David Graeber--anthropologist, anarchist, one of the originators of Occupy Wall Street, and son of Lincoln vet Kenneth Graeber--writes in this week's issue of The Nation:
The idea of the “99 percent” managed to do something that no one has done in the United States since the Great Depression: revive the concept of social...
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A small but moving episode marked the regular annual meeting of the German organization Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936-1939 (Kämpfer und Freunde der Spanischen Republik 1936-1939). It was the first such meeting without a single veteran; the last volunteer in Germany, Fritz Teppich, died last winter, and none of the tiny,...
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Check in with Democracy Now! for the latest coverage of the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street:
Occupy Wall Street protesters are converging in the Financial District in Manhattan to mark the first anniversary of the movement's beginning. Similar protests are taking place in dozens of cities today. On Sept. 17, 2011,...
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ALBA is now accepting nominations for the 2013 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. About the Award The ALBA-Puffin International Award for Human Rights Activism is granted on an annual basis to individuals or organizations whose work has had an exceptionally positive impact on the advancement and/or defense of human rights. The Award was established in 2011 to...
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A British archive has released a new virtual exhibition on Basque refugees in Carshalton, England during the Spanish civil war.
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Three more bodies have been recently exhumed with the help of a Canadian university student working with the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory to find the remains of Franco's victims.
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Trade Unionists in Scotland honor.
the 75th anniversary of the founding of the International Brigades; remember lost comrades.
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In addition to marking the 11th anniversary of the more recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, today is also the 39th anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet's military coup in Chile, in which he forced a brutal, militaristic government upon the country. As the Associated Press reports, riots began earlier today, as...
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Yesterday Mexican leftist politician and presidential runner-up Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced his decision to leave the country's Democratic Revolution Party. As the New York Times reports, López Obrador "was one of many political figures who abandoned the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in 1988 and was a popular Mexico City mayor before seeking...
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The words and deeds of the Lincoln Vets still Speak to a generation of present-day Spaniards. I received an email during the last week of August from Nacho Garcia, a young Spaniard from Burgos who maintains a blog, The Jaily News, named after the underground newspaper written by the International Brigade prisoners who...
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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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Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
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Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
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After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Seegers family did not hesitate to join the resistance. They had experience fighting fascism: their son Piet had fought for the Spanish Republic. When Tom King started digging into his family history seventy years later, he fell from one surprise into the other.
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Tina Modotti’s short life took her from Italy to North Beach and from there to Mexico, Berlin, Moscow, and civil-war Spain. Rightly known as a pathbreaking modernist photographer, she was also a radical activist. “Modotti spent the second part of her working life fighting for revolution.”
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Kirsten Weld has spent years studying Latin American dictatorships and the citizens who fight to hold them accountable. That experience has proven valuable in her current role as president of the AAUP chapter at Harvard, which, in March, sued the federal government for targeting students and faculty—and won.
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Targeted by the far right, Rutgers historian Mark Bray and his family went into exile in October. Speaking with The Volunteer from Madrid, he reflects on the current political situation. “Fascism shamelessly takes over institutions that, under liberal norms, are supposed to remain neutral.”
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I. In the Beginning Second child, Bernard, born March 1, 1915 Older brother, my father, Jacob (Jack), born June 3, 1912 Younger sister, Roslyn, born (June 1, 1922) disabled, hospitalized, died February 10, 1942 Their father, Abraham, died March 21,1930 Their mother, Nettie, died April 29, 1953 Bernie Brilliant student, graduated High...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
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In recent years, citizen groups in Leipzig and Madrid have fought to preserve the buildings that were backdrops in two of Robert Capa’s best-known photographs. Their steadfast dedication has created two sites of historical memory whose significance extends far beyond Capa’s original images.
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On November 8, 1937, Salaria Kea, a 26-year-old African American nurse from Ohio, had been in Spain for seven months and one day. The country was in disarray. Half its territory was controlled by fascist rebels. Cities were being bombed, and civilians were killed by the thousands. Thousands more were forcibly displaced. But Kea...
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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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