Today in Labor History December 10, 1861: Nguyễn Trung Trực, along with his militia, sunk the French lorcha L'Esperance. Nguyễn Trung Trực was a fisherman who organized and led a guerilla rebellion against French colonial forces in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam in the 1860s. They used snipers to assassinate isolated French soldiers and chased French soldiers around the countryside, attacking military installations that were left undefended. Their intimate knowledge of the territory and their skill in hit-and-run tactics allowed them to inflict substantial casualties on the European troops.
Solnit: We are our stories ... that can be both prison and the crowbar to break open the door of that prison; we make stories to save ourselves or to trap ourselves or others, stories that lift us up or smash us against the stone wall of our own limits and fears. #Liberation is always in part a storytelling process: breaking stories, breaking silences, making new stories. A free person tells her own story. A valued person lives in a society in which her #story has a place.