TODAY, MONDAY, MAY 7, IS CHARGED WITH EVENTS. So the Weekly Memo is going out early to alert our activists.

MORE about the upcoming week will be added to this, our online Memo, as it comes in. Click here to catch up throughout the week.

WHAT’S HOT TODAY (Monday, May 7)

Prince George’s District Council – concrete batch plant in Bladensburg may get a decision today (1:30 at CAB, Upper Marlboro)

And in Capitol Heights, a State’s Attorney candidate forum at 6 and a debt free college event at 7 with Ben Jealous and Sen. Bernie Sanders at 7 – both at Oakcrest Community Center.

Teachers across the country have shown the rest of us how to fight back. Now the organized, moneybags Right Wing is ginning up a propaganda mill to slander the teachers. Jeff Bryant reports on Progressive Breakfast that “teachers are not making their pay the defining issue of their uprising. Contrary to what [right-wing propaganda] asserts, they’re focused on improving the lives of their students.” Progressive Breakfast is the blog from People’s Action, national affiliate of Progressive Maryland.

A bill that would have provided safe consumption sites for drug use in Maryland -- proven to save lives and reduce opioid addiction mortality in other counties -- failed (again) in the General Assembly this year. “We know that Maryland will eventually see the demonstrated benefit of safer drug consumption spaces and pass the legislation necessary to establish them here,” says Harriet Smith, the Baltimore Harm Reducation Coalition’s executive director. “We need brave policy makers who are willing to set aside their fears of reelection and do what’s right for Maryland.”

May Day tomorrow -- less than two months till the June 26 Primary Election in Maryland – a crucial time for mobilizing on behalf of not only progressive candidates but on the progressive issue stances to which we will hold them when they are elected. Make sure your neighbors and your community are energized on both counts by joining our canvasses across the state. Become part of our Movement Politics team.

Plus recent blog posts and info from around our state chapters and our allies.

Rather than have a fair, honest primary election, the DCCC "selected" the Colorado candidate ahead of time and have been shuttling money and resources to a corporate lawyer they favor. Hoyer tried to get the progressive candidate to withdraw. This is back-door, anti-democratic politics, says Drew Langlois.

Polls show that education is a top state and local concern of voters as the 2018 elections approach, and the state has a process in place to develop the most comprehensive educational reform package since the Thornton Commission of 1999-2002. The Kirwan Commission will be even more closely watched as it gets closer to polishing the package – and discussing how much it should cost.

Few reporters have paid more sustained attention to the evolving Kirwan report than veteran Len Lazarick of the online Maryland Reporter. Here he refreshes our memory on the group’s process as it resumes work after the General Assembly session. 

Voting in the June 26 Primary Election as part of your life strategy

We’re going to work through the question of voting and whether it makes a difference in a series of blog posts over the next several weeks, as we get to, and then inside, about 60 days until the June 26 primary election.

Coming up on sixty days till the June 26 Primary Election in Maryland – a crucial time for mobilizing on behalf of not only progressive candidates but on the progressive issue stances to which we will hold them when they are elected. Make sure your neighbors and your community are energized on both counts by joining our canvasses across the state. Become part of our Movement Politics team.

Historical patterns of racially tinged investment in Baltimore City over the years have devastating consequences of inequality. Investment “maps” of Baltimore City …all showed a similar pattern. The neighborhoods of the “White L,” running up the Charles street corridor and around the harbor, consistently receive more [public and private] investment, while the “Black Butterfly” of Baltimore suffers from disinvestment, as Samuel Manas reports in Maryland Matters.

Activists came away from the 2018 session seeing a rollback in enthusiasm and willingness to consolidate gains after an encouraging group of wins in the 2017 session. Pushback from industry, developers and business interests doomed many bills. One bright spot: fully funded state effort for Bay cleanup.