October 5, 2015

2015Chantal Akerman, Belgian-French actress, director, and producer (born 1950)^[†]

Chantal Anne Akerman was a Belgian film director, screenwriter, artist, and film professor at the City College of New York.

2015Joker Arroyo, Filipino lawyer and politician (born 1927)^[†]

Ceferino "Joker" Paz Arroyo Jr. was a Filipino statesman and key figure in the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos. He was a Congressman for Makati from 1992 to 2001 and Senator from 2001 to 2013. Arroyo received various awards and commendations for his significant contributions to the law profession and public service. Among these are the Philippine Bar Association's Most Distinguished Award for Justice as a "man beholden to no one except to his country" and Senate Resolution No. 100 enacted in the 8th Congress citing his invaluable service to the Filipino people. He was also known for being the thriftiest legislator, earning the title of "Scrooge of Congress", as he only had few staff members without bodyguards and did not use his pork barrel funds. In 2018, Arroyo was identified by the Human Rights Victims' Claims Board as a Motu proprio human rights violations victim of the Martial Law Era.

2015Grace Lee Boggs, American philosopher, author, and activist (born 1915)^[†]

Grace Lee Boggs was an American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political direction. By 1998, she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, with Scott Kurashige and published by the University of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American, Black Power, and Civil Rights movements.

2015Henning Mankell, Swedish author and playwright (born 1948)^[†]

Henning Georg Mankell was a Swedish crime writer, children's author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.