All posts filed under: Articles

What’s going on at the Durham County Jail?

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By Monica Chen The Durham County Sheriff’s Office is still using COVID lockdown protocols at the jail, and activists are sounding the alarm about the conditions amounting to solitary confinement for the hundreds of inmates. In fact, for some of the inmates at the Durham County Jail who were incarcerated on or before March 2020, that means their solitary confinement has lasted now three years. Activists Marcia Owen and Andrea “Muffin” Hudson sent an open letter in December to local officials, including Sheriff Clarence Birkhead, District Attorney Satana Deberry, Chief District Court Judge Clayton Jones and Police Chief Patrice Andrews. They called for the urgent need to alleviate conditions at the jail. The letter has been signed by hundreds of people and organizations. Owen and Hudson also have met with Birkhead and others to discuss their concerns. “Muffin and I understand from our meeting with the sheriff on Nov. 16 that the jail has sustained the 21-23 [hours] alone in cell for every incarcerated person since late March 2020,” Owen said in an e-mail this …

There are serious problems with the Durham Police Department

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By Monica Chen I complained about a Sheriff’s Deputy. Then, the Durham Police started harassing me. Then, it got even worse. First of all, I have had positive experiences with law enforcement in Durham. Friendly and responsive officers who left me feeling safer than before they arrived. Unfortunately in Durham, public safety has been declining since 2013. And then since 2017, the police have increasingly, actively been disrupting and bullying good residents, peaceful homes and neighborhoods instead of protecting them – protecting us. The police have been on the side of bad people, even coddling them. I think the actions of the Durham Police are about controlling movement, and breaking the normal rules of engagement, interaction, communication – so that incompetence and corruption would not be exposed. We are not allowed to engage with the Durham Police on our own terms, in normal ways. So this happened to me in June. The short version is that I was upset by a Sheriff’s Deputy’s actions with puppies that I had rescued. I called to complain about …

Movie review: “2000 Mules,” a flawed but legitimate bombshell

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By Monica Chen “2000 Mules” is not as much the hard-hitting expose of the 2020 election that viewers might expect from its marketing. The movie is actually a great overview of election fraud that has been taking place for the past decade. And the research it features leaves a big question wide open. Still, “2000 Mules” is a major, real bombshell. The documentary comes from political pundit Dinesh D’Souza and familiar collaborators, including director Bruce Schooley, and D’Souza’s wife, Debbie, who has also produced his other movies, most recently “Trump Card” in 2018. It features research conducted by election integrity watchdog True the Vote. Much criticism has been leveled at the use of cellphone data in “2000 Mules” to track “mules,” or ballot traffickers, and estimate the number of fraudulent votes in the 2020 election that gave Joe Biden the win over Donald Trump. This writer finds the cellphone data to be credible. The data is what makes “2000 Mules” a bombshell, the kind that comes along once in a century. It is the research …

What’s wrong with schools

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By Monica Chen  Schools have become so bad in the past decade that some fundamental things need to be said: The point of schools is to teach, to impart knowledge, to provide a space and the support for kids to learn and to be curious, to imagine.  Schools and teachers currently are controlling and abusive when they should be nurturing and open. Teachers are there for the kids, not the other way around. I cannot believe these things have to be said, that these basic parameters for good and bad when it comes to the educational system have to be recognized. It should be about kids. Teachers have horrifyingly, willfully made it about themselves. Here are some negative changes that I have noticed with schools in the past decade. Unfortunately, I have not seen anything positive:  1. Politics in every part of the educational system, even in math workbooks. Harder to identify than Critical Race Theory but it is obvious. There is no room for imagination and learning. Students are made to swallow a ton of …

A look back at the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict

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By Monica Chen When Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty last December of trafficking girls for sexual abuse, it was on social media that not only did the news break, but also where the most relevant coverage happened, making up for the lack of attention from mainstream media. The elation of the verdict, the intensity of the trial, as well as discussions of the crimes of Maxwell and her ex-boyfriend, pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, happened only on social media. It was a collective effort of independent journalists and women working in established media, mostly young women, who made up for the lack of mainstream coverage. The real coverage of the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict was not on TV or newspapers but what was happening in real-time on Twitter. At the federal district court at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in New York, presided over by Judge Allison Nathan, the verdict came suddenly and expectedly on the late afternoon of Wednesday, December 29. It was the dead of winter and the jury began deliberating before Christmas. Earlier on this fifth …

Blog post: “Abortion is a constitutional right.” Is it?

