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American Poets, Refusing to Go Gentle, Rage Against the Right

Alexandra Alter The New York Times
There seems to be a growing audience for poetry that speaks to the anxieties of our era. Traffic to the academy’s online poetry archive has surged in recent months. Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise,” has been viewed nearly 470,000 times since Nov. 8, compared to about 280,000 times in that period the previous year, while Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again,” has been viewed some 280,000 times, up from about 88,000 times.

Harvesting Union Rights in the Field

Sonia Singh Labor Notes
Unlike most guestworkers, many in North Carolina have a say in their working conditions and seniority rights because they belong to a union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee.

Why Scientists Are Marching on Washington and More Than 400 Other Cities; March for Science & Peoples Climate March are Inherently Connected

Joel Achenbach, Ben Guarino, Sarah Kaplan; 350.org Chicago Tribune
The Science March is about respecting science, the Peoples Climate March is about acting on it. One march is about listening to science, the other is about acting on it. Today's march, taking place on Earth Day, will march in defense of truth and scientific fact. Next week the Peoples Climate March will put forward a vision to build bold solutions that tackle climate change, create and retain fair jobs, and bring forth justice truly for all.

The GOP’s Overtime Reform Plan: Fraud Masquerading as Flexibility

Justin Miller The American Prospect
Amid endless political cacophony in Washington, D.C., House Republicans are quietly advancing legislation that would drive a freight train through a central tenet of New Deal-era labor law: overtime. With Obama’s landmark overtime expansion blocked in the courts, conservatives roll out a plan that would undo overtime pay as we know it.

Climate Change as Genocide Inaction Equals Annihilation

Michael T. Klare TomDispatch
“We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. For the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity has known it. A possibility might be ‘terracide’ from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist." Tom Engelhardt, May 2013

French Elections

The presidential election in France could determine the political future of Europe. John Oliver visits an excessively French bistro to deliver an urgent message to voters.

Ode to Joy in Nuremburg

Beethoven's Ode to Joy (Ninth Symphony) is the official anthem of the European Union. Flash mob performance by the Nuremburg Sympthony.