Nate Thornton is pictured in this 2010 photo with a copy of this biography, "I am an International."
ILWU Local 34 retiree Nate Thornton passed away quietly on January 2, but his life was anything but quiet. His political activism spanned seven decades and he was one of the last living survivors of the International Brigades. The International Brigades were military units made up of anti-fascist volunteers from different countries, who traveled to Spain to defend the Second Spanish Republic against the fascist forces led by General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939. The volunteers from the US are referred to as the Abraham Lincoln Brigades.
Nate’s politics were shaped by his experience as a youth in the Great Depression and the labor struggles of the 20s and 30s. Those struggles eventually led, him and thousands of others of his generation who saw so many workers suffering, to join the Communist Youth League. His father, Mark, joined the Communist Party at the same time. In 1937, both Nate and his father enlisted in the Lincoln Brigades to fight fascism where they served as ambulance and truck drivers.
Despite the fascist victory in Spain, Thornton remained a self-declared internationalist. “I am an international,” Thornton said in his biographical pamphlet published in 2010. “I believe in the international rule of the world and that the people of the world should get together and decide that there are going to be no classes in this society. We work and we decide when we are going to quit working. We decide collectively. And everything of importance will be decided collectively.”
However, he remained embittered about the treatment Brigade members received from the US government, which refused to take a stand against Franco’s fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War. “They didn’t make friends with us,” Thornton is quoted as saying in a 2009 article in the Eastbay Citizen. “First thing they did was label us ‘premature anti-fascists’. It was okay to be anti-fascists but don’t be ‘premature’. We had to wait for the United States to tell us when we could be anti-fascists.”
Thornton remained politically active throughout his life. He supported the struggles of the United Farm Workers in the 60s and protested the training of right-wing Latin American military personnel by the US government at Ft. Benning, GA.
Although Thornton did not expect to see a more equitable world in his lifetime, his optimism for the future remained firm. “Once this is all done, the capitalists are going to have to work with a pick and shovel like the rest us,” Thornton said. “That’s what they don’t like. That’s what they don’t want.”
Nate Thornton is survived by his wife, Corine, who continues the fight for a better world.