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.

Medicare for All remains atop this week’s agenda as we tackle the deep need in Maryland and around the nation for comprehensive, universal health care – and the three Maryland members of Congress who have not joined the 118 Democratic co-sponsors of HR 1384, Reps. Steny Hoyer, Dutch Ruppersburger and David Trone. We challenged Rep. Hoyer to sign on at our Town Hall this past Saturday, as you see below (and you can watch it preserved on livestream).

On Saturday, August 17^th, 2 - 4pm, The Maryland Progressive Healthcare Coalition will convene a Medicare For All Town Hall in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s Congressional District 5. Doctors and policy experts will highlight the pitfalls of the current system and explain Medicare For All. As a coalition of healthcare activists and progressive organizations throughout the state, our goals are to educate the public and challenge the Congressman to stand with his constituents, not with the healthcare industry.

 Medicare for All tops this week’s agenda as we tackle the deep need in Maryland and around the nation for comprehensive, universal health care – and the three Maryland members of Congress who have not joined the 118 Democratic co-sponsors of HR 1384, Reps. Steny Hoyer, Dutch Ruppersburger and David Trone. Hoyer faces questions about it in his own district this Saturday, Aug. 17 -- see more below.

Join Progressive Maryland and 2018 Gubernatorial nominee Ben Jealous on Saturday, September 7 in Prince George's for an organizing conversation on the issues in our criminal justice system, mass incarceration and the current realities of structural racism in our legal system.

Progressive Maryland campaigned hard for new Del. Stephanie Smith of Baltimore City, and here she talks with Progressive Breakfast about the importance of co-governing -- the work that community activists must do between elections and between legislative sessions to build the kind of power that will pay off in better, more responsive public officials and better community co-governing with them, day by day.

This Maryland Matters opinion article by a self-described “independent policy wonk,” John Moser, argues that using a different system of voting than the winner-take-all arrangement we use now to elect legislators in Maryland would be more democratic than ending the multi-member district for delegates, as proposed earlier including on this PM BlogSpace.