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.

STATEWIDE ACTION

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.

Here’s how our executive director, Larry Stafford Jr., puts it:

“You love going to see your doctor, dentist, and optometrist on a regular basis because you deeply value your life and your health.  All your family members are able to take care of their health care needs consistently, and are never stressed over any out-of-pocket fees. 

“This is our vision and we invite you to be a part of the movement to make it a reality for all of us, and not just for the wealthy few.  Join the fight for Medicare For All!  Learn about how YOU can be an important part of the exciting momentum building RIGHT HERE IN OUR STATE to advance our human right to healthcare.”

 Onward,
Larry Stafford, Jr.
Executive Director, Progressive Maryland 

Saturday, August 17 M4A comes to Prince George’s with a 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! It’s at 2 PM – 4 PM at Mt. Ennon Baptist Church 9832 Piscataway Rd., Clinton, MD (Prince George’s, south county) in coalition led by the Maryland Progressive Health Care Coalition

Medicare just turned 54 years old so Join other progressive activists and call to request a hearing on HR 1384

Call the House Committee on Oversight and Reform (chairman is Rep.
Elijah Cummings, Maryland 7^th Dist.) Committee: 202-225-5051

And House Committee on Energy and Commerce: 202 225-2927

In late July Rep. Cummings’s oversight committee held a hearing on the impact of exploitative drug prices on patients – a huge factor in the outrageous cost of US health care in the era of wild-west Wall Street unregulated health care. Read the excellent testimony of MoCo resident David Mitchell, who also directs a nonprofit advocacy group for lower drug prices, HERE.

PROGRESSIVE MARYLAND DAY IN, DAY OUT

Our ideals are broadly and concretely represented by the campaigns we wage. 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. We are formulating our part in campaigns for Medicare for All (see above) and for education reform in the path being laid out by the Kirwan Commission; Progressive Montgomery recently kicked off its participation in the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools (AROS), a statewide initiative with county-level focus. Progressive Prince George’s has been working in parallel with PGC Educators Association on the AROS agenda and the important Kirwan focus on community schools – there are forty-plus schools in Prince George’s that will become Community Schools in the next two school years. Our next AROS coalition meeting will take place on Thursday, August 15th at 10 am at the PGCEA office located at 8008 Marlboro Pike, Forestville, MD 20747. 

 Learn more about the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools at https://reclaimourschoolspg.org

Progressive activism around the Free State, both Progressive Maryland’s action and those of our allied organizations and individuals, are in the Weekly Memo early every week (usually Monday unless a holiday intervenes). It’s a clearinghouse for folks who are building power together; and you can be in that environment of collective action. You can get the Weekly Memo by email; just sign up here.

OUR CHAPTERS AROUND THE STATE

Progressive Prince George’s

Our next AROS coalition meeting will take place on Thursday, August 15th at 10 am at the PGCEA office located at 8008 Marlboro Pike, Forestville, MD 20747. 

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 in coalition with the Maryland Progressive Health Care Coalition.

And on Saturday, Sept. 7 join Progressive Maryland and 2018 Gubernatorial nominee Ben Jealous 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.

PMD Montgomery  --  Progressive Montgomery Upcoming Events

A list of power-building events with Progressive Maryland in Montgomery County. Find one that works for you and join us!

Frederick County Progressives

Take Action Anne Arundel County

Progressive Howard County

Talbot Rising

Lower Shore Progressive Caucus

PMD Baltimore

EVENTS FROM OUR PROGRESSIVE ALLIES

Wednesday, August 14 Prison and Police Abolition – Socialist Night School comes to MoCo! 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center 4805 Edgemoor Ln # 100 · Bethesda, MD -- Wisconsin room on the 2nd floor. Join Montgomery County DSA and MDC DSA's Socialist Night School for a discussion on the politics of police and prison abolition situated in the context of our community and the larger region.

 SAT August 24 Prince George’s County’s Environmental Justice Plan discussed by Dr. Sacoby Wilson of the UMD Public Health department 3-5 PM at the Greenbelt Community Center, 15 Crescent Road, Greenbelt MD, room 202. Discussion includes the disparate impacts of environmental policies and decisions in the county and state.

SAT Sept. 14 – 350MoCo town hall on climate action, 11 AM to 1:30 PM, Silver Spring Civic Center https://www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-emergency-montgomery-countys-response-tickets-66570745893

Baltimore progressives, Check in on Max Obuszewski’s highly useful activist calendar and tip sheet at http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

 Reading the Progressive Maryland BlogSpace: our blogs for the previous week are shown below, but if you want a handy way to keep track – and never miss a blog post – you can sign up to get this Weekly Memo by email. Remember this is your blogspace and your participation is heartily invited. See something going on that you don’t like – or that you do like and hope to see more of? Send us your thoughts; submit to the moderator at [email protected]

We recently published these blog posts:

August 09, 2019 White supremacy's role in mass incarceration

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.

August 07, 2019 Del. Stephanie Smith: Your voice is valuable

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.

August 06, 2019 Maryland needs multimember PROPORTIONAL legislative districts, not single member

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.

August 05, 2019 Progressive Maryland Weekly Memo for Monday, August 5, 2019

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.

>>REMEMBER – these blog posts are frequently expressions of political opinion from our wide-ranging membership and circle of allies. They are not expressions of opinion by Progressive Maryland. Don’t be surprised if they sometimes vary in their political content. You might even disagree with them – a good reason to contribute a blog of your own. Send it to the moderator, Woody Woodruff, at [email protected].

>>Keeping up with the blogs is easier with the index. The blogs published in the PM BlogSpace from June 2015 through December 2016 are all available with descriptions and links here. You can follow blogs for 2017-18 starting from here