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Disturbing Pablo Neruda’s Rest

By Ilan Stavans The New York Times
On its surface, a poem seems incapable of stopping a bullet. Yet Chile’s transition to democracy was facilitated by the poet’s survival in people’s minds, his lines repeated time and again, as a form of subversion. Life cannot be repressed, he whispered in everyone’s ears. It was a message for which he may have died, but that lives on in his verse.

Colombia Peace Marches Draw Thousands

By Peter Bolton and Jonathan Watts The Guardian
Tens of thousands of Colombians have taken to the streets of Bogotá in support of peace talks aimed at ending Latin America's longest-running insurgency

Media Bits & Bytes - As The World Turns edition

Portside
AP drops the "i-word"; FCC’s future; When Google lost its cool; Are alt-weeklies toast?; A ‘disruptive’ cable channel; ProPublica meets Reddit; Time’s big lie; Kochs shop for dailies; Exxon > freedom of speech; NLRB Rules In Favor of CWA Against Cablevision

What You Need to Know About the Indiana University Strike

James Cersonsky and StudentNation The Nation
Though Indiana University's March Madness is over, a generation of gutting and restructuring has left Hoosier country on its feet. This Thursday and Friday, the university will be the site of a statewide strike.

NYC Fast-Food Workers Fight Back Against Super-Sized Corporations

Peter Rugh The Indypendent
The ongoing organizing effort of fast-food workers has highlighted the highly exploitative conditions faced by those at the deep fryers and cash registers of America’s most profitable fast food outlets, which include Burger King, McDonald’s, Dominos, Pizza Hut and KFC. The actions and considerable media attention has also begun to chip away at the conventional image of a fast-food worker as someone who bears her servitude with a youthful grin.