For the past ten years, ALBA has been conducting professional development workshops for high school educators all over the country, and to date we have reached over 1,200 teachers in more than nine states.
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ALBA’s Human Rights Film Festival shines a light on human rights abuses—and on those who try to stop them—wherever they may happen. The geography covered by this year’s Impugning Impunity is vast.
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We have all been following the conflict over the status of Catalonia within the Spanish state. This issue of The Volunteer features an insightful interview on the topic with journalist Emilio Silva. The conflict over Catalonia has not only mobilized a sector of the...
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The 2017 George Watt Essay Prize for the best writing on the Spanish Civil War received a record number of submissions. Students from Canada, Egypt, and 18 U.S. states...
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Dayana Arrue is a Geoscience Engineering major at Rutgers University and an intern at an engineering firm. An activist for environmental and migration-related causes, she hopes to remediate groundwater...
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The fate of the POUM, among the most controversial episodes of the Spanish Civil War, is shrouded in taboo. Founded by Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín, the Partido Obrero...
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The escalating conflict between Spain and Catalonia led to the country’s deepest constitutional crisis since the transition to democracy. Journalist Emilio Silva reflects on the short- and long-term impact. “For someone on the left, the confusion in terms of priorities and alliances is hard to understand.”
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Last August, in the wake of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Ohio Humanities issued a powerful letter condemning white supremacists who attacked antifascist protestors. We speak with Executive Director Pat Williamsen about the need for public humanists to take a stand. “America has forgotten itself.”
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The plight of the non-citizen veterans of US military service who have been deported stands as a small but telling example of how our country falls far short of living up to its promises.
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Julio Llamazares was born in 1955 in Vegamián, a small town in the province of León, in the north of Spain, where his father worked as a teacher. In...
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In the autumn of 1937, after the Republican front had collapsed in Asturias and with any possibility of retreat being prevented by the sea, hundreds of fugitives took refuge...
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Alejandra Soler Gilabert, who died in Valencia, Spain last March, was one of the Spanish teachers who worked with the nearly 3,000 children who were evacuated to the Soviet...
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Joan Sales, Uncertain Glory. Foreword by Juan Goytisolo. Translated by Peter Bush. New York: New York Review Books. 2014. 457 pages.
Anonymous The old Communist behind the bar is decanting rot-gut red into green bottles, pours me a taste. He’d fought in Spain with the Lincoln Brigade and in the...
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Dr. Mark Bray, controversial author of The Antifa Handbook, delivered the Bill Susman lecture to a lively crowd of 100 at Wayne State University on October 17. His appearance...
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To the Volunteer: Reading “Forgotten Fighters: American Anarchist Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War,” I noted that at least one prominent American who volunteered for service in the Anarchist...
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Rob Waters kindly allowed The Volunteer blog to reprint his interview with Reuben Barr, originally published in The Tenderloin Times, June 1984, v. 8, no. 5, pp. 4 and...
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Shortly after the publication of the blog post Seven American Volunteers Refused Permission to Land in France, Paul Hofmann the...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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Peter Verbergh translated this article from CeSoir describing the arrest of the Dallet-Nelson Group. “The Interrogation of the Passengers of the Sans-Pareil”, CeSoir, March 29, 1937 (From our Special Correspondent) Perpignan March 28 (By Telephone) Yesterday morning around 10am, The Coast Guard Vessel Cebère docked in the port of Port-Vendres alongside the torpedo boat...
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Only five veterans of the Spanish Civil War are known to be buried in Virginia outside of Arlington National Cemetery: two in Richmond, two in Norfolk, and one in Big Stone Gap. ALB Tribute visited the graves of Harry Edward Farris and Thomas Moore in Richmond as well as Manuel Lizarrago and Crawford Morgan...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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