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Home > ICConline - 2010s > ICConline - 2012 > April 2012 > China: the intensification of workers' struggles
China: the intensification of workers' struggles
Over the last decade or so, the proletariat in China, and the rest of East Asia - Burma, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam - have all been involved in a wave of strikes and protests against capitalist exploitation. It's China we want to concentrate on here and to do so we will largely use the information given by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), the publication of a non-governmental organisation based in Hong Kong with links to Human Rights groups and Radio Free Asia. The Bulletin promotes the idea of a "fairer" Chinese state, which includes advocating its adoption of "Free Trade Unions".
In a subsequent piece, we will look at further recent elements around the "People's Republic", including the development of imperialist tensions, decomposition and intrigues around the all-powerful Politburo.
The class struggle
Throughout the last decade the working class in China has been involved in a wave of strikes and protests, counting thousands of workers, as anger and combativity mounts under the weight of capitalist exploitation. The spontaneous strikes, born from the workers themselves, have been over issues across the board: overtime pay, relocation compensation, corruption of officials, wage rises, wage and pension cuts, improved working conditions and reductions in hours, education and health benefits. In sum, the whole gamut of conditions expressed in the intensity of the exploitation of the Chinese state. While largely separate from each other these strikes have shown a definite dynamic and a growing strength to the extent that the China Briefing of 29.11.11 warns investors to get used to labour unrest.
Just a few days ago, in the town of Chongqing, the previous fiefdom of the disgraced Party boss Bo Xilai, there were strikes - unconnected to the Politburo manoeuvres - over wages and pension cuts. This town of 30 million in southern China, like many others, is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy which is a growing concern (local bankruptcies are a big problem for capitalism, witness some states in the USA, regional governments in Spain, and so on). Against the struggle in Chongquing, the authorities, as elsewhere, blocked the microblogging that workers have used to communicate effectively with each other and spread news in the face of the state's blackout.
The China Labour Bulletin, 5.3.12, reports that strikes and protests continued across the county throughout February 2012, the vast majority taking place in the industrial/manufacturing and transport sectors, with demands mainly for higher wages and against bonus reductions. Five thousand workers at the Hanzhong Steel Co., at Shaanxi in the north, struck against low pay and long hours. Several thousand workers left the plant and made for the city streets in order to demonstrate. The report indicates that the workers elected their own representatives. The March issue of the Bulletin also records the highest monthly total of strikes since it began keeping records 15 months ago, and notes the escalation of strikes over pay and relocations. Riot squads and militia units are actively present in many cases and, apart from getting sacked, many militant workers have been "detained" - there's not a whimper about this from the human rights industry in the west. In China, repression and surveillance is of course the speciality of a Stalinist state and, like the Arab regimes, this state also uses gangs of armed thugs that it pays and transports around the country for use against the workers. Internal police spending in China for 2010 and projected for 2011 outstrips the external defence budget – which is not inconsiderable[1].
Migrant labour is no longer docile
At the start of the 21st century, millions of poor, young, rural labourers flooded into the factory towns of South China looking for work. These young men and women worked for long hours for very low pay in often dangerous and unhealthy conditions. These were largely helpless lambs to the slaughter. It was upon this basis that the "Chinese Economic Miracle" was founded. But this enforced acquiescence did not last for long. Tempered in the heat of the class struggle, by the end of the decade the era of cheap and docile labour was well and truly over. A significant number of workers, still young but wiser, better educated, more confident and militant, were organising and undertaking strikes and protests. Summer 2010 culminated in a wave of strikes in the manufacturing sector[2].
In mid-decade, the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security estimated the number of migrant workers to be 240 million, including 150 million working away from home, with 70% of these in the manufacturing sector. Even with these numbers, labour shortages around 2005 saw workers' struggles taking a further step towards offensive struggles and demands with specific outbursts giving material encouragement for others to launch their own protests. The Chinese state records that there were 80,00 mass incidents in 2007 – the last time the state published official figures[3]. The CLB estimates these figures going up year on year since and the strikes taking on a different intensity. For example, in August 2011, thousands of laid-off workers, victims of China's National Petroleum Corporation restructuring, joined in with a demonstration of a thousand employed oil workers on strike for their own demands. This underlined the greater development of taking to the streets, blocking roads and demonstrations and sit-ins in public squares. Another aspect of the microblogging mentioned above was its use in the Nanhai Honda strike in 2010, where communications were established and a small group of workers set up called "Unity is Victory". The Chinese authorities attempted to stop this form of communication under the guise of preventing "unfounded rumours"[4]. One of the Honda strike leaders told the New York Times that a minority of workers, about 40 in all, communicated and met up before the strike in order to decide on action and demands. At a PepsiCo strike in November 2011, workers elected their own delegates from their general meeting. Despite increases offered by the management, they extended and lengthened the action[5].
