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New York City pharmaceutical heiress Annabella Rockwell is claiming that her mother paid a $300-a-day "deprogrammer" after believing her daughter had been "brainwashed" by attending an all-female elite liberal college that left the young woman "totally indoctrinated" and estranged from the parents who raised her. "I left school very anxious, very nervous, very depressed and sad," Rockwell, now 29, recently told the New York Post. "I saw everything through the lens of oppression and bias and victimhood. I came to the school as someone who saw everyone equally. I left looking for injustice wherever I could and automatically assuming that...

Annabella Rockwell led a life of privilege even before she entered posh Mount Holyoke College in rural South Hadley, Mass. in 2011. The heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune, she grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, summered in Newport, RI, and later moved with her family to Palm Beach, Fla. A competitive figure skater who lived abroad for a time in Germany as well as Hong Kong, Rockwell chose Mount Holyoke for its academic rigor and prestige. At the time, she said, she’d grown up in a home with “traditional” values but considered herself open-minded. “I was so excited about...

Police say that a man attempted to stab to death a social worker on Friday afternoon before barricading himself in his apartment. In a news release, the Holyoke Police Department said that city resident Alfredo Rivera, 50, has been charged with attempted murder and other assault charges after allegedly stabbing a 61-year-old Center for Human Development clinician repeatedly. Police arrived at the area of Ivy Avenue and Dwight Street at 4:30 p.m. on Friday after receiving reports of a stabbing. There, they found the victim profusely bleeding from his upper body, with bystanders giving him first first aid. He was...

They stormed the beaches at Normandy, liberated Nazi concentration camps and fought the Cold War in Korea and Vietnam only to die in their beds from a virus that infiltrated the veteran’s center in western Massachusetts that was their home. But on Friday the loved ones of the 76 veterans who, starting in March, died from the coronavirus at the Holyoke Soldiers Home, received a measure of belated justice. Former Superintendent Bennett Walsh, a Marine, and the home’s ousted medical director, Dr. David Clinton, were each charged with five counts of “wantonly or recklessly” causing or permitting bodily harm and...

Neal beats back primary challenge from progressive Alex Morse in Massachusetts BY MAX GREENWOOD - 09/01/20 09:44 PM EDT 53 166 Rep. Stephen Lynch beats back progressive challenger in Massachusetts Neal beats back primary challenge from progressive Alex Morse in Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, fended off a primary challenge from Holyoke, Mass., Mayor Alex Morse on Tuesday in a blow to progressives who had hoped to unseat the longtime incumbent. The Associated Press called the race for Neal just before 9:45 p.m. local time. The incumbent was ahead by...

Holyoke, Mass., Mayor Alex Morse (D) said Sunday he will remain in his congressional primary race against Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) amid a University of Massachusetts investigation into allegations that Morse had sexual relationships with students while teaching at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Morse denied ever using his position of power as mayor or as a lecturer to take advantage of students. “I want to be very clear about this. I have never, in my entire life, had a non-consensual sexual encounter with anyone. I have never used my position of power as Mayor and UMass lecturer for romantic or...

HOLYOKE, Mass. (WWLP) -As of Tuesday afternoon, thirteen veterans at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke have died and all residents and staff are being tested for COVID-19. According to Brooke Karanovich from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the following was confirmed by the Soldiers Home Tuesday: According to Brooke Karanovich from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the following was confirmed by the Soldiers Home Tuesday: 13 veteran resident deaths (6 tested positive for COVID-19, 5 pending test results, 1 negative and 1 is unknown 10 veteran residents have tested positive for COVID-19 25 veteran...

As we discussed here recently, New York State passed a special law aimed squarely at Donald Trump (which is likely an unconstitutional bill of attainder) that would allow the release of President Trump’s New York State tax returns. Beyond the constitutional questions, there was one other small hitch in this scheme. The law wouldn’t allow New York to expose them or do much of anything with the documents. It would only allow their release to specific committees in Congress. And in order for that to happen, somebody would have to ask for them.Well, that still hasn’t happened. The “somebody”...

