A national study showed that food deserts – Maryland has its share – are more often solved by co-op grocery outlets than by major chain grocery relocations, because community support is immediate and bottom-up. Food deserts – simply, communities where full-service groceries are too far away to be accessible – are leading indicators of many other community woes that can affect health, school success and neighborhood prosperity and mobility. As you can guess, the bottom line is inequality – of income and wealth.

This article is a little wonky but has a wealth of links to further information. Some boldface emphasis has been added by the PM BlogSpace editors.

It’s not out of character for a top member of the Hogan cartel (Budget Secretary David R. Brinkley) to snipe that the goal of school reform should “make wanting to be in the classroom something that people really want to do and don’t have to be bribed to do it.”

But it signals that the neolib establishment, including the tell-both-sides media, are already taking aim at the Kirwan Commission’s serious attempt to compensate teachers according to their value and provide a working classroom environment that helps kids succeed and keeps good teachers in the game longer than the three-year average. Progressives will have to fight from day one to reclaim our schools from the budget hawks.

A packed main room in the ATU union hall in District Heights saw many testify from personal experience Saturday about the need to reduce incarceration, end cash bail, stop enabling ICE, get a grip on police misconduct and many other reforms.

As this Maryland Matters report indicates, headliner Ben Jealous became the news simply because he came back in public view – even though he was fighting for the same social-justice principles he has espoused whether a candidate or not.

We told you. All those local governments, city and county councils, that were taking a leisurely summer off have started their new sessions. Big money doesn’t sleep during the summer, though, and there are early alarms out about what local governments may be doing with big money on the sidelines urging them on. As you see below, it’s never too early to push back – and sometimes it’s getting late

"Make no mistake, those profiting from the status quo have been pitting workers against each other for centuries, and it is a strategy designed to stop us from realizing our collective power," union leader Lisa Brown writes. "There is a good reason that those on top want to stop workers from building this collective power – because when we organize together, we win."

Our role in the progressive movement in Maryland is to build power for working families and workers in the workplace – hence the observances of Labor Day. Now that Labor Day has passed, most schools are back in session and … local governments are back in business and need to be checked by grassroots progressives. Read about a bill hearing in Anne Arundel County Council TONIGHT, below.

After a successful Town Hall in Prince George’s challenging Rep. Steny Hoyer to get on board with Medicare for All (HR 1384) or get out of the way, the Maryland Progressive Healthcare Coalition is revving up plans for Montgomery County and Baltimore action. In this account from Progressive Breakfast, Sameena Mustafa describes the kind of grassroots, engaged activism it takes to move the needle when the people’s needs are set aside for the profit of big corporations and the political system they have captured.

At Progressive Maryland (and with our progressive allies) we work for environmental justice, reform of the criminal justice/policing system  and cutting the school-to-prison pipeline, fair elections that loosen the grip of big money on our politics, and reform of the systems that keep our families trapped in poverty in the midst of wealth.

While activists fight around the country to lower the prices greedy Big Pharma charges for high-priced drugs, an innovative panel in Maryland to cut those excessive prices is stalled by the governor's refusal to release its appropriated funding.

Gov. Larry Hogan has waved the no-tax flag in front of his base at the Maryland Association of Counties beach blast in Ocean City. Assembly Democrats are digging in for a fight to improve the state's schools in spite of Hogan's resistance.