Migrant Justice Takes Huge Step Towards Access to Driver's Licenses in Vermont: Grassroots Campaign Momentum Growing For a Big Victory in 2013
Posted Mon, 12/17/2012 - 4:16pm
Migrant Justice Takes Huge Step Towards Access to Driver's Licenses in Vermont
Grassroots Campaign Momentum Growing For a Big Victory in 2013
Dec. 14, 2012---After nearly a year of non-stop grassroots organizing, 35 farmworkers took to the State House on Thursday for a final push to successfully move a Legislative Study Committee to an 8-1 vote, recommending that Vermont create a law to allow undocumented residents to access driver's licenses and IDs in 2013! Long time Migrant Justice ally and 
faith community leader Laura O'Brien was there last Thursday and shares this reflection about the big day below. For a photo essay go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/migrantjustice/sets/72157632274984146/show/
Teacher and writer Parker Palmer talks about harnessing the “creative tension” of the world as a necessity for being an agent of change. That is, finding a way to operate in the world in that space between the way things are and the way we know they can and should be, without becoming so jaded or idealistic that action is impossible.
I would like to think the members of the Driver’s License Study Committee were able to do this on December 13, helped in large part by the imagery surely burned into their mind’s eyes throughout the morning’s proceedings. Around the center table of the House Chamber on Thursday morning this group of power holders was discussing the bureaucratic logistics of what it would mean to grant access to driver’s licenses to people without a Social Security number. And more specifically, how might Vermont’s migrant farmworkers fit into this system.
