Portside

Edward Snowden talks NSA and internet surveillance at SXSW.

Manufacturing jobs are not what they used to be. Companies increasingly hire temp workers through contractors who are paid less and even wear different shirts. Employees paint a grim picture of the work and the long-term impact on the local economy.

Fifteen towns approve resolution that would establish bank that works for people of Vermont, not Wall Street.

Anti-Fascist Action Ukraine estimated that 30 percent of the protesters in Kiev's Independence Square were far-right ultranationalists, and that was before the shooting began, when more of them joined the street battles.

Witnessing a brutal occupation, where permanent insecurity and maximum humiliation are the norm.

Many new state workers — ranging from teachers to police officers to street cleaners — will retire with fewer retirement benefits than their current counterparts. Since 2009, faced with ballooning bills and strained budgets, 45 states have either cut pension benefits or increased mandatory employee retirement plan contributions, or both.

Black History Month with Barbara Ransby, author of the new biography, "Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. Legendary civil rights activist, singer and actor Paul Robeson - one of the most celebrated singers and actors of the 20th century - attacked, blacklisted and hounded for his political beliefs. Eslanda Robeson, was an author, an anthropologist and a globally connected activist who worked to end colonialism in Africa and racism in the U.S

Underneath global apparel's glitzy makeup lies an unglamorous underbelly - one of violent working conditions and structural faux pas. Case and point: factory fires. In September 2012, 300 garment workers lost their lives when a factory caught ablaze in Pakistan - two months later, 112 deaths after a similar tragedy in Bangladesh. Add China to the list, and 2012 will go on record as the deadliest year to be a garment worker.

American political history can also be told as the story of the great protest movements that periodically well up from the bottom of American society and the impact these movements have on American institutions. There would be no founders to memorialize without the Revolutionary-era mobs who provided the foot soldiers to fight the British; no films about the quandaries of Abe Lincoln during the Civil War without the abolitionists and the thousands of runaway slaves...