Stories by 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 Alternet, Ms. Magazine, Newsday, and her old zine, cain. Follow her on Twitter at @meeshellchen or reach her at michellechen @ inthesetimes.com.
Posted on May 22, 2012, Source: The New Press
In this excerpt from the new book "Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America," Michelle Chen looks at young workers from Egypt to Wisconsin.
Posted on May 17, 2012, Source: In These Times
By raising barriers to economic assistance and legal recourse, the legislation sends the message to countless women living in violent households that their place is still at home.
Posted on May 13, 2012, Source: In These Times
Geopolitics turned humanitarian workers and refugees into hostages of a budget war that makes life for the community absurdly hard, from seeing a doctor to earning a paycheck.
Posted on May 7, 2012, Source: In These Times
While racist hostility pervades the mainstream political arena, Occupy may be one of the only spaces left for immigrants to speak up without fear.
Posted on Apr 29, 2012, Source: In These Times
Labor and human rights groups in both countries argue that the agreement would effectively condone violence against activists and economic oppression.
Posted on Apr 29, 2012, Source: In These Times
Suicide starts to seem a strangely rational measure of life’s cheapness in a monetized society--people’s logical response to a loss of control over their destinies.
Posted on Apr 19, 2012, Source: In These Times
The question we should be asking is not whether domestic caregiving is more or less important than wage work—they’re both crucial, and crucially different.
Posted on Apr 15, 2012, Source: In These Times
Unlike the shady fiscal roulette that lawmakers often play with your tax dollars, PB gives ordinary people leverage to direct spending according to their idea of the greater good.
Posted on Apr 11, 2012, Source: In These Times
New websites that connect people to odd jobs raise questions about the future of work: are these the new home-based sweatshops, exploiting desperation for next to no pay?
Posted on Mar 21, 2012, Source: In These Times
If one fundamental truth has emerged from the scandal surrounding Daisey’s fudging, it’s that the lived reality of many Chinese workers is bleak—no embellishment needed.
Posted on Mar 6, 2012, Source: In These Times
The students came for a summer learning experience with a job at a classic American company. Instead, they got a crash course in the realities of the global economy.
Posted on Mar 1, 2012, Source: In These Times
The all-India general strike brought together workers of various sectors united under a banner of opposition to neoliberal policies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government.
Posted on Feb 26, 2012, Source: In These Times
New pro-labor coalitions are forming in Egypt, but can they reinvigorate a stalled movement for social justice?
Posted on Feb 23, 2012, Source: In These Times
Many jazz artists hustle from gig to gig, often at the mercy of club owners who have little or no obligation to provide basic benefits like medical or unemployment insurance.
Posted on Feb 19, 2012, Source: In These Times
Far from offering a more regulated alternative to undocumented migrant labor, guestworker programs encourage the same abuses that “illegal” workers suffer.
Posted on Feb 16, 2012, Source: Ms. Blog
A new study warns that when Americans eat out, they feed into an industry fueled by exploitation and rampant discrimination against women.
Posted on Jan 15, 2012, Source: In These Times
ICE officers' union resists reform measures to controversial Secure Communities program, while AFl-CIO wants to end it
Posted on Dec 11, 2011, Source: In These Times
The holiday season is a time of material pleasures, but it's also a time to take stock of how our social values tend to be at odds with the objects we most prize.
Posted on Nov 28, 2011, Source: In These Times
Movements are discovering the connection between health and activism through medical workers joining the front lines to deploy their skills and their conviction.
Posted on Nov 14, 2011, Source: In These Times
Maybe the ethical clarity that moral crusaders desire requires less talking and more listening to what sex workers know, need and want.
Posted on Oct 17, 2011, Source: Colorlines.com
Congress last week approved three long-pending trade deals with Panama, South Korea and Colombia that will likely lead to massive job loss, not job creation.
Posted on Sep 30, 2011, Source: In These Times
Occupy Wall Street seems to be following the trajectory of grassroots organizing: a spark of protest led by younger activists, followed by the support of labor organizations.
Posted on Sep 26, 2011, Source: In These Times
Teachers standing up for their rights on the job are providing a good example for their students, not "politicizing" education as the so-called reformers do.
Posted on Sep 2, 2011, Source: Colorlines.com
On Monday, activists hope to get ahead of political deal-making by demanding that any new trade deal give greater priority to environmental, labor, and health concerns.
Posted on Aug 10, 2011, Source: In These Times
There's no simple explanation for the uprising in London and several other UK cities this week. But the riots mirror the state of working-class Britain.
Posted on Jul 21, 2011, Source: In These Times
The Murdoch empire is based on a vulgar corporate culture in which honesty and critical thought are dismissed as an impediment to commercial success.
Posted on Jul 12, 2011, Source: Colorlines.com
Rape is a weapon used by the powerful against the powerless--and migrant women across the world are its victims.
Posted on Jul 7, 2011, Source: AlterNet
Scott Walker's budget is the latest to slash health funding for women--showing that the war on workers and the war on women are intertwined.
Posted on Jul 6, 2011, Source: Colorlines.com
The future of a warming planet holds more than just melting ice--it will see a lot more conflict over resources, food, and living space as well.
Posted on Jun 30, 2011, Source: AlterNet
The plight of women in Afghanistan, Congo and other difficult places owes much to the machinations of Washington politicians.
Posted on Jun 17, 2011, Source: Colorlines.com
Student activists in the West Bank are educating themselves in grassroots organizing strategies--on the ground and on the Web.
Posted on Apr 21, 2011, Source: In These Times
At the center of state lawmakers' money-laundering shell game is the starving of public education for investments in prisons -- an incentive for incarcerating the disadvantaged.
Posted on Mar 30, 2011, Source: On The Issues Magazine
Little girls are growing breasts a year after losing their first baby teeth. Are the chemicals in everyday household products to blame?
Posted on Nov 16, 2010, Source: Colorlines.com
The Obama administration just decided to leave countless kids stranded on some of the world’s bloodiest battlegrounds.
Posted on Sep 23, 2010, Source: Ms. Blog
Knowledge is power. So it's no wonder that, all around the world, a girl has less of both.
Posted on Sep 8, 2010, Source: Colorlines.com
We may be past the era of cruel reproductive social engineering, but something more sinister is now emerging in its place.
Posted on Jul 21, 2010, Source: Colorlines.com
2010 has been a big year for health care reform, but the families on whose backs those legislative victories were won have little to celebrate.
Posted on Nov 18, 2009, Source: ColorLines RaceWire
We can argue about the nuances of immigration reform all we want. But the real conversation begins when -- and only when -- we acknowledge elements of structural racism.
Posted on May 26, 2009, Source: Colorlines.com
With foreclosures and job losses dragging down the whole economy, low-income families of color are falling into an even deeper hole.
Posted on Aug 6, 2008, Source: The Women's International Perspective
Legal protections for immigrant survivors of domestic violence are growing more complex and in some ways, more precarious.
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