Many strikes end up with pay rises and some satisfaction of demands, but many do not. In both cases, workers are sacked and arrested. And where wage rises are given these are often wiped out by the inflation that is becoming a major curse for the Chinese economy. Wage demands are rising not just in the coastal regions, but, since 2010, in the hinterlands, where workers involved in action have family, friends, etc., posing the possibilities of strike action alongside social protest and thus widening the battlefront. On the other hand, migrant workers settled in other towns are often denied basic education and health benefits for them and their children – which their employers should pay but don't. This has opened another arena of confrontation. All this a far cry from a decade ago when these young, rural elements were used and dumped at will by the Chinese state. Unemployment also looms large with the Federation of Hong Kong Industries saying that a "a third of Hong Kong-owned industries will downsize or close", affecting tens of thousands of workers at the very least.
The China Labour Bulletin states that workers "had no confidence in the All China Federation of Trade Unions"[6] and its "ability to negotiate a decent pay increase". They consequently " took matters into their own hands and organised a wide range of increasingly effective collective actions..." ACFTU is clearly linked to the Party and made up of its members and cadres, and the CLB is drawing attention to a big problem facing the Chinese ruling class: the lack of effective trade unions to control and discipline the workers. Repression is never enough and can add fuel to the fire. As the CLB report notes over the Honda strike mentioned above: "Any workers' organisation that develops during a protest is usually disbanded after the demands that gave rise to it has been addressed". The pro-state CLB would like to make these workers' organisation permanent and enmesh them into a structure of Free Trade Unions with peaceful relations with the state. The ACFTU branches, such as they exist, are sometimes made up exclusively of managers, such as at the Ohms Electronics factory in Shenzhen, where the twelve managers were all union officials! And in a pathetically desperate effort, which also points to the limits of the Stalinist state, the Shanxi Federation of Trade Unions has ordered its province's 100,000 union officials to publish their phone numbers so that workers can get in touch with them!! Throughout the country, ACFTU branches have sacked workers, hired scabs and called the police and militias against workers. It is completely part of the discredited Party apparatus. The bourgeoisie, not just in China but internationally, need a renovated, elastic and credible union structure and this is where the China Labour Bulletin and its push for Free Trade Unions comes in. We can see this in its call for "greater participation (of workers) in committees and other union structures" and "new employees to be given information about the union's activities", as after the recent Foxcomm struggles.
The unions in China – unlike their sophisticated brothers in the west – generally don't even see strikes coming let alone defuse and divide them. This was the case at the Honda car plant in Foshan south-eastern China last summer. It took two weeks and a large pay rise to get the workers back to work. Kong Xianghong, an ex-worker and veteran CP member and now a member of ACFTU, said after the strike (and a further rash of strikes that it provoked): "We realised the dangers of our union being divorced from the masses". Kong added that China needed "To absorb the lessons of the uprisings in Arab nations"[7].
For the working class in China the struggles are intensifying and for the bourgeoisie the problems are mounting. For the latter, if they are at all a possibility, and that must be doubtful, Free Trade Unions would give them a greater element of control. For the workers, the lesson of the Free Trade Union Solidarnosc in Poland, is that these institutions can be more insidiously destructive to the workers' cause than the Party/State union structures – which at least show the unions as the anti-working class formations that they are.
Baboon. 15/4/12
[1]Bloomberg News, 6.3.11
[2]There were an estimated 180,000 "incidents" in 2010, Financial Times, 2.3.11.
[3]CASS, Social Trends Analysis and Projection Topic Group, 2008-2009.
[4]BBC News, 16.3.12.
[5]World Socialist Web: "Signs of a new strike wave in China".
[6]"A Decade of Change: The Workers' Movement in China 2000-2010".
[7]Washington Post, 29.4.11
Geographical:
China [2]
Recent and ongoing:
Class struggle [3]
Economic Crisis [4]
Rubric:
Source URL: https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201204/4837/china-intensification-workers-struggles#comment-0
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/chinese_workes_on_strike.jpg
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/class-struggle
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis


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Leslie Cheek, Jr. College Papers
This collection contains awards, publicity material, songs, articles, speeches, and photographs that once belonged to College of William and Mary professor Leslie Cheek. The bulk of the material is from 1936 to 1938, and most of the material relates to the various exhibits put on by the Department of Fine Arts. The photographs are from theatre productions, dances, and exhibits at William and Mary.
