Obama Defends Sweeping Education Reforms in Face of Criticism from Minority and Teachers' Groups - Democracy Now!

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President Obama took on critics of his administration’s sweeping education reform plan on Thursday in a nearly hour-long speech at the National Urban League’s 100th anniversary convention. His address came on the heels of news that New York public school students are not performing nearly as well as prior state tests had revealed. We speak with Diane Ravitch, the former Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, and Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters.

Spanish Civil War Volunteers' Cultural Legacy Kept Alive By Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives to be Feted on May 2nd at New York's Museo del Barrio..

Archive's Letters, Photos, Films and Documents Preserve "The Good Fight" For Inspiration and Education

Photo of Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Ernest Hemingway. Pablo Picasso. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Federico Garcia Lorca. All were deeply touched by the efforts of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- the nearly 3000 Americans who fought against Franco's forces in Spain in the 1930s. Those volunteers will be celebrated Sunday, May 2 at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives' (ALBA) 74th Volunteers for Liberty reunion program and reception at New York's Museo del Barrio.

Picasso's "Guernica" (photo above) and Hemingway's 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' are probably the best-known works inspired by the Spanish Civil War, and ALBA has recently been instrumental in two others. The first, a film shot by the legendary photographer Cartier-Bresson (currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art) was recently rediscovered in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives collection. And a new staging of Spanish poet Garcia Lorca's play 'El Retablillo de Don Cristóbal' quotes letters from Brigade volunteers preserved by the Archive - and available free to the public on the ALBA website at http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/digital-library

The May 2 program and reception celebrate the Abraham Lincoln Brigade's volunteers and their legacy of activism with the presentation of the first annual ALBA Activist Award to Amy Goodman, author and host of Democracy Now!; an appearance by Matti Mattison, one of the last surviving Abraham Lincoln Brigade volunteers, now an honorary Spanish citizen;, a talk by ALBA board members James Fernández and Sebastiaan Faber that will take attendees on an adventure through the Archives; and a performance by Bruce Barthol (Country Joe and the Fish) of the stirring songs of the Spanish Civil War.

Event information and tickets are available via
http://www.alba-valb.org/news-events/events/#alba-74^th-reunion-of

Hear ALBA Executive Director Jeanne Houck discuss the Abraham Lincoln Brigade on the Leonard Lopate Show on New York's WNYC Friday, April 30 at 12:40 PM at http://www.wnyc.org/flashplayer/player.html

Read The Volunteer, founded by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade:
http://www.albavolunteer.org/

Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove - Democracy Now!

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RIP Professor Zinn...

We pay tribute to the late historian, writer and activist Howard Zinn, who died suddenly on Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of eighty-seven. Howard Zinn’s classic work A People’s History of the United States changed the way we look at history in America. It has sold over a million copies and was recently made into a television special called The People Speak. We remember Howard Zinn in his own words, and we speak with those who knew him best: Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove.