad City Progressive Action forum

Tom Higgins knows how to get things started, and he will offer his expertise and views to grassroots organizers on Saturday.

Mr. Higgins' expertise has taken him to the Iowa state house, the White House and a new bio-technology company. He will be the keynote speaker Saturday at a community forum and summit for Quad City Progressive Action for the Common Good at Augustana College.

Mr. Higgins organized Vietnam War protests, founded a drug-abuse treatment program in the Quad-Cities in the early 1970s, and was elected to three terms in the Iowa General Assembly.

President Jimmy Carter selected him to be a senior executive at the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare. He also was deputy secretary of the Cabinet.

In the early 1980s, he headed west, where he was head of Health and Human Services Department in Portland, Ore. He has since worked in health care since the mid-1980s.

He calls the Quad-Cities one of the most fertile areas he has ever seen for grassroots organization.

"This is a broad-based group of citizens trying to organize around issues they have in common," he said of Progressive Action for the Common Good. "I think my happy task is to talk about the principles that under gird some of this."

The fairly new progressive coalition tackles issues ranging from Social Security to health care, to education to the Davenport riverfront. It requires appreciating several types of thinking, he said.

"I think people have to be motivated and inspired by ideas," he said. "Like in international affairs, you have to be willing to work in alliances with a conviction to get things accomplished."

Saturday's forum also will feature workshops on a number of social issues, including health care, poverty and housing, women's issues, and reclaiming faith and values from a progressive point of view.

Registration for the forum and summit starts at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Wallenburg Auditorium at Austustana College. Speakers start at 9 a.m. and run until noon.