Building power happens everywhere and all the time. As folks living in this US, we have to fight to see people-killing armaments kept in military hands and lethal weapons in general made harder to get unless they come with accountability and responsibility pre-required. The tragedies in El Paso and Dayton are only the most recent events to underscore this.

We are, in Maryland, lucky that we have space to fight for these things and to build power with different forms of risk – but we have to press our case on progressive change across the board as firmly as possible, at the polls and in the streets, because the business-as-usual establishment won’t respond to politics as usual.

While the deliberate noise from the White House fills the infospace, the threat to immigrant families in the US remains despite the few actual results from Trump’s claimed sweep. Here is a personal account of why “Abolish ICE” is hardly a radical demand, given the abuses itemized by Cummings and many others.

Tomorrow’s Prince George’s Civic Academy tackles the challenge and promise of community schools in the Kirwan proposals. Keeping those proposals fresh and defending them against the business-as-usual impulses of political leadership has to happen at the community level.

Building power with Medicare for All (hellooo, Steny!) and strengthening our schools in the Kirwan framework of community schools. Read all about it, and more, in the Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo.

Saturday, August 17 Medicare For All Town Hall -- An Open Invitation For Majority Leader Steny Hoyer To Discuss The Healthcare Of His Constituents Within District 5, As Well As That Of Every American!
2 PM – 4 PM Mt. Ennon Baptist Church 9832 Piscataway Rd., Clinton, MD

TOMORROW an important congressional hearing: The Patient Perspective: The Devastating Impacts of Skyrocketing Drug Prices on American Families Friday, July 26, 2019 - 9:30 AM 2154 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 At 9 PM a news conference from the activist coalition includes Carrie McBane (see her story below).

Our Dist. 7 (MD) Congressman Elijah Cummings’s oversight committee takes on the cost of essential medicines that is crushing working families in the US.

Maryland's multi-member state legislative districts -- being discarded by other states -- serve to protect incumbents and keep the grip of neoliberal Democrats on the General Assembly, where big money and big business rule the roost and working families get the leavings. Our activist ally Rich Elliott outlines why single-member districts will bring more democracy to Maryland in this guest commentary from Maryland Matters.

We progressives have a more nuanced agenda today than the July 14 storming of the Bastille in Paris 1789 but the principles are the same: knocking down the barriers to the full lives all of us deserve. Join us in our issue campaigns, where we build power and hold our local officials accountable -- or replace them.

We have our Fourth of July to mark our 1776 Declaration of Independence and the French, just thirteen years and ten days later, had theirs. Bastille Day has come and gone, the day (July 14) that marks the beginning of the French Revolution of 1789 and the emergence of working people as a force in history, no turning back. That was the kick-start; join us in the continuing work of making change and building power.

Why are Maryland teachers fighting for the improvements promised in the Kirwan Commission proposals (and in the unkept promises of the Thornton plan before that)? Maybe because “ A 2018 study on ‘Understanding Teacher Shortages’ … found that Maryland teachers ranked 48^th out of 50 states for teacher working conditions, … and … scored especially low on classroom autonomy and administrative support.” It starts in the classroom, the reason Progressive Maryland is engaged with teachers in the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools (AROS) in Prince George’s, Montgomery and other counties around the state. This Maryland Matters article by Lisa Nevans Locke outlines the path to activism for many of the state’s teachers.