Planning for your will and your legacy? The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade established their legacy with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. Now you can continue their “good fight” by establishing a legacy gift to ALBA in your will. As a non-profit educational organization, 501(c)(3), ALBA can accept legacy gifts in any amount,...
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Justice, Spanish Style
According to today's issue of Público:
1. Judge Baltasar Garzón initiates an investigation into the forced disappearance and/or assasination of 113,000 Spaniards by Francoist forces.
2. Judge Baltasar Garzón is accused of judicial malfeasance (prevaricación) for having initiated that investigation, and is suspended from his post as a Judge.
3. An Argentine judge, invoking...
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Among the distinguished guests at ALBA’s 2011 reunion to honor Judge Garzón were Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School, who interviewed the Judge; as well as Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, and Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who both gave speeches at the event....
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The 75th Bay Area reunion, held in Berkeley, California, on Memorial Day, was graced with a surprise guest. Looking spry and mobile at age 95, Delmer Berg, one of the five surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, took the floor. The Columbia, California, resident advised the audience to keep up the good fight...
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A news item buried in yesterday's edition of the Spanish e-paper El Plural called attention to a little-known case pending in Spain's Constitutional Court, whose outcome could have definitive repercussions on two of Garzón's three cases.
There is an anomalous figure in Spanish law known as "acusación popular", which allows unharmed citizens to press...
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The argument being made by Interights is fascinating and compelling: the violation of Judge Garzón’s rights is being committed in the prosecution itself, undermining judicial independence. This argument seems powerful and coherent, given the lengthy list of bizarre twists and turns that have characterized this case from the start.
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ALBA is getting ready for two major annual celebrations in New York and the Bay Area. The New York program--on May 14th, at the Eisner/Lubin auditorium on Washington Square, New York City (tickets here)--will feature Judge Baltasar Garzón, who will receive the first ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, alongside Michael Ratner, director...
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Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish magistrate who has headed the effort to identify human rights violations during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, will receive the first ALBA-Puffin International Award for Human Rights Activism at the ALBA annual reunion in New York City on May 14. (Press release; tickets; Facebook.)...
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San Francisco, February 25, 2011, ALBA-Bill Susman Lecture: Marjorie Cohn; NYC, May 14, 2011: Annual Reunion and Human Rights Award; Berkeley, May 29, 2011 Freight and Salvage Bay Area Annual Reunion.
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On September 17, over 150 people attended the opening of “La colonia: a photo album of Spanish immigrants in New York, 1898–1945” at NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center. Curated by ALBA board member James D. Fernández, “La colonia” uses the family archives of seven descendants of Spanish immigrants to explore and display the history of Spaniards in New York. (Video...
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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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Today, the ALBA Board of Governors issued the following statement: During this time of renewed labor action and organizing, ALBA reaffirms its support for the struggle for workers’ rights happening across the country. The headlines may announce victories, but they can also serve as a reminder that we must continue to be vigilant in...
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Inspirational and courageous; that was the IWW. Click here then the forward arrow to listen as author Ahmed White talks with former ALBA board member Burt Cohen about White’s new book Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers on the podcast keepingdemocracyalive.com.
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Nobody remembers Lloyd Mallan. I came across his name while writing a book on poet- playwright Federico García Lorca’s iconic afterlife. Mallan’s piece on the poet’s assassination, published in 1939, was instrumental in spreading to the U.S. and Canada a highly embellished narrative of poetic martyrdom that helped shape the public image of Lorca....
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ALBA is proud to partner with the Spanish government in the publication of a 60-page curricular guide for high-school students and teachers in Spain as part of a government-sponsored series. Highlighting the experiences of U.S. volunteers in the International Brigades, the guide invites readers to use these stories as an inspiration to set...
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For an English translation of this article, see here.
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On May 30, 1937, the Republican freighter Ciudad de Barcelona was hit by a torpedo fired by a lurking Nationalist submarine. The torpedo tore a gaping hole in the ship and it rapidly sank. A Republican seaplane drove the submarine away with a depth charge attack, then landed and began rescuing men in the...
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Dr. Irving Busch (1896-1960), a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, volunteered to serve in Spain with the American Medical Bureau. In Spain, he served with the Republican Medical Services. Both before and after Spain Busch was an amateur photographer and he carried his camera along with him. After his death...
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The picture of a young man in a jaunty hat and a big smile stared out of the 1978 issue of The Volunteer. The photo was accompanied by a request for information about Sidney Lorraine who died in Spain during the course of The Retreats. There is no evidence of any replies. Sidney Hotchkiss...
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Many American veterans went on to serve in WWII and Korea. This list is a work in progress. Those marked with an “*” were killed during the war. Office of Strategic Services Aalto, William Oliver WWII US Army, joined December 1941 served as 1st SGT transfer to OSS April 12, 1942; Dismissed after he...
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Eddie O’Neill was born in the same County Tyrone neighborhood as the poet Charlie Donnelly (1914-1937), who was killed in action at Jarama while serving as a platoon leader with the James Connolly Section of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Inspired by the sacrifice of his fellow countryman and fellow Irish Socialist Republican, Eddie set...
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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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