Cheek, Leslie, 1908-1992 (Person)
The collection is open to all researchers. Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, such as the Virginia Public Records Act (Code of Virginia. § 42.1-76-91); and the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (Code of Virginia § 2.2-3705.5). Confidential material may include, but is not limited to, educational, medical, and personnel records. If sensitive material is found in this collection, please contact a staff member immediately. The disclosure of personally identifiable information pertaining to a living individual may have legal consequences for which the College of William and Mary assumes no responsibility.
Leslie Cheek was born in Nashville, TN in 1908. He studied art at Harvard University and architecture at Yale and Columbia. He headed the department of fine arts at the College of William and Mary 1937-39, where he was instrumental in getting an honorary award given to Georgia O'Keeffe by the college in 1938 and Frank Lloyd Wright.
In 1939, he married Mary Tyler Freeman (1917- 2005), the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of George Washington, Douglas Southall Freeman. That same year he joined the Baltimore Museum of Fine Art as its director, where he found Adelyn Breeskin (q.v.) of its prints department already assembling an outstanding collection. Cheek worked actively with various Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist's projects. He resigned from the Museum in 1942 to join the army corps of engineers in World War II.
After the war, he succeeded Thomas C. Colt, Jr as the second director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1948 (the museum itself was founded in 1936). During his tenure at Virginia, he persuaded the General Assembly to finance the Museum as the state's official art museum. In 1953, Cheek developed a "mobile art program" to bring exhibitions to more remote parts of Virginia. The project, Artmobile I, was a success. In 1955, the Virginia Museum Theater opened to integrate the performing arts with the gallery. He retired from the Museum in 1968. The following year the Cheeks began a mountaintop compound they named Skylark on a former farm along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 1977, they donated it to Washington & Lee University which is today that university's conference center. Cheek suffered a series of strokes at his home in Richmond and died in 1992. His personal papers, 1981-1994, are held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and 1940-1983 by the Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN, the ancestral home of Cheek, is now a public art museum, built upon the collection of the former Nashville Museum of Art.
Acc. 1993.33 was received on 4/3/1998.
Leslie Cheek, Jr. Papers (Mss. 98 C41); University Archives Photograph Collection (UA 8); University Archives Poster Collection (UA 12); University Archives Oral History Collection (UA 43).
Cheek's personal papers, 1981-1994, are held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and 1940-1983 by the Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. The Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN, the ancestral home of Cheek, is now a public art museum, built upon the collection of the former Nashville Museum of Art.
College of William and Mary. Dept. of Fine Arts
Speeches, addresses, etc.
Universities and Colleges--Virginia--Faculty
Guide to the Leslie Cheek, Jr. College Papers
Finding Aid Authors: Special Collections Staff.
Leslie Cheek, Jr. College Papers, Special Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/repositories/2/resources/5622 Accessed July 16, 2019.

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Asterisks (*) designate pseudonyms. Portrait subjects photographed for this article were approached by Omaha Magazine independently from the research conducted by professor Thomas Sanchez. These current, former, and would-be DACA recipients consider Omaha to be their home; they volunteered to share their stories and thoughts about the termination of DACA.
Driving through rural Nebraska, I noticed the battery gauge dropping slowly toward zero. Soon after turning from Highway 30 onto Highway 15, the engine stopped. I pulled to the side of the road. Thinking about my options, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a sign that read "Batteries for Sale." I scurried the quarter mile to the farmhouse and knocked on the door. An elderly gentleman answered, and we quickly proceeded to a barn filled with hay. There was an array of car batteries arranged on shelves; I chose the cheapest. We got into his pickup, drove to my car, and installed the battery. Then I drove back to the farmhouse to pay.
I am a light-skinned Mexican-American with a Ph.D. who speaks English with no hint of a Spanish accent. I was born and raised in the middle of the United States. I am also a tenured associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. I am the quintessential "American," but personal experiences have demonstrated to me that many in the United States think Latinos are qualitatively different from them—that Latinos are "from somewhere else." I do not have an immigrant experience, and I do not pretend to understand the immigrant identity. But my light skin color coupled with my upbringing in the Mexican barrio of southeast Scottsbluff has always made me fascinated with issues of ethnic and cultural identity, issues I teach about in all my classes (especially "Race and Ethnicity" for the Sociology department and others in Latino Studies).
