Once again, the members of the AFT Maryland have demonstrated, through their hard work volunteering, that Baltimore is, always has been, and always will be a union town.
With the Baltimore City Board of Elections certifying the results from last week’s primary election, labor can now officially celebrate the hard-fought victories up and down the ballot. The process that began last year with the construction and compilation of union questionnaires for the candidates and ended with union activists on doors and phones every week for the past 2 months bore fruit: Every candidate the AFL-CIO (and therefore the AFT Maryland) endorsed for the primary election in Maryland won their primary race, making the union 13-for-13 on their endorsements. In the races for city council that the union did the most work on, the endorsed candidates, Paris Gray and Jermaine Jones, won by approximately 200-300 votes, showing that union work and engagement in these elections made a difference.
Labor is excited for these union-backed candidates– from Mayor Scott to incoming City Council President Zeke Cohen– to begin their terms! But we also must pause to thank candidates who did not win their races for their service and leadership for the residents and working people of Baltimore.
The union’s– and also the entire nation’s– attention now turns to the general election, where a race to replace Ben Cardin might decide ultimate control of the US senate. One of the biggest issues in that race will be preserving the right to bodily autonomy, under attack since the Republican-appointed Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Republican nominee Larry Hogan, who as governor vetoed state legislation that would have expanded a woman’s right to choose, and withheld state funding for that expansion when the legislature overran his veto, is now running from that record, saying he defended Maryland women’s right to choose. Yet he has not been able to point to one executive order he made, or one piece of legislation he championed, that defended those rights. He now claims if elected to the United States Senate, he will support legislation codifying Roe v. Wade, but he knows full well that under Republican control of the Senate, such legislation would never even be considered.
The Democratic nominee, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, does have a record of defending women's bodily autonomy and speaking up for women, with her first job out of law school being the first full-time domestic violence prosecutor in Prince George’s County history.
Because the US senate has the power to review and confirm judicial appointments, including appointments to the Supreme Court, Maryland has a unique opportunity to say “we reject the policies and Court decisions that decimate worker rights and union protections, and seek to rob women of the right to make their own choices regarding their health and reproductive rights.”
2024-05-29
photos and article by AFT Maryland Staff