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By Monica Chen One of the phrases I keep hearing in the turbulence after the SCOTUS leak on Roe v. Wade is that abortion is a constitutional right, which — that does not sound right, does it? This blog post is my first look at this assertion by politicians and activists on the abortion issue. Is abortion a constitutional right? If you look at the writings and talks by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — the answer seems to be, “Not really.” Or she’d rebuke you for asking the wrong question to begin with. Roe was settled on the right to privacy. But for Ginsburg, reproductive choice, not abortion, was a constitutional right for women and came down to equal protection under the law, under the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Ginsburg was critical of Roe, the 1973 landmark decision. She thought it was shockingly sweeping, halted progress that was already underway in the states, proved to be divisive over time, and Ginsburg seemed to have always supported the …

Not abortions, Gov. Cooper — Lockdowns

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By Monica Chen Immediately after news broke that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Gov. Roy Cooper took to Twitter to support women’s health. “Now more than ever, governors and state legislatures must stand up for women’s healthcare,” Cooper wrote on the evening of May 2. The next day, Cooper also joined 16 other governors to call on Congress to “protect access to women’s health care,” he wrote in another tweet. “Reproductive healthcare decisions are deeply personal and should be made by patients in consultation with their health care providers, not by politicians,” the letter signed by Cooper stated, to push Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act. But according to N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein, Roe being overturned means North Carolina will revert to abortion being legal for the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy. Gov. Cooper, there are bigger challenges to women’s health in North Carolina right now. If Cooper wants to discuss women’s health, then the first thing that must be confronted are the negative impacts of …

What Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought of Roe v. Wade

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By Monica Chen  Although the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been held up by the pro-choice movement and feminist organizations as an icon of feminism, widely assumed to support Roe v. Wade, what the movements have been ignoring are Ginsburg’s own words on the decision. Ginsburg had strong criticisms of Roe over the decades, and was consistent in her points of criticism. Ginsburg even called the landmark 1973 decision, which legalized abortions nationwide, a “regime.” Her words are now echoed by Justice Samuel Alito’s recent leaked draft opinion to overturn the decision. The Court had “fashion(ed) a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force,” Ginsburg wrote forcefully in 1992 in the wake of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Ginsburg thought Roe took the debate on abortion out of state legislatures — away from the legislative branch of government — and that’s where that debate had been up to that point and should have stayed. According to Politico, Alito wrote in his majority draft …

Roe to be overturned: Reactions in NC

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By Monica Chen Shock and anger were the reactions of many North Carolinians after news broke on Monday night that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. A draft of the majority opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had been leaked to Politico. The 1973 landmark decision will be overturned, reverting the issue of abortion back to state legislatures. Protests broke out across the country on Tuesday, including at Moore Square in Raleigh. President Joe Biden also lashed out at the MAGA crowd on Wednesday, calling them “Ultra MAGA.” Vice President Kamala Harris said of Republican lawmakers, “How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in particular had a very strong reaction as she joined protesters in front of the Supreme Court. Pro-life organization N.C. Values Coalition issued a statement on Tuesday. “If Roe and Casey are overturned, as the draft opinion indicates, we must build consensus for the strongest protections possible for unborn children and women in North Carolina, and we …

Blog post: The media’s sick game with Putin, Russia, and American workers

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By Monica Chen  In Western media’s gaslighting, exploitative coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the worst coverage so far has been the battles in Mariupol.  Mariupol is a port city in the Donetsk region, which has fought for independence from Ukraine since 2014. It is a pro-Russian city. Mariupol in reality is a city that is under siege from Ukraine. The destruction in the city is well-documented. In this OSCE report in 2015, shelling from Ukrainian forces resulted in 30 civilians dead and 150 injured. Western media has got it backwards.  Here is the most recent example of Western media’s semi-delusional coverage of Mariupol and the Russia-Ukraine conflict in general: The picture that CNN paints is that Russia decided against storming the steel plant because of, well, a loss of guts.  But in Russian media outlet TASS, the country was celebrating securing Mariupol with the exception of the one steel plant.  Mariupol had been won. This is what Russian President Vladimir Putin said:  “In this case, we need to think about – I mean, we always …