Early voting begins next week and tomorrow is the deadline for requesting an absentee -- "mail-in" ballot. Read all about it in the Memo, plus updates on how the Hogan administration is doing in the struggle to cope with COVID (spoiler alert: not good), how to contest the corporate darling Judge Amy, and working to support progresssive down-ballot candidates in jurisdictions all over the state. Check it out in this week's Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo.

As the election draws closer we continue to remind you of the little things it takes to make sure your vote counts. If you are tired of seeing them here, that's understandable. The way to conveniently ignore that information is to vote early, vote absentee, get it done.

Meanwhile the Weekly Memo is otherwise populated with insights to keep you and your community chugging ahead to make change. Make it happen.

Marylanders shocked by Florida's vindictive requirement that ex-felons must pay off all fees before they can vote should know that equally onerous requirements hobble returning citizens iin Maryland as well. In Florida, GOP legislators connived to suppress votes after the state's voters, in a referendum, determined that ex-felons should enjoy the right to vote. In Maryland, not so dramatically, the impediiments to resumng life in society pile up with equal, remorseless tenacity. Maryland Matters's Hannah Gaskill recounts testimony from the Job Opportunities Task Force, our progressive ally organization focusing on the ways poverty is criminalized and perpetuated in our state.

Time is running out for the Maryland General Assembly to do what its clear duties require and meet in Special Session to finish their work from the cut-off session in spring 2020 and remedy the shortfalls of the Hogan administration in keeping the state's people and economy protected from the effects of COVID-19.

Here, a participant in the recent People's Special Session recounts how the leaders of the Assembly tried -- and failed -- to pre-empt or muffle these demands by crashing the People's Special Session.

As Rashad Lloyd says here in a Maryland Matters commentary, "The people won’t forget the harm the General Assembly has caused by failing to take action. We certainly won’t forget this moment when they’re up for reelection in 2022."

See more of our PM BlogSpace coverage on the need for a special session here and here.

Lots of election info here, see below. And watch for our most recent endorsements, which will be announced all this week. Watch and follow our Facebook & Twitter pages for updates on our candidate endorsements!

Plus statewide alerts, our chapter news and events, allies events and our reent blog posts. Read the Memo!

Getting some action out of our General Assembly lawmakers is still on the table; find out how. Meanwhile, the raw deal they have left us to handle on our own requires solidarity and knowledge. You provide the community solidarity, we've got chapter and verse on how to vote, how to stay safe and fight back in pandemic time, where we fit in the national activism scene and more -- all in the Weekly Memo. Read on.

Progressive Marylanders in Montgomery County have been fighting, with allies, to defeat the right-wing stealth measure Question B that would cripple public services in the county with a tax-break windfall for the rich. Adam Pagnucco in the Seventh State blog updates that fight as a new umbrella coalition is launched by a citizen group with many of those allies.

In the Memo this week: Action urging a special session of the Maryland General Assembly; COVID-19 keeps hitting hard in Maryland; beginning-to-end explainer on how we’ll vote in our state (hint: not all on Nov. 3); notes on the crisis outside our state -- in Congress and the White House; progressive events in MoCo, PGC and AA counties plus our other chapter news; events from our allies and our recent blog posts. Your go-to weekly source for progressive thought and action in the Free State.

Despite the surprise appearances of House and Senate leaders at a rally to show how a special Assembly session could work, their disappointing refusal to call such a session brought progressives' vow to keep the pressure on. Read about what happened Wednesday and what happens next.

Maryland's transit systems -- buses, MARC and more -- are about to take a $150 million hit. It is unsurprising but outrageous that "these cuts... would be devastating to many Marylanders that live in low-income  communities, communities of color, and people with disabilities." Sixty-four Maryland activist groups across the political, community and environmental spectrum wrote this letter demanding the cuts be reversed and the Transportation Trust Fund tapped to ease the plight of essential workers, who largely come from the most impacted communities.