I have been putting off writing this op-ed piece for the past several months hoping in vain that our President and Attorney Eric Holder would become real leaders and not continue down the racist road they have been traveling. However the most recent police murders in New York City have prompted me to break my silence. I did not vote for President Obama when he first ran nor did I vote for him in 2012. When he was first elected I hoped that as a person of color he would move race relations forward and become a good, if not...

ix members of the Climate Summer 2014 Team Western Mass. have been bicycling across the state and will be at the farmers' market here Thursday (July 3) to highlight concerns about the proposed expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline. The expansion of the pipeline in the Northeastern United States is believed to include a route through Franklin County, though a company spokesman said routes haven't been finalized and the company is committed to public safety and protection of the environment. Tennessee Gas Pipeline is part of the Kinder-Morgan company of Houston, Texas. The proposed mainline route of the company's Northeast...

Passenger train service is scheduled to be available here by spring 2014 with a $2 million platform to be built at Dwight and Main streets, officials said Monday. "This is a game changer for the city of Holyoke," Mayor Alex B. Morse said. Morse was joined by two congressmen and a slew of officials at a press conference to discuss the project. The event took place on a dirt lot between the end of Dwight Street and the north-south tracks owned by Pan Am Railways where a 400-foot-long concrete platform with a roofed waiting area will be built. The platform...

The United States will accelerate the resettlement of about 7,000 Iraqis referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and will contribute $18 million to the agency's appeal for Iraq, about one-third of the total, Undersecretary of State Paula J. Dobriansky said Wednesday. — Washington Post, 2/15/07 I hope it won't be thought impertinent, over-inquisitive, or — Heaven forfend! — mean-spirited of me to ask, but: Just what, exactly, are these refugees seeking refuge from? Us? A few more questions come to mind. Let us suppose, for example, that Sergeant John Q. American, a serving member of the U.S. armed...

More than a year ago, before most people had ever heard of Trayvon Martin, Miniard Culpepper didn’t want his son going around with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head. “I told him that people need to be able to see who you are,” Culpepper, regional counsel for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, said Friday during a panel discussion of racial profiling conducted during the 2012 Fair Housing and Civil Rights Conference at Western New England University. Culpepper, who is also an ordained minister and part-time pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Dorchester,...

Climate change was the lesson for Peck School students recently in a program that featured formation of a giant “350.” The number refers to a threshold: Some scientists say people must work to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide from its current level of 392 parts per million in the atmosphere to below 350 parts per million, which is considered the stable and safe upper limit. To cap the climate-change lesson plan in late September, 600 students, teachers and other staff at the school gathered in a field outside the 1916 Northampton St. school. They divided into three groups of...

Judge throws out $2 million worth of drugs, gun as evidence in case against Springfield man called 'big fish' drug trafficker SPRINGFIELD - Saying the actions of a veteran state trooper and a Holyoke police detective amounted to "lawlessness," a judge has refused to allow close to $2 million worth of cocaine and a loaded handgun to be used as evidence to prosecute a Springfield man described as a "big fish" in drug trafficking. The ruling by in Hampden Superior Court marks the third time in a month that judges have thrown out evidence in cases being prosecuted by the...

Refugees Subject Of Discrimination In Their Country HOLYOKE, Mass. -- Holyoke city councilors have voted to oppose a plan to relocate 300 Somali refugees to the city. The resolution adopted in a 12-to-2 vote asks the federal government to rescind a $320,000 grant to church groups to help resettle the refugees in the western Massachusetts city. The councilors said the state's poorest city doesn't have the resources to house and educate the refugees. Councilor Kevin Jourdain said the refugees will be looking for jobs that just don't exist in the city. The black, Muslim refugees are members of Somalia's Bantu...