The Memo will be posted here Monday after the email version is sent

In a final veto dump on the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend, Gov. Hogan erases laws for better transit, more transparent and easy voting and protecting tenants against eviction. What's not to like? We have the reaction to that and more in state action, plus the prospect of a week when both US House and Senate will be in at work and dodging questions about, you know, guns and dead elementary school students. Read on ...

PM Weekly Memo for May 23 2022: Stand Strong For A Strong Democracy, Rep. Raskin’s message to us.

We can’t think of a better way to have marked the one year Anniversary of our New Era PAC and election program than by being with more than 300 Marylanders (on zoom and Facebook in real time and viewing later) with more than a dozen impressive progressive PM backed candidates and our own remarkable Champion for Democracy Rep. Jamie Raskin! 

He told us he was thrilled to be working with Progressive Maryland and all of us. We were thrilled to be with him and to hear his inspiring message last Saturday. He expressed what we’ve all been thinking  for some time,“we’re in the fight of our lives” given the attacks from the extreme right or as Congressman Raskin characterized them the “rule or ruin faction.”  He detailed the violent crimes and the harm that was done on January 6, 2021 by the insurrectionists and their enablers in the GOP. He described how razor close our country came to experiencing a coup. 

We prevailed at the end of that terrible and traumatic day but the assaults on our democracy and freedoms continue. Even in a blue state like ours there are Trump loving Republicans on the ballot this year. And an anti-choice group is organizing to put a  statewide ballot measure on the November ballot to  repeal the abortion legislation passed this year (and upheld after Hogan’s veto) in the Maryland General Assembly. We can’t take the outcome of the 2022 elections for granted so here at Progressive Maryland we’ll be very focused for the next two months on organizing extensive voter outreach, voter education and voter turnout efforts for the Primary contests. We’ll be involved in the general election, too! Voter participation is absolutely essential to keeping and growing our democracy. A strong democracy is what will help us, in the words of Rep. Raskin, “advance the interests, needs and agenda of the people.”

Thank you Rep. Raskin for sharing your time and remarks with us last Saturday. Thanks to PM Board Member Cat Paul who introduced the Congressman, to our affiliates and donors who supported the event, and to everyone who tuned in. It was great to see  the PM slate of candidates who joined us from the field where they were door knocking, attending events, and campaigning with volunteers! 

Now it’s time for all of us to jump in!  Please help  power our election work this spring and summer! We have two months left to shape the outcome of a number of County and state legislative elections. Sign up to knock on doors, drop campaign literature,  make calls to voters or help us recruit more volunteers. We have shifts available most weeknights and on weekends. See the memo for ways to get involved or reach out to one of our organizers. 

Look here for fun stuff on national elections and the Trump Effect as well as less fun stuff about the rise in COVID infections in Maryland, and what some school districts are doing to respond.

Let’s band together to turn back the attacks on our fundamental rights and the attempts to roll back advances we’ve made when it comes to racial and environmental justice,  progressive economic policies, and the need for a just and equitable response to the pandemic and healthcare disparities. We know it’s no small feat to take on growing corporate power on one hand and the rise of a white nationalist movement on the other. But it can and must be done!

By banding together, in communities across the country, we stand a good chance of stopping what those forces are doing. We know that the majority of Marylanders support our issues. We just need to build more grassroots progressive power in order to prevail. It’s not easy but it is fairly simple in many ways: each of us can organize or donate to support organizing;  we can host a meeting or go to a meeting, we can vote and we can help voter turnout efforts for progressive candidates. We can write a letter to the editor,  march,  demonstrate, show up, and express our solidarity with one another. It’s a critical time to work together on many fronts, including the ongoing work to push for support for families and individuals who are dealing with the impact of  COVID and the overdose crisis.

Find the tools you -- we -- need to make change and advance our communities here, in the Weekly Memo. Read on -- and take action.

Replace who? Working people of all identities have lots to stick together for -- to fight off the predatory corporations and banks and the right-wing politicians and media crazies they have bought and continue to support. But too many desperate people are vulnerable to conspiracy theories about “replacement” that goad them to find folks of a different hue, origin or identity to blame.  And so, we have Buffalo, which will burn in our hearts. Until the next heartbreak.

 We should be in solidarity against those big-money pundits, their corporate enablers and the gun culture that they always dangle in front of the desperate and vengeful. But the lure of rapidfire revenge steadily peels off the desperate and easily-duped and brings camo-clad tragedy, where real harm reduction (mental health aware-care, not militarized cops and easy gun purchases) could have brought a different outcome.

Cities like Buffalo struggle with gun violence, even of the sort that drives many miles to find black people in groups large enough to shoot. But they are near-powerless to change it locally.  So we’ll start with the federal side this week, where gun control can be expected to bubble up again in Congress. So News U Can Use starts in DC this week.

It’s been an unbearable past week as we started the month of May: hearing as we did about what’s spelled out in the draft brief by Justice Alito on abortion rights, seeing Governor Hogan refuse to release state approved funds for the abortion care clinical training program, and learning in the past few days that we’ve reached the tragic milestone of a million COVID related deaths in this country and fifteen million deaths in the world. It’s hard to take in and absorb such devastating news. We hope you got to take a little break from it all yesterday on Mother’s Day as we paused to celebrate our family members and friends who are moms or all those we know who help the kids in their lives. 

Now it’s time to raise some hell! Time to lift our voices, to organize, raise money, get in the  streets, help elect candidates who pledge unwavering support to abortion rights, women’s health and healthcare for all. Please join us!

In news you can use this week: Hogan is backfilling his GOP credentials for a prez run by withholding appropriated funds to train workers for reproductive health clinics. Also: One commentator argues that slow-thinking Democrats have allowed the threat to democracy to deepen. Long Covid may afflict up to 300,000 Marylanders. Prince George's plays it straight down the fairway, despite dodgy resignation ploy. Plus what's going on (or not) in DC in a big week for health care.

To our members and supporters in Maryland:

Our New Era PAC is an effort to turn the tide in Maryland politics away from corporate-funded officials who carry water for big business, not working people and families.

Please join us May 21 to celebrate the anniversary of this ground-breaking effort and ensure that the people's voice is heard loud and clear.

Progressive Maryland stands with communities across the nation fighting for abortion justice, and is in support of the statement from People's Action executive director Sulma Arias in response to reports that the Supreme Court of the United States intends to overturn Roe v. Wade.