GOV. LARRY HOGAN HAS VETOED THE $15 MINIMUM WAGE BILL that was passed last week by the Maryland General Assembly. Maryland’s hard-working families need this bill. Contact your legislators before the vote to override, which will probably be tomorrow. Let them know that this hard-fought bill deserves passage this year.

And sign our petition to make sure the public as well as legislators understand the importance of this new timetable for making sure the state minimum wage keeps up with the cost of leaving – instead of leaving the state’s working people behind, as the governor’s veto would do.

Grassroots action works. It takes perseverance and patience, but it works.

 Activists and allies in the Port Towns surrounding historic Bladensburg, on the Anacostia in Prince George’s County, have fought for almost two years against a proposed “concrete batching plant” endangering residential areas and community health. They won. See how they did it here.

Progressive leadership and a commitment to the public good works everywhere in Maryland -- from urban centers to the Lower Shore. Progressive Maryland activist Jared Schablein, in an op-ed in Maryland Matters, shows how this has happened in Salisbury.

Sine die approaches but progressive power-building never sleeps. Check out our online resources and lots right here on the Weekly Memo, including pushback against 5G radiation in our communities and the growth of progressive sentiment on the Lower Shore.

First, check out our Late Breaking IN-vite to the People's Wave.

The Maryland General Assembly has passed a bill that puts Maryland on a path to reach a $15-per-hour minimum wage by 2025.

Progressive forces didn’t get everything we wanted in this bill, as Larry Stafford, Progressive Maryland’s executive director, points out. But the state's progressive forces got major traction this year, always building power.

Bills in the Maryland Legislature in this session would make important changes in the ways our schools are managed from the classroom to the principal’s office.

Under the general heading of “Restorative Justice” these bills would help improve classroom climates to benefit teachers and students – and, ultimately, parents and families. Using these strategies, students are more likely to stay in school, graduate, and stay out of the criminal justice system.

The Senate has the already-damaged bill to raise the Maryland minimum wage to $15 an hour on its plate and is planning to vote on extending the timeline for “small businesses” to 2028, slowing the rate of increase. They think they are protecting Maryland’s small employers. However…

A longer timeline is Bad for Business. Find out why here>

TODAY IS Crossover Monday, March 18. The push is on today in Annapolis to move bills out of committee or to pass bills on the floor to improve their chances of getting considered by the full Assembly this year.

A top issue, the Fight for $15 as a minimum wage statewide, is still in play and the damage done by the two "money committees" to the bill must be reconciled before passage. You can be heard; see our Memo for details.

The scam run to get undistinguished rich kids into elite colleges is not unique -- it's the logical criminal outcome of the unjust system that labor leader Leo Gerard outlines here. In this Progressive Breakfast analysis we see that working people are hemmed in on many fronts by the economic advantages enjoyed by the wealthy that keep the rich -- and their children -- on top of the economic ladder. That system must be unwound.

Danielle Gaines of Maryland Matters recounts the rocky path toward passage of the $15 minimum wage in the Senate, as many try to put their regional or ideological stamp on the already tattered bill. The House, passing it last week, disgracefully went along with the business-sodden Economic Matters Committee’s cuts – no indexing for inflation, no tipped workers, no agricultural workers, pitfalls for young workers and a two-year delay in reaching the full $15. The Senate made the rubble bounce by exempting businesses with 15 or fewer employees. The WaPo seems to think even this badly damaged bill is a “major victory for liberal Democrats,” overlooking the victories of neoliberal Democrats in gutting the bill. But as Gaines’s play-by-play shows, many senators still had to get into the act…