About PATH’s Candidate Forum
Sunday, March 8, 3–5 pm
St. John Baptist Church, 9055 Tamar Dr, Columbia, MD
Help us make our democracy work for our communities!
Join PATH on March 8th as we ask candidates for Howard County Executive and County Council how they will address the top issues we heard in listening sessions with 700+ people:
Housing
Immigration
Youth
Healthcare
Food security
Inclusion
This isn’t just any candidate forum—we’re bringing hundreds of people together in targeted action for meaningful change. We expect 300 attendees.
Interpretation into Spanish and childcare will be provided.
Who PATH is:
People Acting Together in Howard (PATH) is a multi-racial, multi-faith, non-partisan community power organization in Howard County. We bring people together across faith, race, and class with a common purpose of justice. Together, we find common issues and hold elected officials accountable to create solutions that improve people’s day-to-day lives.
We are part of the Maryland Just Power Alliance, together with our sister organizations AIM in Montgomery County and ACT in Anne Arundel County. We organize people at both the county and state levels to take action and create meaningful change. See PATH’s victories here.
Why engaging candidates in Howard County is important now:
This year, we’ll be electing a new County Executive and County Council. The county executive cannot run again due to term limits, and 4 of 5 current county council people are not running for the council. We will be electing a lot of new county leadership!
The primary election for these races will be on Tuesday, June 23.
We build relationships with future county leaders and position PATH to act powerfully with them once elected:
We hope people who attend the forum learn a lot, get a chance to connect and stand with diverse people of faith in the community, and leave inspired to keep organizing for action and change Howard County needs.
We want to make it clear to politicians that PATH is rooted in our community, committed, and serious. We will be consistent and persistent in organizing people power to win action on the community needs we heard.
We are values-rooted, nonpartisan, and focused on our issue priorities:
We invite all registered candidates of all parties.
We will give all candidates for the same office the same preparation and time.
We'll have timekeepers in all rooms raising cards when speakers are close to their time limit (yellow) and when we need them to stop speaking (red).
We do not endorse candidates.
How the event will run:
We'll have an introduction to PATH and our priority issues.
We'll divide into rooms by council district (folks can go where is best for them) and people can interact in smaller settings with the candidates for each council district.
These district sessions will have their own PATH leader emcees, and will also ask set questions prepared by PATH. We will have audience questions here as time permits.
We'll come back together and hear the County Executive candidates answer specific questions in specific amounts of time.
We will not accept audience questions in this setting.
We'll have a send-off with prayer and music.
We'll have 2 choirs, a warm welcome from faith leaders, and ushers at entrances throughout the event.
We want an empowered and compassionate feel—and we'll be serious about running our agenda well and getting real answers from candidates, and staying on time to accomplish our goals and help everyone leave on time.
Roll Call:
PATH relies a lot on people power to show how much support we have for these issues.
We intentionally strengthen our ability to help people from our institutions to take action
We work on making a commitment of the number of people we will bring to an event, and then bringing them!
You will see someone from each institution say how many people they promised to bring with them, and how many people came. We try to be accountable in what we do and how we share the work!
Find flyers and more on our March 8 webpage.
