Video clip of Howard Zinn's talk at Boone Memorial on June 17, 2006.

Monthly Review July-August 2006 Notes from the Editors

Daniel Boone Schirmer, a longtime contributor of articles to MR and author of Republic or Empire: American Resistance to The Philippine War (1972) and The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance (1987) died on April 21, aged ninety-one. From the 1930s through the 1950s Schirmer worked against white supremacy and for fair housing and unemployment insurance. For his troubles he was indicted under the notorious Smith Act for ?conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence.? Schirmer, called "Boone" because his energy reminded many of his ancestor, Daniel Boone, spent four years underground, emerging when the charges were dismissed, to complete a doctorate at Boston University. From the 1960s on, he was a fierce campaigner against U.S. imperialism, especially in the Philippines, demanding human rights, the end of the Marcos dictatorship, and the elimination of U.S. military bases, nearly all of which were achieved during his lifetime.

The Manila Times Internet Edition  Friday, July 07, 2006

THE OTHER VIEW By Elmer A. Ordo Friends of the Filipino People

THE recent departure of activist scholar Daniel Boone Schirmer was an occasion for those who have known him to remember the man most prominently identified with the US-based Friends of the Filipino People. A year or so ago, I wrote about the Schirmers when wife Peggy passed away.  I met Boone (as Dr. Schirmer was called) in Montreal in the late fall of 1974 when our group held a forum on the Philippines under martial law. Boone's daughter, Audrey, and her Canadian husband, Martin Duckworth, attended the forum and became friends as well as allies in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship. Boone came as speaker all the way from Boston. I noted then that the Friends of the Filipino People are the heirs to the work of the Boston-centered Anti-Imperialist League that opposed the US annexation of the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. The best known of league's writers was Mark Twain. A Harvard graduate and World War II veteran, and as a teacher, Boone was a victim of the McCarthy witch-hunting era in the fifties and had to go underground because of his background with the US Communist Party. In better times he was able to finish his PhD studies in Boston University, with his research on the Anti-Imperialist League. In 1972, at the height of the Vietnam War, he had his book Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War (Schenkman) published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his home became an alternative graduate school for Philippine studies. A number of young Filipino activists in the antimartial-law alliance earned accredited MA degrees in Boone?s school. This was the time when Friends of the Filipino People was formed among Americans. Members came from church groups, academe, labor, other professionals and Filipino Americans who all shared the view that the dictator was an instrument of US imperialism. The FFP did coalition work with Filipino groups with members and those who were stranded or forced into exile in the US when martial law was declared. Groups then were divided along ideological lines, but the FFP maintained a kind of ?united front.? There was redbaiting within the loose coalition with the Movement for a Free Philippines under Raul Manglapus trying to keep distance from the "communists." The FFP itself was not spared from redbaiting simply because of Boone?s radical background. Boone and FFP?S overriding concern in working with groups was to lobby for the US government to cut off aid to the dictatorship and to inform the American people about the issues of human-rights violations, repression and forms of subjugation of the will of Filipinos under martial rule. While the FFP today is not too visible (at least from this distance) the issues remain the same. And there are new ones attributable to US foreign policy like the "war on terror." The Visiting Forces Agreement that enables the US to maintain an almost permanent military presence here, the pending antiterrorist bill, the scuttling of the peace talks and the "all-out war" (with the local communists), are but examples of US influence on Filipino officialdom. Boone wrote in his book that "oppressive intervention in other people's affairs is nothing new to American history," citing the relentless war on the American Indians and the aggression against Mexico resulting in the annexation of territories like California and Texas as precursors of the Philippine-American War. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino died in that conflict, and it reduced the country into a colony and, to some, a neocolony today. The Philippines was said to be the "first Vietnam." The "Philippine War" (the subject of a recent book on "counterinsurgency") is one of two "turn of the century wars" waged by the US in an unequal conflict, the other being the war on Iraq, as written by another FFP member, Steve Shalom.  Like Boone, Shalom reiterates that global interest, foreign intervention, ruling over subject peoples and seizing foreign territory as the continuing hallmarks of US foreign policy. Abroad I have met American friends of the Filipino people and worked with some of them in common interests (scholarly, political and cultural) vis-a-vis the Philippines. I treasure their friendship and solidarity. Boone stands out as one of them.

