Welcome to 2020, to the first Memo of 2020, and whoa! here comes the 2020 Maryland General Assembly session barreling around the bend with an ETA of this Wednesday (January 8). Learn how to keep up with events and navigate the three-month session with Progressive Maryland's help (and that of several nonprofit news sources you'll want to know about).

Conversations are taking place around Maryland on diversity, equity and inclusion practices (DEI). The writer, a Baltimore attorney, provides context about where various parties are starting from, historically, in terms of power and emphasizes “Those most impacted must also be the ones most empowered in the conversation to shape the discourse and the decision made.” This appeared Dec. 20 in Maryland Matters.

As opposition rises to Gov. Hogan's high-dollar toll road plans fueled and controlled by private-sector money, lawmakers tout plans to trim or stop the project in the upcoming 2020 Assembly session.

Many are calling for more mass transit and fewer cars on the road -- not new lanes on the Interstates. Bruce DePuyt of Maryland Matters covers a rally against the road-widening project Monday in Silver Spring.

It's a wind-down and reflective time of year. Not much going on. Except, well, impeachment, trial and removal from office. But we know you were already paying attention...

Use Facebook? Yup, we do too. It's a natural monopoly and a public utility, privately controlled by a young(ish) know-it-all and claimed idealist who looks more and more like a typical profits-first corporate greedhead.

As progressive radio host Thom Hartmann outlines here, it's probably time to take this public utility into public ownership or control.

The Trump Agriculture Department is rolling out a trifecta of badness that could “take food off the table of struggling families” in Maryland and nationwide, as StatesNewsroom’s Robin Bravender reports.

This week: links to our recent blogs – on business leaders seeing their self-interest in full funding of the Kirwan school improvement program, how militarism roadblocks health care improvement, and a roundup of our coverage on the funding of the Kirwan school improvement plan, a battle coming up in the General Assembly next month. Plus more battles on criminal justice reform and Medicare for All, news and events from PM’s chapters, and events from our progressive allies.

Despite Gov. Hogan's alarmism about taxes, some business leaders have taken a look at the costs and benefits of the Kirwan Commission school improvement plan and see a win-win in pushing it all the way, no half measures. A business-commissioned report has the details, as Maryland Matters recounts here.

How do we afford Medicare for All? We have to buckle up and recognize that war profiteers endanger our safety AND cost the US taxpayer massive amounts that can be redirected to human needs, including the one that most voters rank first -- fixing the broken health care system.

Prince George's County, with lack of police conduct accountability and near-nonexistent assistance for returning citizens, is in serious need of reform on those and other fronts.