My personal and professional interest in identity made me wonder: how do young people, who are "American" in every aspect except legal, negotiate and deal with their identity? How do they make sense of their lives when their personal history and the vast majority of their experiences have taken place in and around Omaha, Nebraska, yet the governmental authorities and the media present them as foreigners?
Throughout my career, most of my research has been conducted with immigrant communities in Nebraska. But my poor Spanish always made it difficult to conduct interviews (much of the consternation was mine, being embarrassed at how bad my Spanish is at times). Interviewing recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (a federal program created by President Barack Obama's executive memorandum in 2012) offered relief from my occasional language hiccups. Nebraska has about 3,000 recipients, and there are approximately 800,000 nationwide.
The catalyst for my DACA research was an announcement at a faculty meeting of the Office of Latino and Latin American Studies at UNO; private scholarship money was being designated for DACA recipients. I immediately thought that I could continue my research on "immigrants" without worrying about my inability to communicate well because most DACA recipients are in college (71.5 percent of them), and to get into college one must speak, read, and write English. A new research avenue was born.
The following semester, I was readying my application for a faculty development fellowship (formerly referred to as a sabbatical) from the College of Arts and Sciences. A colleague suggested that I get a letter of support from potential interview subjects. It was late on a Friday afternoon, but I called the Heartland Workers Center and was referred to the Young Nebraskans in Action (previously known as the Dreamers Project Coalition). The next week I met with two leaders of the group. Each agreed to write a letter of support to the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
"I actually had made a deal with my mom and said, 'Well, we're only going to go there for six months, because I didn't want to come. I was so little. I really didn't understand the situation or why she was making the decision. So , she agreed to six months, and now it's going to be 18 years."–Luisa Trujillo Estrada, 28, CHI Health & Human Resources staffer (Originally from Mexico, Trujillo is current DACA recipient engaged to a U.S. citizen).
My DACA interviews began with three in December 2015. I conducted seven more interviews in January 2017 after receiving the fellowship. All of my interview subjects were born in Latin America: seven in Mexico, two in Guatemala, and one in El Salvador. At the time of their interviews, the ages of these DACA recipients ranged from 19 to 26. Although not born in Omaha, they were all raised here or in surrounding areas. Nearly all speak English perfectly (without any trace of accent). At the time of the interviews, nine were enrolled in college and receiving above-average marks in their coursework. One had recently graduated. None of them have criminal records.
The following notes and excerpts from my 2015 and 2017 interviews provide a glimpse at the reality of DACA recipients' existence in Nebraska using their own stories, their own words.
Each of the 10 interviewees articulated a profound love and appreciation for what the United States and Omaha have allowed them to do, the opportunities that the education system has allowed them to pursue. Most of them expressed the view that— if forced to leave their adopted city and country—they are not afraid of returning to their country of birth or to take their talents elsewhere in the world.
Of the 10 DACA recipients interviewed, many of them were politically active and know that being prohibited from voting does not take away their constitutional rights to engage in political activities. A couple of them were timid individuals and specifically stated that agreeing to be interviewed was a political act. One admitted to being shy, saying that their condition of being in the U.S. without authorization made them eschew attention and want to blend in with others around them.
In many ways, the experiences of the Nebraska DACA recipients I interviewed are similar to what academic and other research has revealed to be experiences nationwide.
All 10 of my DACA sources speak English and Spanish. Each speaks English well, and only one did not speak Spanish well. Most of them speak Spanish with parents and elder family members but English with others, including younger siblings. Only one of the sources claimed their parents could speak English well.
"When people [say], "Oh, you know they're here just leeching and taking U.S. citizens' benefits," I just want to tell them that. We're just here working hard, and all we're asking for is an opportunity to continue to be blessed in the greatest country in the world."–Armando Becerril, 24, Audit associate at KPMG (Becerril is originally from Mexico).
They have internalized the Nebraskan and Midwestern culture, especially in terms of work ethic. Not only driven by the work ethic of those around them, they felt obligated to prove (to themselves, to family and friends, and to society at large) that they will be successful. They work hard at jobs, school, and in their community. While they all claimed cultural connections to their country of birth, their inability to travel outside the United States makes those connections appear to be mostly imagined. They are connected culturally in ways that a second- or third-generation Mexican-American might be connected to their ancestors' nation of origin. Their "Latino" culture is largely a U.S. Latino culture.
All of the interviewees shared a positive image of Omaha, and almost all of the sources had mixed feelings about the conservative politics of the state. Nelson* (who says he migrated from El Salvador when he was "1 year old, maybe less") was active in getting legislation passed such as LB 623 (which gave them the opportunity to get a driver's license).
