The much-awaited unveiling of a plaque commemorating ALB Commander Robert Merriman this coming November 6 is accompanied by a slate of educational and other programs.
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Founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The much-awaited unveiling of a plaque commemorating ALB Commander Robert Merriman this coming November 6 is accompanied by a slate of educational and other programs.
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In addition to the November celebrations in Berkeley, ALBA has an event-filled fall planned.
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In our ongoing online film discussion series, dozens of ALBA community members gathered on June 12 for our Pride Month feature, Alejandro Marín’s film Te estoy amando locamente (Love & Revolution, 2023), which tells the story of LGBTQ repression and resistance in southern Spain...
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On the morning of Thursday, November 5, the day before the Merriman plaque unveiling, UC Berkeley will host a three-hour, in-person ALBA teacher workshop titled “The United States and...
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There is one war whose close to 800 American victims are not formally recognized at Arlington: the fight against international fascism in Spain.
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“Community” is a word that comes up a lot in our work.
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The iconic group portrait of raggedy Lincoln Brigade volunteers that’s become ALBA’s calling card over the years is now finally available in an uncropped, high-res print. When and where was it taken? And who exactly are these 29 men?
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Tina Modotti and Vittorio Vidali, who dedicated a major part of their lives to the Communist International, have long been surrounded by myth. New research by the historian David Jorge suggests that they consistently strove for broad leftist fronts—even when the leadership of the...
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In 1946, the leadership of Edward Barsky’s Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee. For Ernestina González and Manuel Magaña, the brave gesture of defiance was only one chapter in their activist lives.
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After attending the AABI event honoring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Madrid, in February 2025, Anita Caref, a retired adult literacy educator, started an antifascist children’s book club.
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Ca-Vostra, a bar-hotel in the historic center of Ibiza Town that the Austrian painter Lene Schneider-Kainer opened in 1933, served for years as a refuge for artists and intellectuals...
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Few Americans know how integral Seattle has been to radical movements of the 20th century. In fact, it was Seattle-based Lincoln vets who played an important role in the...
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The Catalan government has recently disinterred the remains of 45 international combatants from a mass grave, hoping to match them with descendants. They include two Americans.
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To be, or not to to be, that is the question. / Are you now, or have you ever been, that is the question
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Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist, by Najati Sidqi. University of Texas Press, 2025.
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Brigadistes: Lives for Liberty, by Jordi Martí Rueda. Translated from the Catalan by Mary Ann Newman. Pluto Press, 2022. $18.95 (paperback with free ebook); $12.95 (ebook).
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Longtime ALBA board member Ellyn Polshek, who passed away peacfully at her home in Greenwich Village on May 12, was born Ellyn Margolis in Boston in 1930. After graduating...
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Fort Circle Gamers, a DC-based company founded in 2017 to develop and publish beautiful board games that are grounded in historical events, is preparing to launch Land and Freedom:...
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Flip through the print edition of the September Volunteer.
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York’s Volunteers In the spring semester of 2020, the first thirty-three students completed biographical sketches that were published to a student-built website. Stuyvesant High...
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On the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court case Pennsylvania v. Nelson, which wiped state sedition laws off the books, Steve Nelson’s grandson reminisces about the beloved commissar of...
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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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After attending the AABI event honoring the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in Madrid, in February 2025, Anita Caref, a retired adult literacy educator, started an antifascist children’s book club.
Read more »
Ca-Vostra, a bar-hotel in the historic center of Ibiza Town that the Austrian painter Lene Schneider-Kainer opened in 1933, served for years as a refuge for artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazism—until she herself was forced into exile. Sol Izquierdo reconstructs a remarkable life.
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, New York’s Volunteers In the spring semester of 2020, the first thirty-three students completed biographical sketches that were published to a student-built website. Stuyvesant High School teacher David Hanna declared his goal for students to compile biographical entries for each of the approximately 800 volunteers who went to Spain from...
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A new episode of the podcast “Family Secrets of the Spanish Civil War” is now available. In the podcast, which premiered in October 2024, historians Patricia Schechter and Dan Czitrom discuss the impact of the Spanish war on their and others’ families. This episode features the children of Anna and Alvin Warren. Below is a...
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In 2025 the fourth stage of ALBA’s Passport Project wrapped up. The fourth stage focused on volunteers on whom we have very little information to enable a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) search. Most of the volunteers submitted had at least a year of birth to reference. Expectations...
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On the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death, the New York Times published an article by Jason Horowitz about the “nostalgia” for Francisco Franco being expressed by a growing number of younger Spaniards, most of whom have no direct experience of the dictator. As is common these days in the Times’ coverage of any number...
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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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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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