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Michelle Chen

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at In These Times. She is a regular contributor to the labor rights blog Working In These Times, Colorlines.com, and Pacifica's WBAI. Her work has also appeared in Common Dreams, Alternet, Ms. Magazine, Newsday, and her old zine, cain.

Connect:
@meeshellchen

Articles by this author

 
A man rides through as grocery store workers and others stage a protest rally outside the Whole Foods Market, in the South End of Boston, to demand personal protective equipment, added benefits if needed and hazard pay, during the coronavirus pandemic on Apr. 7, 2020. (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

A Spontaneous Rebellion of Low-Wage Workers Is Rising Up Amid Pandemic

Workers are fighting for their lives—even as they save ours.

Michelle Chen ·

New Jersey Department of Corrections. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Prisons Are Using the Pandemic to Impose Lockdowns

Advocates say the extreme restrictions on movement are punitive and dangerous.

Michelle Chen ·

One of the top countries for pollution-related death is among the richest: the United States ranks number seven, with some 197,000 deaths due to pollution. (Photo: ribarnica/Flickr/cc)

Dirty Air and Water Is Killing Us

New study affirms that pollution is the world’s leading cause of death, ahead of tobacco use, drug and alcohol use, and even war.

Michelle Chen ·

Can Google’s Soul Be Saved?

Rank-and-file Silicon Valley tech workers are using their leverage to push companies toward more ethical business models, or at least away from destroying the environment and undermining human rights.

Michelle Chen ·

A protester makes a gesture during a protest on June 12, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. (Photo: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

Hong Kong Protesters and Militant Chinese Workers Point the Way to a New Kind of Internationalism

We can remain warily optimistic that, regardless of the system of government that rules over them, workers and civil society are still the force from which even the most powerful states derive legitimacy.

Michelle Chen ·

There is no future in which workers are not on the frontline of climate-driven social transformation, either as survivors, or as agents of change. (Photo: By ZoranOrcik/shutterstock.com)

'Hardhats vs. Hippies': How the Media Misrepresents the Debate Over the Green New Deal

Despite the media’s insistence that environmentalism remains the province of the privileged, blue collars and green priorities may overlap more than they know

Michelle Chen ·

Rep. Deb Haaland speaks at a reception hosted by the Congressional Native American Caucus in Washington on Jan. 3, 2019. (Photo: Brian Snyder / Reuters)

Two Native Women in Congress Isn't Enough to End the Systemic Violence Native Girls Face

Every level of government has failed to protect communities from violence or support their deteriorating social infrastructure

Michelle Chen ·

A Central American girl travelling in a migrants' caravan, rides a bus outside a temporary shelter in eastern Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico on December 6, 2018. (Photo: Guillermo Arias / AFP - Getty Images)

Trump's Caravan Problem Isn't Which People Are Coming, But What Kind of Country America Will Choose to Be

The plight of asylum seekers in Tijuana reflects the dying promise of this country as a land of refuge from suffering

Michelle Chen ·

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