revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

146
racist . Reform was impossible . Only a revolution led by people could
build a world in which racism and exploitation were abolished and selfdetermination
could be achieved .
Black people in the U .S . were part of the Bandung world which is made
up of all people of color from Asia, Africa, Latin-America, Central America,
the Caribbean, North America, the Indian sub-continent and the Pacific Is
lands . The Bandung world's historical relationship to the West was based
on the exploitation of people for their labor and the
raw materials the
colony could export to the metropolitan country . Bandung people shared
the same enemy . The struggle against their common enemy had to be international
. The international nature of the struggle is stressed throughout
the RAM documents . In the early papers, 1962-65, the international theme
is put forth uncritically . A letter of support for the Vietnamese National
Liberation Front declares RAM's solidarity with their struggle and
RAM's
independence from U .S . foreign policy . 2 In Decla ration of the Revolutionary
Action Movement , a document written in 1964, RAM states its intention
to organize the black liberation movement in the United States as a part
of the world-wide revolution . It pointed out that U .S . imperialism was the
chief enemy and appealed to the "Supreme Judge of the World" and all freedom
loving people for justice . 3 It never made clear who the Supreme Judge
was and this reference to a higher mystical power does not reappear in the
later documents .
RAM acknowledged its debt to Malcolm X in its conception of the struggle
of black America as part of an international struggle in "An Analysis
2 "Greetings to Our Militant Vietnamese Brothers," Black America , 1964,
3Declaration of the Revolutionary Action Movement , 1964, p . 1 .