Kate Doyle, winner of the ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, now serves on ALBA’s Board of Governors where she leverages her formidable expertise. Aaron Retish speaks with her about her work uncovering U.S. involvement in Latin American human rights violations.
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Among a handful of India-born brigaders who fought with the Spanish Republic was Gopal Mukund Huddar, a journalism student in his thirties. Nancy and Len Tsou, experts on the Asian volunteers in Spain, tell his remarkable story, which passes through the POW camp at San Pedro de Cardeña.
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Michael Ratner, who passed away in May, was an internationalist in the best sense of the word. That meant for him in the first place to combat the use and abuse of power by U.S. actors in, and very often outside, their own country. A tribute from Wolfgang Kaleck, founder and head of...
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In 1949 Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior under Franklin Roosevelt, described General Francisco Franco as a “mimic of Hitler” whose regime “chokes the breath out of liberty in a police state.” Four years later, The Christian Century, a liberal Protestant magazine, called Spain “that pathetic remnant of medievalism.” The Spanish Civil War...
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There are numerous comparisons that can be made between the conflict in Syria and the Spanish Civil War. Both conflicts feature a ruthless dictator, appalling loss of life, war crimes and the massive displacement of tens of thousands of refugees. However, such superficial comparisons apply to many other conflicts. Merely in terms of...
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On May 20, 1938, Dave Lipton tells his parents that he is leaving for the Catskills to work as a waiter. Instead, he sails for Europe to join the Abraham Lincoln. Dave sends letter after letter home detailing his hopes and begging for forgiveness. He never receives a reply. Decades later, his niece Eunice...
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While attending an ALBA institute, a veteran Brooklyn teacher discovers that a Lincoln volunteer lived just around the corner. He decides to find out more and unearths a touching story.
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Salvadoran survivors of state terror—crimes for which no one has been held accountable—have created an organization that helps families uncover the truth of what happened to their lost loved ones. This is no small task. But given the intense U.S. involvement in El Salvador, some of the information they seek may be available in...
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The legacy of the Spanish Civil War played a crucial role in the lives of Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill, the winners of the ALBA/Puffin Award. But how do we ensure its transmission to younger generations, whose life world is so different that they often have trouble even reading the Lincolns’ hand-written letters? ALBA’s...
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Acceptance speech by Jeremy Scahill on receiving the 2016 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism. May 7, 2016. New York. Lydia just pushed me to come here first (crowd laughs.) I really, in all candor, I feel like I shouldn’t be here receiving this award, particularly because I think that my co-recipient, Lydia, is one of the...
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