In the first two parts of analyst Sean Dobson’s account this week, we have seen the shape of the failed Trump coup in 2020 and the many flaws in our electoral system that could be far more exploited by an organized post-Trump white-supremacist GOP rightwing core at the next opportunity. What are the ways that pro-democracy forces could contest those strategies – not only the obvious ones that happen before, during and even after Election Day but the less-visible vulnerabilities that require legislative and executive action sooner rather than later?

In the third of four parts, Dobson -- Progressive Maryland's board chair and a progressive historian of modern politics -- the activist path is laid out that will be required to mount the best defense against a likely more coherent GOP takeover attempt. Keeping police and the military neutral and militias weak are critical tasks, as is reining in the unchecked power of social media and the Russian trolls who surf it.  As we find, “Nothing in the US Constitution or federal law specifically mandates that the President be popularly elected” and that leaves the field open for a lot of GOP mischief that must be fixed legislatively.

Here is how the fixes can be accomplished. This full essay can be read here.

photo:Saul Loeb/getty images

In the second of four parts, analyst Sean Dobson outlines the weaknesses in our ageing constitutional system that could be exploited by right-wing zealots, especially elected Republicans in federal and state office. Existing strategies of voter suppression and partisan gerrymandering (the GOP is much better at the latter) will combine with further attacks on the judicial system, top to bottom, as well as internal party attacks to remove GOP officials who remained loyal to the democratic electoral system, as Dobson, who is board chair of Progressive Maryland. Further, the already-flawed Electoral College system is further open to exploitation by GOP state legislators. Each part of the strategy is well known to be vulnerable to manipulation but, added up, the dangers this poses to democratic process are truly alarming and will need to be addressed.

This is the second of four parts being published on the PMBlogSpace this week. The complete essay may be read at https://seandobsonprogressive.wordpress.com/category/blog/ 

The right-wingers at the core of today’s GOP demonstrated January 6, 2021 that they have no interest in American democracy if it interferes with their goal: political, financial and cultural dominance of this nation. In this deep-diving essay, Maryland progressive leader and analyst Sean Dobson shows how close this frothing minority came – and could come, in the future – to overcoming the democratic processes that we are used to thinking of as normal elections. Donald Trump was the clear perpetrator of the attack on the Capitol and Congress in January but the sentiments and strategies of the Republican right predated him and will be rehabbed by his clumsy failure. A next round could succeed in upending democratic electoral processes by targeting their dangerously fragile 18^th-century roots with 21^st-century strategies, as Dobson -- board chair of Progressive Maryland -- shows here. In the first of four parts we see how Trump’s and Trumpism’s assaults on the election before, during and after Election Day, imperfect as they were, nearly succeeded in undoing the majority rule on which our process is grounded. A coup has failed, for now; a future one has better chances unless understood and fought against.

This is the first of four parts being published on the PMBlogSpace this week. The complete essay may be read at https://seandobsonprogressive.wordpress.com/category/blog/

It’s People’s Recovery Lobby Week this week so we are pushing Congress to pass a comprehensive American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan as large as the physical reality of the climate crisis, the health crisis and the economic reality of mass unemployment and underemployment, and the structural reality of systemic racism.

Been to a statewide COVID Forum? Attended a Justice Task Force event? Have you taken part in a local organizing meeting for a County Chapter or Fair Elections? Supported our drug policy work?  If the answer is yes to any or all of these: thank you! Now we ask you to take a next step to help us expand our work and impact on these issues-- join hundreds of other local PM supporters and become a Progressive Maryland member. 
This and much more in the Memo.

Happy birthday today (Monday) to Bob Dylan, an 80-year-old White folk singer who in 1963 wrote and recorded “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” about the 1963 beating death of a Black barmaid by a drunken and abusive young White man, son of a tobacco-wealthy Charles County, MD, family. Allies everywhere. And everywhen.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

"Maryland is one of only three states that has no statewide law covering collective bargaining rights but allows every jurisdiction to decide whether they want to have collective bargaining or not. The result is that 90% of local jurisdictions do not have any law that allows public workers to have a union. Some of the biggest municipalities where public workers do not have union rights are Gaithersburg, Hagerstown, Salisbury, Cumberland, Hyattsville and New Carrollton. This is also true for a majority of Maryland counties."

Activist and former House of Delegates member Jimmy Tarlau outlines in a Maryland Matters opinion column why this practice stems from Maryland's dominant Democratic power structure and its tacit compliance with business interests, not those of working families.

Much Love To Moms: PM Weekly Memo for Monday, May 10, 2021

 This past Mother’s Day Weekend, we reflected on the many roles of mothers in the world, and the impact of the pandemic on womxn and families. We are thinking about all the mothers who have lost children, and all the children who have lost mothers. And to all those who chose to be mothers, chose not to be mothers, are unable to carry a child, have adopted or fostered children, have two moms, have chosen mothers, have estranged relationships with their mother, etc. - we are sending much love to you all. 

As does Gaea, a love that we all return.

One way in which we can all stand with womxn is by fighting for Medicare For All, worker’s rights, and people’s recovery. This and much more in the memo.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

In Solidarity,

The PM Team

In a whirlwind week of events threatening a tsunami of evictions and homelessness, activists urged the state government to protect renters against eviction as courts re-opened, a federal judge voided national tenant protections (and then reinstated them) and yesterday (Thursday, May 6) executives of the state's biggest population centers jointly urged Gov. Larry Hogan to stop Maryland courts from enforcing evictions when tenants were often unable to appear in the newly opened courts to defend themselves. See more in this blog post.

A Session like no other. We focus on the good, but yield to the urge to mention some bads and some uglies. As legislators often say, “it takes three years to get a good bill through the General Assembly. A bad bill takes only one year.”

And… to widen our horizons and timeline... Thursday (April 22) is Earth Day; Pres. Biden is hosting a virtual world leaders climate summit. Root for a carbon tax.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

Maryland Coalition for Justice & Police Accountability (MJCPA), advocates and individuals impacted by police brutality, celebrate the successful organizing that has advanced police transparency and accountability, but say Maryland’s historic police reform package still does not meet the moment. That moment -- when George Floyd's memory is being defiled by the desperate defense of Derek Chauvin while more Black people die at police hands in seemingly every news cycle -- required more from our Assembly than they delivered, and will require more from Progressive Maryland activists and allies to meet these still-dangerous moments coming every day.

We need to prepare for the next phase and push for COVID relief and for healthcare for all. Please come to the Healthcare Task Force (HCTF) meeting TONIGHT, Tuesday, April 13, at 7pm for this important discussion. The meeting will give us a chance to talk about how we can keep making progress toward greater equity, access and justice in our healthcare system.  RSVP HERE 

Today is Sine Die day (the Assembly adjourns at midnight tonight UNLESS they stop the clock at 11:59 and keep messing around, which is not unheard of). Critical bills are still headed for the finish line; see below to find out how to get behind them. Even before the finale, a sweeping though depleted package addressing police violence and public accountability for it was passed, vetoed by Gov. Larry Hogan, and reinstated by an emphatic veto override.

 we continue to keep you up to date on both the fast-moving, national-level COVID relief efforts, struggles for justice in Congress and the back-and-forth of state legislation. This and much more in the Memo.

Spending for social needs, which was pretty much on hold during the Trump administration, is back on the table this spring and suddenly the schedule is everything. In an excellent roundup from People's Action's campaigns director Sondra Youdelman, we see that timelines for work in the House and Senate are complicated by juggling both the Biden admin's budget, which has huge increases for education, health and the environment, and the big infrastructure bill, which demonstrates how social needs and the transportation, power grid and broadband deficiencies are deeply intertwined. Activists are going to have to learn fast and follow the back-and-forth of events almost daily to know when to put our muscle to work to keep this legislation oriented toward people and not corporations and the rich.

From the Diamondback student newspaper, a bill passed this week by House and Senate in the General Assembly is favored by a union organizing workers at numerous campuses because it would enable one master agreement with the University System of Maryland.

The trial of Derek Chauvin, formerly of the Minneapolis police department, should be bringing us a warning: Chauvin is rightly being abandoned by his former colleagues for the blatant murder of George Floyd at his hands -- and those of three other sworn officers. But trial viewers should completely discount the excuses of Chauvin’s superiors that “this is not the way we trained him.” Unfortunately, Academy training is no match for the prevalent mythology of the Warrior Cop and the permissive internal police culture that it creates.

The trial is raising many issues about racism, police relations with the community, the role of police unions and the accountability of police departments.  Reimagining public safety, making fundamental changes to policing practices and oversight, as well as  focusing on harm reduction, continue to offer our best path to a more equitable criminal justice system.  Only when public officials seriously examine the impact on BIPOC communities of decades of police abuse and mistreatment and demand an end to this toxic culture will we begin to see a substantial reduction in the often-lethal examples of excessive force that ricochet from city to city and show up in the news and the data.

April brings with it the wrapup of our state Assembly session with Sine Die next Monday; we continue to keep you up to date on both the fast-moving, national-level COVID relief efforts, struggles for justice in Congress and the back-and-forth of state legislation. This and much more in the Memo.

We stood with our AAPI family in sorrow and solidarity over the racist mass shootings in Atlanta in recent weeks. As the shootings in Boulder, Colo. show us, we struggle not only with the otherizing motives of the violent but with their easy access to murderous weapons and the law’s enablement of their makers and sellers. We stand against all forms of racism and gender based violence -- and the way greed caters to and encourages them.

April approaches and with it the wrapup of our state Assembly session; we continue to keep you up to date on both the fast-moving, national-level COVID relief efforts, struggles for justice in Congress and the back-and-forth of state legislation. This and much more in the Memo.

We stand with our AAPI family in sorrow and solidarity over the racist mass shootings in Atlanta. We stand against all forms of racism and gender based violence. We have joined many groups in signing the Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta statement: “A Community-Centered Response to Violence Against Asian American Communities”; and our national affiliate People’s Action has released a press statement. Furthermore, here is a statement that we support from the MoCo Progressive Asian American Network in response to these hate crimes. 

Keep up to date on both the fast-moving, national-level COVID relief efforts and the back-and-forth of legislation in the Maryland General Assembly as we approach the last month of the session. This and much more in the Memo.

The General Assembly is tweaking -- and in some cases adjusting big-time -- the huge program called the Blueprint for Education to make sure the Kirwan plan adapts to the needs of a post-COVID landscape and to the learning loss that the past year has brought to Maryland's K-12 students. This Maryland Matters coverage shows the possibilities.

Today would have been the 88th birthday of Ruth Bader Ginsburg! We remember this great champion of equality and will keep dissenting as long as we need to. Congress should honor her legacy and #RestoreTheVRA. We continue to observe Womxn’s History Month and keep you up to date on both the fast-moving, national-level COVID relief efforts and the back-and-forth of legislation in the Maryland General Assembly as we approach the last month of the session. This and much more in the Memo.

Thank you for being part of this movement. 

In Solidarity,

Gov. Hogan has abruptly set the stage for openings across the state, giving local officials fits. Among them are schools, which teachers and their unions insist should be much safer to open for face-to-face learning than they are at this point. The national priority for vaccinating teachers will help, but signs of progress in Maryland are spotty and disputed.

Conduit Street, the newsletter of the Maryland Association of Counties, has the latest on county by county plans for reopening schools. Read them here.