| Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Poland will be in Chicago Feb. 9 to receive the 2012 Lincoln Leadership Prize from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. The black-tie dinner will be at the Four Seasons Hotel. Walesa is the co-founder of the Solidarity trade-union movement and while president spearheaded the fall of communism in Poland and Eastern Europe. Wałęsa, electrician by trade, was a labor activist at the Lenin Shipyards. In 1980, Wałęsa helped negotiate Gdansk agreement and co- |
founded Solidarność. In December, martial law was declaied, stopping the Solidarity movement and Wałęsa was arrested. In 1989, Wałęsa helped negotiate the Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections and served as president of the Third Republic Poland from 1990 to 1995.
