Wicked Work

“yeah can i get a deluxe quarter pounder with cheese?”

“absolutely, do you want the meal or just the sandwich?’

“uuuuuh hold on”

*fishes something out of my pocket*

“mikey what do i do?”

“get the fries. youll need the energy in the coming days”

*stuffs it back in my pocket*

Text of the full letter available here.

They are doing this the extra cruel way on purpose. If they knew which people to send this letter to, then they could have just as easily just automatically mailed them replacement licenses. But forcing them to make arrangements to travel to a DMV, present themselves in person (to be potentially humiliated/deadnamed by the DMV employees to their faces), and to be unable to drive themselves to their work/school in the interim, are all just ways of making this process even harder. And because there’s a National Driver Register database that lists individual drivers’ status and history information, it’s not necessarily even as simple as just moving to a different state and get a new license issued there, because it will presumably show their previous license as being suspended.

Someone has been comparing this to the day in 1938 when the German government invalidated all German passports held by Jewish people, forcing them to surrender their old passports and instead have passports stamped with a “J” for Jewish on them.

For trans people, carrying an ID that misgenders them opens them to intrusive questions, harassment, and even violence.

I’ve also seen people boost the following organization for those who relocation is financially not an option:

Local organization helping with the cost of replacing driver’s licenses: https://lgbtqks.org/donate/

so don't get too comfortable.

Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, socially, financially.

Life is asking a lot right now.

Pause when you can. Breathe when you remember.