This past Tuesday evening Progressive Maryland hosted our virtual Member Welcome meeting to build community and learn about what it means to be a member of Progressive Maryland. We were joined by both the longtime and relatively new members who make our organization what it is.

We want to build momentum from this meeting and head into 2021 ready to increase our grassroots power across the state, so this post is to carry that meeting’s messages to those who were unable to participate. Here's how we work together to make change in Maryland.

/PM BlogSpace Report/ This past Tuesday evening Progressive Maryland hosted our virtual Member Welcome meeting to build community and learn about what it means to be a member of Progressive Maryland. We were joined by both the longtime and relatively new members who make our organization what it is.

We want to build momentum from this meeting and head into 2021 ready to increase our grassroots power across the state, so this post is to carry that meeting’s messages to those who were unable to participate.

Progressive Maryland aims above all to show how much more people in solidarity with one another can advance their own self-interests than even the most effective activists can by themselves. We aim for members, and for working families across the state, to gain power in our now-unequal society and economy—to make change.

In order to make change in our society we need political power. Our two sources of power are organized people and organized money! We are an organized group of people from across the state focused on building the power necessary to transform Maryland into the most progressive state in the country. Our goals, some partly realized, are: Build local groups in every part of the state; Build the public support and pressure necessary to pass reforms and structural changes; Elect people to govern from our movement

What is our vision for the state we live in?

We demand a Maryland in which the state government and its economy work for all working class Marylanders, especially communities of color. We see a future in which the justice system can truly live up to that name by acting as a system for repairing harms as well as restoring both victims and offenders. In our Maryland healthcare will be a free and available right for every human being that must face the very human reality of sickness and disease. We envision a Maryland where poverty is known only in history books and paintings hung on museum walls, where we have transitioned from an economic and energy system that threatens our planet to one that is driven by renewable energy and that creates thousands of high wage jobs in this industry. We know that we can build a world where every human being will be able to live a worthy and dignified life as we make hatred and discrimination legally and socially impermissible.

Those goals mean that we, at Progressive Maryland, manage both a comprehensive program for social change in Maryland – one that recognizes the way injustice and inequality are a jigsaw puzzle of laws and customs imposed by a ruling economic class – and a set of specific issue strategies to pick apart those conjoined barriers one by one. We currently have these issue task forces because our activists choose to tackle the issues that way: Healthcare (at the federal, state and local levels), Criminal Justice, Harm Reduction and Drug Policy, Reentry Working Group, Environmental Justice and Fair Elections. As issues arise, we initiate other member driven task forces/work.

Progressive Maryland drives both political campaigns--and candidate development--and the development of activist folks across the state with frequent availabilities of trainings. We work with our affiliate groups People’s Action, the Working Families Party, and union partners to get the best practices for training and activism from many of our state progressive groups around the US.ss

Pushing on the political movements of the day is part of our work, and we’ll get ready for a likely very unusual 2021 session of the General Assembly with a statewide general meeting January 9. Please join us for that. But we’ll also plan our power-building strategy in parallel with the assembly session, a process that will put us in better position to affect the 2022 election cycle, when delegates and senators will face election.

As we gear up for the next round and hope to increasingly operate  in a post-pandemic environment, join us for this change-making journey. Let us know what you want to do as a Progressive Maryland member on this MEMBER INTEREST FORM and RSVP for our January 9 general meeting HERE

No matter how strongly you feel about injustice in our state, working together in solidarity is the way to multiply your own efforts and see change happen. Progressive Maryland can be where that happens. With you, for you.

Slides from last Tuesday’s Member Welcome meeting are here.