From Kung Fu to Hip Hop: Globalization, Revolution, and Popular Culture

CONCLUSION: From Possibility to Actualization of Another World

And what is the result of decolonizing the spirit? It is as if one truly does possess a third eye, and this eye opens. One begins to see the world from one’s own point of view; to interact with it out of one’s own conscience and heart. —Alice Walker Having traversed from the decolonizing nationalism of the kung fu cultural revolution to the autonomous forum of hip hop and Jeet Kune Do aesthetics in a loosely evolutionary framework, we may now be able to reexamine the development of popular movements transcending globalization. The first step in such an endeavor is to return to Chiapas, arguably the birthplace of the latest (yet ancient) subjectivity of global subversion. When the Zapatistas took up arms to single-handedly oppose the forces of globalization, it demarcated the turning point of the so-called antiglobalization movement as a whole. The Zapatista’s organizing principle, “directing by obeying, and for everyone— everything,”1 which they vigorously applied to the praxis of grassroots democracy , created a breakthrough both in the reformist partisan and the revolutionary vanguard tradition in the conventional social movements.2 The uniqueness of the Zapatistas has been its flexibility and openness, which are conducive for the evolution of its movement. As the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional or Zapatista National Liberation Army) entered the phase of a dialogue process with the Mexican government, beginning with the peace talks in San Cristobal in 1994, it began to demote the Zapatista Army to a “largely symbolic role.”3 Armed with “sticks made 203 CONCLUSION From Possibility to Actualization of Another World from different kinds of jungle trees” and the “word,” the EZLN engaged with the creation of a political space where grassroots democracy could proliferate.4 Their call for a national democratic convention—as a nonviolent political alternative—soon developed into a “national, nonviolent, independent civilian and political force with its base in the EZLN,” called the Zapatista Front of National Liberation (ZFNL) in 1995–1996.5 By 1996, the ZFNL was able to host both the “Continental” and “Intercontinental” Encounters for Humanity Against Neoliberalism.The Intercontinental Encounter (or Encuentro), which assembled three thousand activists from forty countries, marked the historical threshold beyond which the Zaptatistas’ struggle converged with the global grassroots movement transcending globalization.6 From the second encounter in 1997 held in Spain onward, the global circulation of a subversive paradigm as well as direct actions began to accelerate remarkably, owing significantly to the expansion of cyberspace.7 People’s Global Action (PGA, hereafter) embodies such a process of global circulation. Founded at the Second Encounter as an offshoot of the international Zapatista movement, PGA catapulted the networks of grassroots democracy toward the united front against the forces of globalization, specifically against the existence and mission of the World Trade Organization (WTO).8 Thus, rather than being a centralized and rigid organizational center, PGA became an empowering common space (just as the Zapatistas provided its space for diverse movement) for various struggles—indigenous people, women’s rights, environmentalists, animal rights, workers, farmers, etc.9 —to forge vital links for concerted actions. Accordingly, their global network enabled coordinated and simultaneous global resistance across the globe.The global protest against the third WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999 covered seventy-four cities from India, Brazil, Turkey, and Mexico, to Australia, with other places like Korea, the Philippines and Greece where actions were organized without a call.10 PGA’s solidarity with the Direct Action Network of the United States lay the groundwork for the people’s power to converge in Seattle. The post-Seattle global social movements saw a significant sign of growth of what was sown by the Zapatistas’ idea of Encuentro. In the early 2000, a group of Brazilians planned to organize a meeting to counter the World Economic Forum, the convention of political and economic elites of global power in Davos, Switzerland. The earnest search for a movement beyond the “Battle of Seattle” was a central concern for the organizers, as one of the initiators, Francisco Whitaker, remarks: “Over and beyond the demonstrations and mass protests, though, it seemed possible to move on and to offer specific proposals, to seek concrete responses to the challenges of building ‘another world. . . .’”11 The blueprint for the World Social Forum (WSF or the From Kung Fu to Hip Hop 204 Forum, hereafter) was laid out in collaboration with...