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/july/15/yehey/opinion/20060715opi2.html

Boston Globe, May 8, 2006

SCHIRMER, Daniel Boone

age 91, of Cambridge, MA, died peacefully in his home, April 21, surrounded by his family.  His wife of 63 years, Peggy Schirmer, died August 8, 2004.  He is survived by his three children and eight grandchildren.  Audrey Schirmer and her husband Martin Duckworth of Montreal, Quebec and their children, Danielle, Jaqueline and Nicholas; Abbie Schirmer and her husband An Nguyen of Cambridge, MA and their children, Liem and Lan; Joe Schirmer and his wife, Jane Brelis Schirmer of Madison, WI, and their children, Zoe, Maria and Eleni.  A Memorial gathering will be held on Saturday, June 17th, 2006, 1:30-5PM  at the Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge, MA.  In lieu of flowers, contributions to The Boone Schirmer Research Fellowship Fund can be sent to: Survival Education Fund, Inc., 40 Oakley Rd., Watertown, MA. 02472-1307; additional suggestions will be available at the Memorial service.

Boston Globe, May 10, 2006

Daniel Boone Schirmer's Orbituary by Gloria Negri, Globe Staff

He was a lanky 6-footer and had long, flowing hair that lasted a lifetime. When he spoke in the cause of peace and social justice or was talking to his students about imperialism, his booming voice needed no microphone.

Like his frontiersman namesake, Daniel Boone Schirmer spent his life breaking down barriers. His challenges were racial inequality, unjust wars, inadequate housing for veterans, and low-income families. Dr. Schirmer marched for civil rights, for disarmament, and for a world free of nuclear weapons. He spent years fighting for human rights in the Philippines and for the removal of US military bases there. He protested Harvard's investments in apartheid South Africa. He was arrested several times.

In 1936, he joined the Communist Party, a fact that in 1951 forced him to live underground for four years.

Dr. Schirmer, who was still fighting his battles until several years ago, died April 21 of congestive heart failure at his Cambridge home. He was 91, and he was called ''Boone".

''He was totally committed to a vision of a different kind of world," Howard Zinn, Boston University historian, said yesterday. ''He was an activist, but with all of that he was a very gentle, a very sweet person. He was very unshakable in his conviction that war and racial and economic injustice were wrong."

Zinn wrote the preface to Dr. Schirmer's 1972 book, ''Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War."

Dr. Schirmer's son, Joseph of Madison, Wis., sees his father's work in two periods of political activities. From the 1930s through the 1950s, he said, his father's primary focus was domestic policies -- involving veterans, race relations, housing, racial equality, and unemployment insurance.

In 1944, he joined the Army and served overseas for 15 months in its information and education branch. Back in Massachusetts, he became the state educational director of the Communist Party, and he lobbied the Legislature for funds for veterans' housing.

His membership in the Communist Party did not present trouble for Dr. Schirmer, until the Cold War set off a hunt for Communists.

In his years underground, Dr. Schirmer moved from town to town around New England, seeing his wife and children in clandestine visits. ''It was the McCarthy era," said his daughter, Abigail of Cambridge. She recalled how the family had traveled to the places where Dr. Schirmer was hiding, and how he read Mark Twain or Laura Ingalls Wilder to his children at bedtime. While he was away, his wife supported the family as a seamstress.

In 1954, Dr . Schirmer turned himself in to face sedition charges and spent several weeks in the Charles Street Jail, his son said. Later, his son said, Dr. Schirmer understood that ''it had been a mistake to go underground." His ties with the party gradually lessened.

In his 55th Harvard reunion report, Dr. Schirmer wrote about his disillusionment with the Soviet Union as a socialist state. ''Now, the monstrous Soviet system has collapsed of its own weight. But my belief that it will be possible to achieve a more just and democratic society in a more peaceful world, my socialist vision, is still strong."

The second phase of Dr. Schirmer's political activity began in the late 1960s, his son said. After receiving a family inheritance, both he and his wife returned to graduate school. He was accepted at Boston University in 1962, where he taught while doing his doctoral work in history.

In 1972, Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines gave Dr. Schirmer another cause -- human rights and the removal of US bases there. ''After Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, Boone was among the first Americans to speak out against US military and economic support of the Marcos dictatorship," said Jim Zwick of Pennellville, N.Y. He was a founder of a Friends of the Filipino People group. Dr. Schirmer continued his work on behalf of the Philippines for the next 20 years.

