[troutman]

I select in the Rebel Category, LECH WALESA:

Aeneas makes fun of my Lech Walesa hat.



http://www.time.com/time/time100/lea...le/walesa.html

Lech Walesa, the fly, feisty, mustachioed electrician from Gdansk, shaped the 20th century as the leader of the Solidarity movement that led the Poles out of communism. It is one of history's great ironies that the nearest thing we have ever seen to a genuine workers' revolution was directed against a so-called workers' state. Poland was again the icebreaker for the rest of Central Europe in the "velvet revolutions" of 1989. Walesa's contribution to the end of communism in Europe, and hence the end of the cold war, stands beside those of his fellow Pole, Pope John Paul II, and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lech_walesa

Lech Wałęsa (IPA:[ˈlɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa] (help·info); born 29 September 1943) is a Polishpolitician and a former trade union and human rights activist. He co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995.[1]

He was a member of the illegal strike committee in Gdańsk Shipyard in 1970 (Polish 1970 protests).
In 1976, Wałęsa lost his job in Gdańsk Shipyard.

In June 1978 he joined the illegal underground Free Trade Unions of the Coast (Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża), organized by Bogdan Borusewicz, Andrzej Gwiazda, Krzysztof Wyszkowski, Lech Kaczyński, Anna Walentynowicz, Antoni Sokołowski, and others.
On 14 August 1980, after the beginning of an occupational strike in the Lenin Shipyard of Gdańsk, Wałęsa became the leader of this strike. The strike was spontaneously followed by similar strikes, first in Gdańsk, and then across Poland.

In September of that year, the Communist government signed an agreement with the Strike Coordination Committee to allow legal organization, but not actual free trade unions. The Strike Coordination Committee legalized itself into National Coordination Committee of Solidarność (Solidarity) Free Trade Union, and Wałęsa was chosen as a chairman of this Committee.

Apart from his Nobel Prize (1983) [21], Wałęsa received several other international prizes. He has been awarded 33 [22] honorary degrees from several United States and EuropeanUniversities. Named "Man of the Year" by: Time Magazine, 1981; The Financial Times, 1980; The Observer, 1980 [22], 2009; Legion of Liberty (IPEA)[23].