One of DJ Spooky’s latest projects involved traveling to Antarctica to use the ice, wildlife, footsteps and other sounds to construct an album and multimedia performance. Using ambient sound as source material is older than using vinyl samples, but Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a multimedia performance that comes at a key time in the life of the icy continent. As my homie Joe Block once said about one of my raps, “I woudn’t go bumping it in my car or nothin’”, but I have to hand it to a real hip-hop icon for doing his part for the struggle.

With a 21 percent jobless rate in Motown, many people have taken advantage of empty lots to build community gardens. This AP article reports that within the city of Detroit, hundreds of urban vegetable gardens have popped up on abandoned properties. This kind of land grab has become common in the city where a house was famously purchased for 1 dollar.

In Los Angeles, a much more contentious story played out in the ashes of the 1992 Riots. The Garden Movie documents the story of an urban farm in South Central and the fight to preserve it from development. Here is a preview:

The Beastie Boys’ production company Oscilloscope Laboratories has put out a documentary about water privatization. Irena Salina’s film, which was an official selection at Sundance, builds the case against corporate ownership of water resources. The website for Flow has a link to a petition to add a 31st amendment to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishing access to clean water as a fundamental human right.

Check out the preview:

Last night, the Green Rapper crew saw a screening of the documentary Thirst, Fighting the Corporate Theft of our Water, Thirst tells the story of citizens’ fight for public control of water in California, Bolivia, and India. As the title might imply, the arguments put forth are fairly one-sided and the movie runs a bit long, but overall the film is informative and well-done.

The film opens with footage of civil strife in Bolivia after the privatization of water resources in Bolivia, but is mostly centered around activists in Stockton California and their fight to keep the local water resources from being controlled by a multinational. The town caved into the outside interests, but later overturned the decision to privatize water.

The most compelling story is that of Rajendra Singh and his work in Alwar, Rajasthan in India. His NGO helped to empower villagers to take control of water management due to the government’s slow progress. This story probably hit home for me because it was what I would have loved to see happen in the in Oviedo.

As a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic, I used to take bucket baths and pour a bucket of water into the toilet to flush in lieu of running water. I had to chase down cistern trucks just like everyone else and then carry buckets of water indoors. Various government aqueduct projects came and went, and after two years passed, I really wanted to do something about the problem. Though I had neither the resources nor the time to build an aqueduct, I was able to borrow a video camera from a fellow volunteer and shoot a documentary to raise awareness.

My goal was to spread word about the precarious water situation in the community where I lived. After returning to the states, I edited the documentary, sent it around, and posted it to Google Video. Later, a friend of mine in Oviedo, D.R informed me that the water situation had improved. I don’t believe my documentary had much effect, but it was screened at several film festivals and perhaps helped some Americans become aware of their water use. Here is the video: