Letter from ALBA: Progress in Many Directions
Dear Friends,
“There is no smooth easy road in the direction of progress,” wrote Evelyn Hutchins, the Brigadista truck driver who made countless trips across dusty furrows during the Spanish Civil War.
Inspired by Evelyn and her comrades, ALBA does its part to further ideals of social justice and human rights, past and present. While our road is certainly much smoother than the one “our people” tread in Spain almost 70 years ago, it still leads us in many directions.
The road takes us to high schools across the country as we continue to work with educators to bring history and issues of human rights alive in the classroom. This fall, we will host institutes for high school teachers in Ohio, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. As our outreach expands, you can read about the first teachers’ institute held in Detroit in July (page 3).
Moving from the Midwest to California, the 79th Annual Bay Area event will be held in Berkeley at the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse on November 8th. The matinee event will feature songs and celebration with Velina Brown (page 9) and Emilio Silva, founder of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain and winner of the 2015 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism.
For you, our natural constituency, this issue of the Volunteer features an article about the women who flew planes for the Spanish Republic and a story about the path-breaking composer Conlon Nancarrow, who also was a Lincoln veteran.
We cannot but look to the future with optimism. With your continued financial support—and here we paraphrase the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—while the road ahead will always be bumpy “it bends towards justice.”
Mil gracias,
Fraser Ottanelli
Chair of the Board of Governors
Marina Garde
Executive Director
