DANIEL BOONE SCHIRMER

KASAMA Vol. 20 No. 2 / April-May-June 2006 / Solidarity Philippines Australia Network

activist author, scholar and historian

DANIEL BOONE SCHIRMER activist author, scholar and historian devoted his life to human rights, social justice, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and Philippine solidarity work. As a young student at Harvard University during the Depression years in the 1930s, Boone was a key figure in the radical student movement. In 1973, he and 60 other concerned Americans founded Friends of the Filipino People, to campaign for the end of U.S. support for the Marcos regime, release of political prisoners and removal of U.S. military bases. Boone Schirmer died peacefully on April 21 2006 at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. He was 91 years of age.

Environmental engineer Dr. Jorge Emmanuel, a US-based Filipino activist, remembers Boone from the days of the anti-Marcos struggle: ”To see an old man working feverishly in the FFP office, folding pamphlets, licking hundreds of stamps, answering phone calls, and working late into the evenings with such intensity gave us so much hope in the face of overwhelming odds. He inspired both Filipinos and Americans alike… We cannot help but mourn his passing. But in today’s world of U.S. wars, corporate greed, environmental destruction, and injustice, we also know what Boone would say:

DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE!”