In 1986, he was among the protesters who blocked the doors of Harvard's Memorial Hall, protesting the school's investments in South Africa and causing the cancellation of a dinner.

Dr. Schirmer was born a child of privilege in 1915 in Greenwich, Conn., one of two sons of Abigail (Boone) and Joseph Matthew Schirmer, an insurance executive. He was a descendant of Daniel Boone. Growing up during the Great Depression with little deprivation, he was appalled on a visit to New York for Thanksgiving dinner to see others going through the trash for food. That image stayed with him.

After boarding school in Asheville, N.C., Dr. Schirmer enrolled at Harvard, majoring in economics. He was a standout for his scholarship and activism. Dr. Schirmer joined the Communist Party in Massachusetts in 1936 and graduated from Harvard in 1937.

In 1941, he married Margaret (Fellows), who was a graduate of the London School of Economics. They met when they were students, she at Radcliffe and he at Harvard, while stuffing envelopes for the American Student Union. Over the years, the couple fought many causes together. Mrs. Schirmer died in 2004.

Besides his son and daughter, he leaves another daughter, Audrey of Montreal, and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held on June 17 at 1:30 p.m. in the Friends Meeting House in Cambridge. His ashes have been buried beside those of his wife in North Truro Cemetery.

(C) Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Tributes to Boone:

Schirmer, 91: Marcos critic, Filipinos' friend

First posted 05:45am (Mla time) May 04, 2006  By Walden Bello  Inquirer

Editor's Note: Published on Page A1 of the May 4, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

WHEN DANIEL BOONE SCHIRMER passed away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last month, it felt like the end of an era for many of the people that participated in the movement against Ferdinand Marcos in the United States.

Boone, along with Severina-Rivera Drew, Barbara Cort-Gaerlan and Tim and Linda McGloin, founded the Friends of the Filipino People in November 1973. Over the next 13 years, he became one of the best known US-based critics of the American policy of support for the Marcos regime.

Combining fierce determination with tremendous energy, Boone spoke at meetings and conferences throughout the United States, wrote articles demanding withdrawal of US bases from the Philippines, lobbied the US Congress to cut off aid to Marcos, and managed the Cambridge-Goddard College program on US-RP relations. He was a friend and comrade of Filipino activists from all points of the political spectrum.

At their residence at 17 Gerry Street in Cambridge, Boone and his wife and lifelong political partner, Peggy, also played hosts to visitors from the Philippines seeking his views and advice, like Sister Mariani Dimaranan, Senators Jose W. Diokno and Benigno Aquino Jr., Dodong Nemenzo, Randy David, Ed de la Torre, Charito Planas and Roland Simbulan. His visitors invariably became his lifelong friends.

Perhaps the greatest irony of Boone's life was provided by the contrast between his anti-imperialist politics and his name. He got it from his great-great-uncle, the famous frontiersman and "Indian fighter" Daniel Boone, who played a key role in the westward expansion of the United States. In typical fashion, he took this "contradiction" in stride and joked about it.

Love affair

Boone's love affair with the Philippines, according to his daughter Audrey, began when he decided to go back to school at Boston University in the 1960s. With the protests against the Vietnam War in full swing, he discovered the earlier protest movement, led by Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League, against the annexation and invasion of the Philippines at the turn of the century.

His study of fin de siecle (end of the century) US-RP relations led to a Ph.D. dissertation that was later published under the title "Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War." That book revealed the mainspring of Boone's activism: Like Twain's earlier generation of anti-imperialists, he believed that the United States could not be a truly democratic republic unless it renounced its imperial pretensions.

Activist commitment

Boone's involvement with the Philippine struggle was his second major political engagement in a lifetime of activist commitment.

As a young student at Harvard University during the Depression years in the 1930s, Boone was a key figure in the radical student movement. After serving in the US Army in the Italian campaign during World War II, Boone returned home and served as a key organizer of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) in the New England area. "He even ran as a candidate in Vermont on the CPUSA ticket, though I forget for what office," Audrey recalls.

With McCarthyism engulfing the United States in the early '50s, Boone was forced to go underground. For four years, he would have only irregular contacts with his family. Fortunately, Peggy, also a CPUSA member, had a full-time job, so that "although we were poor, we always had something to eat," says Audrey. It was a trying time for the family.

