To the Editors: I was so pleased to see Bruce Barthol on the cover of The Volunteer. I would see him at events in Rohnert Park at the home of Corine Thornton, who died just before her 100th birthday. The memorial lunch was the last time I saw Bruce. Then, at the opening of...
Read more »

Dan Bessie, who passed away on July 1 in Brantôme, France, was born in rural Vermont, where his parents, Lincoln vet Alvah Bessie and Mary Burnett, eked out a hardscrabble existence during the Great Depression. The family lived in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and finally, Southern California. Following high school, Dan became a shipboard...
Read more »

Norah Chase, who died on May 28, 2023, was the daughter of Homer Chase, a Lincoln veteran from New Hampshire. Norah worked as a professor of English at Kingsborough Community College for many years. In the 1980s, she wrote her Ph.D thesis about her grandmother, Elba Chase Nelson, who ran for governor of N.H....
Read more »

As part of the Alvah Bessie Program, launched last year, the government of Catalonia has confirmed the identities and places of death of 212 International Brigade volunteers from Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands who died in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Next, the government will attempt to document the place of death for...
Read more »

In June, Iago Macknik-Conde, the New York high school senior featured in our last issue, performed his play about the Lincoln Brigade at the National History Day competition for Senior Individual Performance in Maryland, winning an Outstanding Entry medal. Together with his mother, Dr. Susana Martínez-Conde, Iago wrote ALBA’s summer fundraising appeal and recorded...
Read more »

Labor Activist Karen Nussbaum to be Featured in Susman Lecture November 14 This year’s Susman Lecture will feature longtime labor activist Karen Nussbaum, co-founder in 1972 of 9to5: Organization of Women Office Workers and founding director of Working America. Born in Chicago Illinois into an activist family, Nussbaum joined the anti-war movement as a...
Read more »

Sacco and Vanzetti: Film Screening and Discussion Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti—two Italian immigrant anarchists who were accused of a murder in 1920 and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial—are the subject of Sacco and Vanzetti, a documentary by ALBA board member Peter Miller that was screened and discussed at...
Read more »

To the Editors: I’ve just read Nevine Abraham’s article about the Palestinian volunteer Ali Abd el-Khaleq in your last number (“Liberating Palestine in Spain”). I’m very happy you touched this topic and raised a bit of light into this little-know participation. Thanks. But I’m sorry to say there are some important mistakes in the...
Read more »

Freda Tanz (née Gerson), born in Pittsburgh, PA, died on March 3, 2023, at the age of 99. Freda was married to Lincoln vet Alfred Leo Tanz, who pre-deceased her in 2000, and with whom she shared her love and political activism. Freda was previously married to Gilbert D. Olmstead in Los Angeles in...
Read more »

At its annual board meeting in early May, ALBA welcomed its newest member, Steve Birnbaum, a Bay Area labor attorney specializing in workers’ compensation under the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Act. Steve has long been fascinated with the history of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and will be a welcome addition to the board. For...
Read more »