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MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury police officers that encounter foreign nationals who may be in the country illegally will no longer detain them or contact federal immigration agents unless that person is known or suspected of committing a crime or terrorist act, according to a new policy adopted recently by the Middlebury Select Board.

The new protocol, which has actually been an unofficial practice for months, is aimed at encouraging victims and witnesses of crimes or accidents to call 9-1-1 without fearing that their immigration status will land them in hot water.... Read more

Picture a 3000-mile-long dinner table spanning the United States. Then imagine all 303 million Americans sitting down to eat. All of them, that is, except for members of Congress and a bunch of lobbyists and farm activists, who are in the kitchen planning our menu.... Read more

Not every Vermont town has a 45-bed hospital, a full-service pharmacy and an elite private college with its own health center. Middlebury does. But the seemingly affluent town and its environs are also home to low-income residents who struggle to access proper medical care.... Read more

In Mexico, they say Hay más tiempo que vida. Literally translated, the maxim means, "There is more time than life." But to 26-year-old Jorge and his younger brother Gustavo (not their real names), that probably sounds like wishful thinking. Aside from weekly interactions with local volunteers, the frenetic pace of the men's seven-day workweek on a Vermont dairy farm is rarely broken by anything but sleep. And meals.... Read more

Vermont's Republican Gov. Jim Douglas was on C-SPAN's call-in show "Washington Journal" Tuesday morning, a pig in you-know-what, bragging about everything from his "affordability agenda" and determined opposition to any and all tax increases, to "the tough law-enforcement component" of the Douglas Administration's drug policy, "and several recent well-publicized roundups of drug dealers in Barre and St. Albans."... Read more

VERMONT - "Rita" says she's always treated the Mexican workers on her farm like they were family. They've shared the workloads, gone shopping together, even had Christmas dinners together. Like many of her fellow dairy farmers in Franklin County, Rita (not her real name) and her husband have long depended on undocumented Mexican laborers to get their cows milked and fed, in large part because they've been unable to find American workers who are willing to fill those jobs.... Read more

BURLINGTON - Vermont farm workers Rodrigo Alcaron-Rayon and José María Reyes-Reyes were expected to speak last week as part of an immigrants' rights forum at Fletcher Free Library in Burlington, less than 24 hours before both men were to fly home to their native Mexico. The subject of their talk, according to their translator, Irma Valeriano, was their concern about racial profiling and the growing climate of fear among Vermont's immigrant population.... Read more

It was a Thanksgiving dinner that nine Mexican men will never forget. Seated at the dining room table of one of their employers, an Addison County dairy farmer who asked to remain anonymous, the campesinos, or farm laborers, partook in a bountiful Turkey Day feast that included all the fixings. And while most of the men could not speak English, it didn't require a translator to figure out that the stuffing was a huge hit.... Read more

By now you may have heard about the industry-sponsored trips for Vermont lawmakers to visit Monsanto's state-of-the-art facilities that develop genetically modified organisms. Several weeks ago about 40 lawmakers, as well as farmers, state regulators and other interested folks made the six-hour trip to Mystic, Connecticut, where they spent two days touring the company's biotech labs and talking to the scientists who tinker with the fundamental building blocks of the nation's food supply.... Read more

They call this the Information Age, but it could just as easily be labeled the Inundation Age, what with the cacophony of messages assaulting our senses on a daily basis. It's easy for journalists to get disheartened when our efforts to illuminate an injustice or societal ill get lost in the glare of a thousand other spotlights competing for the public's attention. Until, that is, our readers remind us about why we do our jobs.

Anyone interested in getting involved with the Vermont Campesinos Alliance can contact Luis Tijerina at 660-7172. All information will remain confidential.... Read more