The Catholic Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where the Schirmers resided for a while, "told the schoolchildren not to play with the children of the communists," recalls his other daughter, Abbie. "But they did, anyway." Abbie also remembers when the Boston police came to confiscate the books that the family stored in the attic after the CPUSA bookstore in the city was forced to shut down. "My brother Joseph spit at the police from our second floor porch when they left with the books," she says.

All radicals

Boone was arrested in 1954 under the repressive Smith Act but was released after spending two weeks in jail. McCarthyism was waning in the late '50s, but another crisis hit the ranks of the CPUSA when the horrors of the Stalin period were revealed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after the death of the dictator.

Boone gradually disengaged from the CPUSA, but, says Audrey, "he never became bitter about his years with the party like many others did. For him and Mom, you just kept going, you just had to keep on struggling." Abbie adds: "He and Mom had a great influence on us children. We were a close family. We all became radicals, though we were doing different things. And I guess it helped that we went to a summer camp where we met other kids of parents who were also subjected to McCarthyist persecution."

High point

Probably the high point of Boone's political life occurred in 1991, when the Philippine Senate voted to end the tenure of US bases in the country -- a goal he had campaigned hard for. The next year saw him honored by the Philippine Senate, along with Senators Jovito Salonga and Wigberto Tañada, for their influence on that historic vote. But Boone was disappointed with the major foreign policy moves of the new democratic government following the withdrawal of the bases.

The 1998 US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement signed by the Estrada administration allowed the US government to reintroduce a large military presence in the country in the guise of engaging in military exercises. Another blow was the Arroyo administration's endorsement of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its participation in the so-called "Coalition of the Willing."

As he entered his twilight years, Boone the historian moved to ensure that future scholars would have access to his vast number of books and research material. He donated part of his private collection of 4,000 books and numerous papers to the University of the Philippines' Third World Studies Center, though, son Joseph recalls, "he objected when the center wanted to name the collection after him, saying it should be named after the Filipino hero Apolinario Mabini." Other parts of the collection went to the De La Salle University in the Philippines and two US universities.

True patriot

But until the end Boone remained a political activist.

The letter nominating him for the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association of Asian American Studies, which he received in March 2004, noted: "Now, almost 90 years old, frail and having survived a hip replacement operation and two recent bouts of pneumonia, Boone continues to speak out against and write about the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Adamantly opposed to US militarist policies throughout the world, Boone wrote in a recent article, 'The present Bush administration represents the most extensive and heavily armed empire in history. America's economic capacity gives it influence that is nearly global in entirety. Guarding this is an unparalleled military establishment of global reach and frightful nuclear potential. Under cover of the war on terrorism, Washington carries on its hegemonic policy ... It is attempting to reestablish its military domination ... as a stepping stone for US military intervention in Asia and the Middle East.'

"Spoken like a true American patriot."

A few months after Boone received this honor, Peggy passed away on Aug. 8, 2004.

Boone died in his sleep last April 21, surrounded by their children.

The author is a professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines and currently a visiting professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine.

Copyright 2006 Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A Poem

Shishuu:NihonkokuKenpO to tomoni  (With the Japanese Constitution: An Anthology)

Edited by Shijin-kaigi [Poets’ Conference]

Vol.38, No.458 (November, 2000)

Signatures That Came Across the Ocean

Shiba, Noriko

A fax came in from Boone Schirmer,

An American who lives in Boston,

Asking how much it would cost

In an Okinawan newspaper

If they put a full-page ad,

Also a three-quarter, and a half-page ad.

After several exchanges of faxes,

Sixteen hundred American names,

Collected by Schirmer-san

And members of the Boston-Okinawa Network,

Appear in the Okinawa Times

On the twenty-first of July,

The first day of the G-8 Summit.

Governor lnamine, who doesn’t want to show an anti-base Okinawa to the U.S.,

And President Clinton, who said:

“I don’t want to go to Okinawa were the base issues unresolved,”

And Prime Minister Mori, whose mind is prewar and body is for rugby,

They will all spread open the paper that morning

Together with an article on the human chain surrounding the Kadena base,

“No” To U.S. Bases

We American citizens Oppose American Military Bases Here:

“In solidarity with the people of Okinawa, who in their 1996 referendum overwhelmingly rejected U.S. bases, we call for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops, bases and military installations from Okinawa.

