Edie Daly (b. 1937), a self-described Old Lesbian Feminist, arrived at her activism by way of her coming out in 1974. In 1981 she moved to Florida, her home state, opened a women's bookstore on Madeira Beach, and within a year co-founded a Lesbian feminist organization called Women's Energy Bank (W.E.B.), which for 22 years held monthly Salons for women, for educational and social purposes. W.E.B. also produced a monthly feminist publication, Womyn's Words, for over 30 years.
Edie is a retired intensive care nurse. In 1993 her activism toward peace in the world took her to Bosnia, to engage in popular diplomacy during the wars there, and to let the people of Sarejevo know they were not forgotten. In 1995 she boarded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) "Peace Train," traveling across Europe and Asia to Beijing for the United Nation's Fourth World Conference on Women, which marked a significant turning point for the global agenda for gender equality. Edie is a member of: Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC); Women in Black, a worldwide organization of women standing for peaceful and nonviolent conflict resolution; and Southerners on New Ground (SONG), an organization whose purpose is to build a progressive movement across the South by developing models of organizing that connect the oppressions based on race, class, culture, gender, age and sexual identity. She is an interviewer with Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project (OLOHP), and is currently on the board of the Gulfport Public Library's Circle of Friends.
Edie and her wife, Jackie Mirkin, were married in California in 2008. Edie and Jackie worked toward a Human Rights Ordinance in their small beach town of Gulfport, Florida. Now in their eighties, they continue to create powerful memories as they promote inclusivity across race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation, and set a stirring example of their lives.