Progressive leadership on Lower Shore has shown what works
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.
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Read moreProgressive Maryland Weekly Memo for Monday, March 25, 2019
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.
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Read more$15 minimum wage bill on the way to Hogan's desk
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.
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Read more"Restorative justice" strategies keep kids on track to graduate
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.
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Read moreWe need $15 by 2025!
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>
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Read moreProgressive Maryland Weekly Memo for Monday, March 18, 2019
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.
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Read moreCollege scam is not an oddity -- it's woven into an unjust economic system
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.
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Read moreFF$15 bill damaged but still progressing in Assembly
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…
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Read moreThe Reality of Working for Tips
Among the Maryland workers most injured by the gutted $15 minimum wage bill, tipped workers stand out. At $3.63 an hour plus tips, a level unchanged for decades and a legacy of Jim Crow racist oppression, workers in the food service industry remain most under the thumb of unscrupulous business interests, as Drew Koshgarian shows in a Maryland Matters commentary,
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Read moreProgressive Maryland Weekly Memo for Monday, March 11, 2019
A FLURRY OF INFO -- tonight's March for Schools; Larry S pokes the restaurant bosses; latest on the Fight for $15 and other legislation in the State House sausage factory; Movement Politics training this weekend, and more -- all in the Weekly Memo, your one-stop guide for progressive activism in Maryland.
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