‘‘The United States government does not speak in our name.

The demand is made by sixteen hundred Americans with their individual names.

In Okinawa, with the flags of the G-8 nations everywhere

With new roads, transplanted flowers and with numerous check-points,

The movement by Americans themselves for the withdrawal of the bases

Comes into shape in English and Japanese.

The manuscript filled with the names

Was brought by Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee.

To many Americans who don’t even know there are huge American military bases in Okinawa

Explaining what their country has been doing,

Talking about the meaning of the newspaper ad,

Collecting dollars,

And bringing them to Okinawa.

What ardor, what power of action!

I cannot remember

The names of the sixteen hundred people

Who put their signatures with Schirmar-san and Gerson-san,

But I shall keep the paper

And leave it spread open

In my own time from now on,

Because from behind the small alphabet-letters filling the page,

Eyes of various colors of the people

Of America who have begun thinking about Okinawa,

Not of the America of nuclear strategy,

Are looking at me.

Translated by Moroi, Yuichi

Other tributes:   (Click on link to see whole article)

From Jim Zwick  -- an American Studies scholar whose specialties include Mark Twain, U.S. social and political history, and educational use of the Internet.

ILPS HONORS DANIEL BOONE SCHIRMER by  Prof. Jose Maria Sion

Video clip of Boone :

David Boeri reports (WGBH-Boston 10 o'clock news) on protests against US foreign policy during a visit by George Shultz (US Secretary of State) and Casper Weinberger (US Secretary of Defense) to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. This protest takes place during the celebration of Harvard's 350th anniversary,1986.

Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War

On Fillippino-American Frienship by Roland G. Simbulan

My write-up on Boone was published in full in the front page (with Boone's photo) and page 15 (half page) of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI),  July 4, 2002," Philippine-American Friendship Day". PDI is the largest circulation daily in the Philippines with a daily circulation of 450,000 and average daily hits in its online edition of at least 700,000 worldwide.

This is my tribute to my great friend and comrade whose political and personal friendship I, my wife Chit and many Filipinos have treasured all these years of hard struggle. Mabuhay si Boone!

                             

                                                 Professor Roland G. Simbulan

 

WHENEVER Filipinos think of Americans as friends, what usually come to mind are these images: the GI giving out chocolates to children or the Peace Corps volunteer helping rural folk build their own water system. These days, the American friend is also the pen pal who woos a Filipina or the US embassy official who helps one get a visa.

 

There is, however, another kind of American friend that Filipinos have. Many Pinoys who have visited Boston, Massachusetts, for a few months' sojourn as visiting fellows or students at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or Boston University have met him. He is Daniel Boone Schirmer. If his name sounds familiar especially to viewers who watched a certain television show some decades back, this is because Schirmer descended from the American frontiersman, Daniel Boone, and was named after him.

 

Schirmer, now 87, was born on Feb. 22. As he himself wryly said, "Showing a patriotic impulse in embryo, I chose Feb. 22, George Washington's birthday, to make my appearance."

 

It was a kind of patriotism, however, that would manifest itself in a way that was different from what most Americans and his government were familiar with. For Boone-as he was called by his Filipino and American friends-strongly opposed, and fought, the interventionist policies and practices of the United States government, especially as these applied to the Philippines. In the early 1970s, when opposition to the Marcos dictatorship was not yet fashionable, Boone had already been supporting Filipinos who were in exile in the US as a result of their opposition to martial law.

 

In November 1973, Boone and 60 other concerned Americans and Filipino-Americans from Chicago, New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, Connecticut and Philadelphia, founded the organization called Friends of the Filipino People (FFP). Perhaps as a reminder of the true ideals that America should stand for, the FFP was established in Philadephia, where in 1789 the United States declared its independence from Britain and adopted its own Constitution.

 

After he retired as a professor in Boston University, Boone led the American movement in opposing his government's support for the Marcos dictatorship. The FFP joined other US-based Filipino groups like the Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino(KDP), the Movement for a Free Philippines (MFP) and the Anti-Martial Law Coalition (AMLC). Together, they worked to stop US military assistance and political support for the Marcos dictatorship and to inform Americans about human rights violations.

 

Environmental engineer Dr. Jorge Emmanuel, a US-based Filipino activist, remembers those days. "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 then (during the anti-Marcos struggle) in the face of overwhelming odds. He inspired both Filipinos and Americans alike." 

 

As an organizer and activist, Boone took part in anti-Marcos demonstrations and helped lobby in the US Congress for an end to American collaboration with the dictatorial regime. Years later, he and his organization played an important role in pressuring the US government to respect the historic September 16, 1991 decision of the Philippine Senate in rejecting the proposed treaty that would have extended the life of the US bases.

 

In his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which he shares with his wife Peggy, the Harvard-educated professor would invite Filipinos to simple dinners in "house meetings" exchanging ideas with them in a veritable smorgasbord of insights on how to improve the conditions of working people in the US and the Philippines. The Schirmer's book-crammed home at Gerry St. was a house brewing with intellectual fermentation. They were host to a stream of activists, exiles and graduate students who have visited Boston during the Marcos years, including the late senator Benigno Aquino Jr. , senator Jose W. Diokno, Chair of the Civil Liberties Union (CLU)  and Sr. Mariani Dimaranan, Chairperson of Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFD).

 

In the early 1980s, the Schirmers moved to the FFP's national office in Washington D.C. and shared living quarters with Charito Planas, then the leading woman opponent of Marcos in exile. (At that time, Planas was supporting her political activism in the US by selling pizzas and delivering these herself door to door.)

 

Unlike many Filipinos who used their Harvard education to simply advance their careers and make life better for themselves, Boone used his world-class education to help a country thousands of miles away from his own. It would shame many Filipinos to know that Boone spent many years of his life as a full-time activist dedicated to the advancement of Philippine freedom, democracy and sovereignty. Whether it was on the issue of the Marcos dictatorship, the US military bases, the Balikatan military exercises, toxic waste contamination, or Amerasian children, Boone was in solidarity with the Filipino people's struggle and at the forefront of it in the United States.

 

His interest in the Philippines began as a scholar.  This was in the 1960s, "when I was going after a Ph.D. in US history," he said. His thesis topic was the Anti-Imperialist League, an American organization that led massive opposition to the US conquest and colonization of the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century. (So influential was the league that when the US Senate voted in 1899 on the Treaty of Paris-an agreement where the defeated Spaniards sold the Philippines to the United States for $20 million--it won only by one vote). But Boone also had a political motivation for his thesis. At that time, he was one of the increasing number of Americans opposing the Vietnam War. He had "hoped a study of popular opposition to a previous imperial adventure would contribute to the movement against the Vietnam War."

 

In his study of Philippine-US history, Boone was impressed by what he called "the courageous fight the Filipinos have waged against US domination." He work would open the door to "one of the richest and meaningful experiences" of his life: participation and leadership in the Philippine-US solidarity movement to strengthen democratic policies in both countries. 

 

His thesis was published as a book titled, "Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War," and came out in 1972, the year Marcos declared martial law. Quickly, the anti-Marcos exiles in the US who read the book came to see him.  They told Boone that it was all very well to record his government's past misdeeds in the Philippines, but that he should get involved in the present. Specifically, they suggested that he join them in opposing his country's economic and military support for the Marcos dictatorship.

 

According to Stephen R. Shalom, American author of the book, The United States and the Philippines: A Study of Neocolonialism, "Boone always understood that the struggle for justice in the Philippines was primarily a struggle for the Filipino people themselves. But he knew, too, that the US government and the elite interests it represents have been striving for more than a century to dominate the Philippines, and that therefore people of goodwill in the United States-friends of the Filipino people-would have to add their efforts to the cause."

 

In his distinct Bostonian accent, Boone would speak tirelessly in defense of Philippine sovereignty against US intervention. He would also write about his government's detrimental policies in the Philippines. Many of his articles and published speeches carried the same theme: that US policies must be critically studied and those that are detrimental to the interests of both Filipinos and Americans should be opposed. He took pains to make Filipinos and Americans understand that the basic interests of both peoples are the same, but it is the interests of corporate America, the US defense establishment, and global capital that continue to dominate much of US policies and US-Philippine relations.  But Boone took a step further: he was a leading figure in such U.S.-based campaigns and networks like the Campaign Against Military Intervention in the Philippines (CAMIP) in 1983 and the Campaign Against US Military Bases in the Philippines (CAB) in 1986. He helped raise the awareness of the American Churches so that they too, would be able to effectively bring the issues of human rights and U.S. intervention through the U.S. bases and U.S. military assistance, to the greater mainstream of U.S. society, the American people.  In fact, groups like the FFF and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) succeeded in pressing the U.S. Congress to pass the Human Rights Amendment, putting in question U.S. military and economic aid to Third World dictators. 

 

According to Donald Goertzen, director of the University of California's Education Abroad Program-Philippines, Boone "strongly identified with the best in American democratic political culture." He believed that, "Only equals can be friends." "For that reason," Goertzen said, "Boone always maintained that friendship between the US and the Philippines could only flourish after the US gave up its colonial pretentions."

 

Boone's opposition to what he regards as his government's imperialist activities drove some Filipino activists to compare him to the great American author Mark Twain. Twain, a leading member of the Anti-Imperialist League and who opposed American occupation of the Philippines more than a hundred years ago, believed that such US policies often ran against the ideals of liberty and justice on which America was founded.  Shalom further noted that, "both saw US domination of the Philippines as a betrayal of fundamental human values."

 

Boone's critical role and leadership of the anti-bases movement in the US was given recognition by Filipino anti-bases forces who, in celebrating in 1993 the 2nd anniversary of the Philippine Senate's 1991 rejection of the bases treaty, honored him along with former Senate President Jovito Salonga and former senator Wigberto Tanada. It was a recognition that he was reportedly so proud of.

 

His activism, however, has not lessened his humanity or sense of humor. His letters to friends, scribbled in longhand, are usually short but hilarious. Once, writing about his wife Peggy's diminishing memory and his own prolonged convalescence from a bout with pneumonia, he said, "At any rate, we're still here still complaining about the capitalist system to the very last of our limited capacity. That is the bright side! And I mean it."  Another time, after my visit from Boston, he wrote my wife Chit about how I "was very helpful politically" to them  during my visit. But, he added, "Please encourage Roland to come more often. He is so efficient a dishwasher!"

 

In the early 1990s, after the successful campaign to dismantle the US bases in the Philippines, Boone donated to the Third World Studies Center in UP Diliman his entire private collection of more than 4,000 books, many of them rare first editions, on the Philippines, the Philippine-American War and U.S. interventions worldwide. When he found out that it had been named the "Boone Schirmer Collection," he wrote the Third World Studies director to register his strong protest. He did not want his donation to carry his name. He preferred that it be named after the Filipino hero, Apolinario Mabini, perhaps to remind intellectuals about their role as patriots. Thus did the books come to be known as the Apolinario Mabini Collection.

 

Decades after his first brush with activism, Boone, now a frail and thin six-footer plus, has not lost the fire that burned in him when he fought against US government support for Marcos. He is aghast at his government's current global role: "The present Bush administration represents the most extensive and heavily armed empire in history.  Its towering economic capacity gives it an influence that is nearly global in entirety.  Guarding this is an unparalleled military establishment of global reach and frightful nuclear potential.  Under the cover of 'The War against Terrorism,' Washington carries on its hegemonic policy in the Philippines.  With the collaboration of the present Philippine government, it is attempting to reestablish its military domination of that country so as to provide a stepping-stone for US military intervention in Asia and the Middle East."

 

Characteristically, he said, "I oppose Philippine-US relationship of this character.  Rather, I support the cooperation of democratic-minded Filipinos with like-minded citizens of the United States to further policies of peace and justice in both countries and throughout the world."

 

His stand is not a popular one, not in his own country or even in the former colony whose people's struggles he has waged as his own. But unpopularity does not discourage him.

 

Recalling a bleak moment in the fight against the Marcos dictatorship when opposition to it was "but a small voice," the activist Emmanuel says, "Boone tried to lift my flagging spirits. He said that as a historian, he has the advantage of seeing things from a historical perspective. History is a chronicle of human struggles to build a better world for all but even as humanity moves in that direction, it will have many deviations. A setback may feel devastating when it happens but it is only a small deviation in the larger movement. There will always be a few who will keep nudging humanity to move toward that vision. That, he said, is the role of social justice advocates in every generation."


July, 2002