Features

Faces of ALBA: Peter Glazer

November 6, 2021
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<em>Faces of ALBA:</em> Peter Glazer

Peter Glazer is a world-renowned director and playwright and a professor of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He sits on the ALBA board and is an active leader in ALBA’s Bay Area programs. Peter’s father was the folk singer Tom Glazer. You have written several plays and musicals...
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Human Rights Column: Teachers in the Trenches—What’s Behind the Attack on Critical Race Theory?

November 6, 2021
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<em>Human Rights Column:</em> Teachers in the Trenches—What’s Behind the Attack on Critical Race Theory?

CRT is a curious target for legislators and school board members, if only because it is not taught at the K-12 level and only rarely to undergraduates. Today, it’s serving as a red herring to silence the discussion of race and racism across classrooms in the U.S. In recent months, Republican legislatures in approximately...
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From Mississippi to Madrid: Models for the World

November 6, 2021
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From Mississippi to Madrid: Models for the World

ALBA Honorary Board Member Robin D.G. Kelley spoke in September at ALBA’s Bay Area celebration. Here is the complete text of his address.
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Bruce Barthol and Barbara Dane: “Music has the power to unite.”

November 6, 2021
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Bruce Barthol and Barbara Dane: “Music has the power to unite.”

As part of the Bay Area event this fall, Bruce Barthol conversed with Barbara Dane. Here are excerpts from their conversation, which is also included in the video recording of the event. 
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Jan Kurzke’s Spanish Civil War Memoir: A Soldier’s Tale

August 14, 2021
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Jan Kurzke’s Spanish Civil War Memoir: A Soldier’s Tale

Kurzke's memoir The Good Comrade was published this past May by the Clapton Press, after having been tucked away for years, known only to a small number of specialist historians. In this new introduction to the book, Richard Baxell explains why it's so valuable.
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Salud y Shalom: American Jewish Volunteers in Spain

August 14, 2021
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<em>Salud y Shalom:</em> American Jewish Volunteers in Spain

Thirty years ago, I traveled around the United States equipped with a cheap tape recorder I spoke to 39 Jewish-American veterans of the Spanish Civil War. When they went to Spain in 1937, very few of the people I spoke to would have invoked their Jewishness for putting their lives on the line.
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Exhuming Injustice: A Mass Grave in Manzanares

August 14, 2021
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Exhuming Injustice: A Mass Grave in Manzanares

When people think about mass graves in Spain, most relate them to the war years. Yet an estimated 50,000 victims were executed after the war. This summer, I visited a cemetery where the ARMH are exhuming the remains of some of these victims.
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The International Brigades in Color

August 14, 2021
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The International Brigades in Color

When a friend first pointed me to Tina Paterson’s colorized portraits of International Brigade volunteers, I was skeptical. Yet the images are disturbing and strangely powerful. Throwing time out of joint, they undermine the idea that the Civil War is a remote historical occurrence.
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Aking Chan, a Chinese Volunteer in the Basque Army

May 13, 2021
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Aking Chan, a Chinese Volunteer in the Basque Army

A found manuscript in the Basque Country leads to a surprising correspondence.
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Remembering in a Time of Lockdown

May 11, 2021
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Remembering in a Time of Lockdown

In July last year a small group gathered—socially distanced—at the memorial to the International Brigades in London. As Jeremy Corbyn spoke of the “incredible sense of solidarity with people around the world” to a camera in a near-deserted Jubilee Gardens, I uploaded a short video as a personal act of remembrance on the International...
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