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.
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, May 25, 2020 A Spontaneous Rebellion of Low-Wage Workers Is Rising Up Amid Pandemic At a time of record unemployment, Cintya Medina feels lucky to have a job at the Barnes & Noble warehouse in Monroe, N.J.—but she does not want a job that puts her in danger. When Medina and her coworkers learned of several confirmed Covid-19 cases at the warehouse, they organized a protest on... Read more |
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Views Friday, May 15, 2020 Prisons Are Using the Pandemic to Impose Lockdowns When New Jersey issued its stay at home order in response to the coronavirus pandemic, residents holed up in their homes and businesses shuttered. But for the thousands of residents whose home is behind bars, it was a different kind of “lockdown.” "People are calling home crying saying that they... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 31, 2019 Dirty Air and Water Is Killing Us The way we live is killing us. Pollution—whether it comes from a car’s tailpipe, a coal-fired power plant, or a toxic waste dump— claimed more than eight million lives around the world in 2017, fully 15 percent of all deaths. That’s according to a new report published by the Global Alliance on... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 15, 2019 Can Google’s Soul Be Saved? With its ubiquitous and astronomical digital infrastructure, Google has put the world at our fingertips. But in some ways, it’s also making the world dirtier and less democratic. Under the slick veneer of clean, youthful, innovation-loving Silicon Valley, big tech firms like Google have colossal... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 30, 2019 Hong Kong Protesters and Militant Chinese Workers Point the Way to a New Kind of Internationalism Just as the “Made in China” label insinuated itself into our retail stores in the 1980s, China today insinuates itself into most of our mainstream news coverage, as one of the largest global markets, the top carbon emitter, the biggest workforce, and the biggest geopolitical rival to the United... Read more |
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Views Friday, June 21, 2019 'Hardhats vs. Hippies': How the Media Misrepresents the Debate Over the Green New Deal A recent Politico article about the Green New Deal resolution put forward in February by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) features many grumblings from blue-collar union members about the potential economic disruption and the loss of jobs—even though the... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, January 08, 2019 Two Native Women in Congress Isn't Enough to End the Systemic Violence Native Girls Face A shifting power balance on the Capitol — including the first two N ative women elected to the House — might change the political landscape for disenfranchised indigenous communities. For now, though, Washington remains gridlocked and native communities persevere as sites of resistance, struggling... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 11, 2018 Trump's Caravan Problem Isn't Which People Are Coming, But What Kind of Country America Will Choose to Be A bleak irony is emerging in Tijuana's border zone. For all the raging conservative rhetoric about how Central American migrants are lawbreakers who refuse to just “get in line” and enter the “legal” way , the asylum seekers are actually "getting in line ” — or what passes for a line — by forming... Read more |
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Views Friday, April 06, 2018 The Oklahoma Teachers’ Strike Is a Mutiny Against Austerity Oklahoma teachers proudly marked themselves absent from school since Monday, and they had an excellent excuse: They made themselves present in politics instead, with a historic march on the Capitol in hopes of finally capturing the legislature’s undivided attention Lawmakers thought they could eke... Read more |
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Views Friday, March 30, 2018 Trump Wants to Reframe the Census to Fit His Definition of America, Not Protect Americans The purpose of an accurate census count is to help the government understand the people for whom it is responsible — full stop. A fully inclusive census is vital for informing policy-making, whether determining how many roadways are required for a region’s population, monitoring local public health... Read more |