‘Fulton Street’ is a documentary taking place in Bed-Stuy, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill. The project is titled for the Fulton mainway that bisects these neighborhoods in Central Brooklyn, currently in the throes of gentrification. To personify this phenomenon, I am approaching subjects who have lived and worked in Central Brooklyn their entire lives. The project connects ongoing gentrification to the quality of life for residents and business owners in a modern world community of African, Caribbean, Arab, Latino, Southern, and Asian people of color. The main subjects are predominantly African American, ranging from 18 to 80 years old.

I’m always conflicted when it comes to so-called “conscious rap”. Labels serve a purpose, yet at the same time they are confining and often times misleading. Immortal Technique is a “conscious rapper”, yet one can find countless homophobic and misogynistic lines throughout his albums. Cam’ron is a “gangsta/crack rapper”, and yet his classic tracks “D.R.U.G.S.” and “Sports, Drugs, & Entertainment” both astute commentaries that even Nancy Reagan could have championed in her “Just Say No” crusade. Another problem I have with the “conscious” label is that it immediately strips the music of its aesthetics and style. It removes the craft and art from the music. All to frequently, we as the listener tend to conflate “good message” with “good music”. Fortunately for us all, there exist emcees such as Narcy [The Narcicyst], an Iraqi emcee raised in Canada, who effortlessly weaves aesthetics and message together. It is music whose both form and content leave one feeling enlightened.

Entering the home studio that Yassin Kassem and Mohammed Turek of the rap duo Invincible Voice (I-Voice) have built in the Palestinian Refugee Camp of Bourj el Barajneh gives do-it-yourself (DIY) a whole new meaning. A small bedroom - which on this day was subject to enduring electricity outages - is converted into a base for mixing, producing, songwriting and entertaining the journalists that have started to take an increasing interest in these boys’ story. We enter the dark studio, leaving the door open to let the outside daylight in. Grey sponge sounds-proofs the walls of the ground-floor converted bedroom, and Tupac paraphernalia decorates them. This is one of the first “production houses” inside the camps of Lebanon, and is playing a big role in spreading the rap bug in refugee camps across the country.

A week after the too-big, and controversy-laden Toronto International Film Festival has officially packed its bags (until next year), Toronto can start making room for the takeover of the 2nd Annual Toronto Palestine Film Festival …

Current TV has produced a documentary on Pakistani immigrants in Barcelona. Spain has one of the highest numbers of Pakistani migrants in Europe, second to the UK. Current TV’s documentary shows some of the challenges …

Every year, as the crisp winds of September arrive and labour day post-summer humdrum is laid to rest - a painful anniversary reminds all of us why the world we live in is a very …

“Exotic locales” in “far and dangerous places” are not new muses for musicians from the West. Although most of my own iTunes playlists consist of music and musicians from around the world - fitting into the too broad “world music” category - I am always wary of such collaborations and how they represent the muse/country in question, and of how these musical encounters can turn into self-indulgent congratulatory efforts for the recording artist. A new collaboration comes from Swedish songstress Victoria Bergsman, lead singer of The Concretes and famous for lending her soft, feminine voice to indie darlings Peter Bjorn and John. For her latest project, Bergsman travels to Pakistan with producer/guitarist/engineer Andreas Soderstrom to record her solo album “East of Eden”.

One of the first things a (good) transnational activist learns is the practical meaning of solidarity — which, as the latest issue of New York Times Magazine illustrates, is a concept not easily grasped by even the worldliest and most committed of advocates. This week’s installment of the NYT Magazine manages (for the most part) to thoughtfully and contextually explore the plights of Third World women, while examining some of the the hard realities of transnational activism. Nevertheless, the clear subtext of the articles belies the contributors’ apparent commitment to building real and lasting solidarity movements. As journalist Edwin Okong’o points out, the lead feature paints a rather two-dimensional (albeit compassionate) portrait of life in the brutal third world, but shies away from covering the efforts of impactful Third World activists and movements in favor of spotlighting the high-dollar (emphasis on the $) development projects of western nonprofit organizations.

I am too young to have lived through the period where coups and dictatorships were common in Latin America but many of the elders in my community are not and it is their very real and personal stories that have motivated me to do everything I can to support the resistance against the coup.