2,501 Migrants: A Journey, a documentary film by Yolanda Cruz, looks at global migration through the eyes of Oaxacan artist, Alejandro Santiago. Available on DVD September 14.

Motive Industries’ Cannabis Composite EV Satisfies Your Need for Speed, Weed
BY ARIEL SCHWARTZ Fri Aug 20, 2010
Motive Industries recently announced plans for Canada’s first biocomposite electric vehicle–made of hemp. Will cops have automatic probable cause to search it?
In a move that will only strengthen the association between potheads and environmentalism, Motive Industries recently announced that it is working on Canada’s first biocomposite electric vehicle. The biocomposite in question? Hemp.
Read On Here.

Charlene Strong promotes marriage equality in the documentary “For My Wife”
In 2006, Charlene Strong lost her wife of 10 years, Kate Fleming, in a flash flood accident in Seattle, Washington. At the time of Kate’s hospitalization, Charlene was denied the basic right to be by her partner’s side, and was refused dignity and respect following Kate’s passing, as the funeral director dismissed Charlene’s existence in funeral preparations.
Here she is in a clip for the US Census Bureau, telling her story and how the 2010 Census could help gays and lesbians.
Watch and Read …

ARESNIC IN WATER POISONED 77 MILLION BANGLADESHIS
Originally posted on: Jun 20, 2010
DHAKA — Up to 77 million Bangladeshis have been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic from contaminated drinking water, and even low-level exposure to the poison is not risk-free, The Lancet medical journal reported.
Over the past decade, more than 20 percent of deaths recorded in a study that monitored nearly 12,000 people in the Araihazar district of the capital Dhaka appear to have been caused by arsenic-tainted well water.
By some estimates, between 35 and 77 million people in Bangladesh …

Checking In…Yolanda Cruz

July 20, 2010
This month we check in with the Native Program.  In May of this year, Bird Runningwater, director of Sundance Institute’s Native & Indigenous Program gathered a group of four fellows and three advisors in the beautiful lands of the Mescalero-Apache people in New Mexico.
Bird explains the lab in this way: “In Apache we refer to life’s journey as Nda’i bijuuł sia’, which speaks to “life’s living circle.”  The Native Program at Sundance Institute is also a part of a circle: one that begins with a filmmaker’s own point …

Yolanda Cruz: Reel Chatino Women Have Nerve
By: Olga García Echeverría
I’m not really sure if real women have to have curves (I know some flacas who are pretty chingonas), but in my opinion female filmmakers, especially indigenous female filmmakers like Yolanda Cruz, have to have a lot of nerve.
Film, afterall, has traditionally been a male-dominated field, and when we consider the historical representations of indigenous people in the media, such as the stereotypical savage or the noble indian, we can appreciate the challenges faced by contemporary filmmakers like Cruz.
Yolanda, though, isn’t …

Marijuana may cause Canada’s economic comedown
A thriving marijuana industry has aided Canada’s economy – but political shifts in the US and at home are now threatening this.
Douglas Haddow, Thursday 5th August 2010
If you’ve been paying attention to some of the more peculiar side-effects of the global recession, you may have noticed that Canadians have been behaving uncharacteristically uppity of late. This new-found swagger is a result of Canada having the dubious distinction of being the “least-bad-rich-world-economy” – an honour that would be rather unimpressive if the rest of the G8 …

Why hemp could save the world
August 10th, 2010
By: D.M.Murdock
That title probably should say, “Why hemp could have saved the world all along,” because the plant should never have been banned in the first place, and its prohibition has led to untold suffering around the globe. If we—the global human population—had been able to grow the miracle plant hemp (Cannabis genus) locally and to use it for local industries and businesses, including and especially for fuel, we would never have needed to be addicted to oil, for one, an addiction that is …

By: Associated Press
August 11th
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that all 31 states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in the capital, though its decision does not force those states to begin marrying gay couples in their territory.
In a 9-2 decision, the tribunal cited an article of the constitution requiring states to recognize legal contracts drawn up elsewhere.
It did not specify what degree of recognition must be granted to same-sex couples.
Read On.

My Fellow Conservatives, Think Carefully About Your Opposition to Gay Marriage
By Margaret Hoover
Published August 10, 2010
As a conservative Republican representing the next generation of attitudes towards gays and lesbians, I encouraged the readers of FoxNews.com last January to take a careful look at the arguments and evidence in the Prop 8 trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
The case was presented by a constitutional conservative, Ted Olson, who helped found the Federalist Society, successfully argued Bush v. Gore to the Supreme Court (among fifty-five other cases), and was George W. Bush’s Solicitor General. Working with …