Interviewees reported few, if any, incidents of discrimination or overt prejudice in their everyday experiences in Omaha; however, several of them shared anecdotes of close friends—citizens who happened to be darker-skinned Latinos—having more overt discriminatory experiences than they as DACA recipients did.
Some of the 10 DACA recipients had arrived in the United States a bit later in life and always knew they were not authorized to be here (the age of arrival ranges from 10 years to three months with the average being 5 years old); others had no idea of their undocumented status until later in life.
Interview subjects mentioned "shame" when discussing their parent's feelings about being in the United States without authorization and "stigma" when discussing their own feelings; the same words were used by Leisy Abrego (a University of California-Los Angeles professor who was herself part of the wave of Salvadorian immigration to L.A. in the early 1980s) in her groundbreaking research on DACA recipients in California.
Some did not find out they were unauthorized—or they did not realize how it would affect them—until their junior or senior year in high school, when they began to fill out college and scholarship applications and were asked for a social security number.
As young children and teenagers, they were unaware of the consequences: both the social stigma and the legal pitfalls. They had been protected from the vagaries of their undocumented legal status—by teachers, counselors, churches, and other well-meaning adults and institutions.
Many of my interview subjects used terms like "coming out" for disclosing their unauthorized status. The phrasing seems to contradict previous assertions of "no shame." But it could be that their general feelings simply changed from when they were younger and they did not see the effects as readily. As they grew older, the negative consequences of the same undocumented status became more acute and meaningful in their lives. The driver's license issue is just one glaring example (one for which Nebraska gained notoriety in nationwide immigrant advocate and anti-immigration circles).
Due to a fear of immigration and law enforcement authorities, none of the people I interviewed had traveled much, if at all, outside the Omaha area. Some of them had been to Lincoln (on recruitment visits to UNL) and a few had traveled once or twice to Iowa or Wisconsin to visit family. Many admit that they love Omaha, they love Nebraska (even though they had not been anywhere in Nebraska outside of Omaha), and that they desire and plan to stay in the Midwest region of the country. Most want to stay in Nebraska and/or the Midwest in order to pay back those communities for the opportunities that they have been able to access.
In terms of social connections, about half of the interview subjects reported having mostly white friends or friends who are a mix of different races and ethnicities; the other half have friends who are mostly Latino. More than one of them mentioned the difficulty of meeting new people, especially in the romantic realm, and not knowing what or when to tell them about their immigration status. One respondent stated that they were afraid to tell a new dating partner about their status for fear that the other person would wonder if they were just dating them so they could marry and get their immigration papers fixed. Another spoke of being in a long-term relationship with a person who still does not know that they do not have government authorization to be in the United States.
When I began these interviews, I was interested in the question of criminalization. How did undocumented youths see their own "criminalization" in light of what labels have been placed upon them by some elements of society?
The research question turned out to be of little concern to my sources, with eight respondents emphatically stating "no" when asked whether or not they felt like criminals. Two others were not sure or had felt like criminals at some point in their life but changed their mind as they had matured. Almost all had mixed family statuses with little brothers and sisters who were citizens and parents who were unauthorized. At least two had fathers who had been deported.
I came away from the interviews with a sense of awe.
As I interviewed each of the 10 young people, I had the sense that each person will not only be successful; they will be high-achieving contributors to the nation's society and economy. Rather than being afraid for themselves, their worries overwhelmingly focused on the future well-being of their parents, siblings, friends, other family members, and people in situations like theirs who may have not had the tools, skills, or maybe just the proper connections to navigate the educational system.
I often wonder why anti-immigration advocates seem determined to cast out those who would otherwise be helping to pay for Social Security. In the end, it is not about their contributions to the economy, it is about what kind of society we choose for ourselves and the people we welcome into that society.
Topics: DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, English, Spanish, Thomas Sanchez Ph.D.
Ner Clay and Paw Tha are a humble couple with a story that is hard for most of us to imagine. They have lived three different lives—the first in Burma, their homeland; the second in the refugee camps of Thailand; and now their third in Omaha.
Burma—now called Myanmar by military rule, but forever known as Burma to its refugees—lies south of China on the Bay of Bengal. Home to a number of ethnic groups, the Karen (kuh-REHN) people make up about one third of the country's population. The Karen are quiet, respectful, and industrious. Family life is extremely important. Marriages are strong and function as a partnership of equals. The parenting style is firm but loving, and children of every age are respectful and obedient. Traditionally, Karen do not have family names; each person is seen as an individual.
The Karen suffered political and religious oppression in their homeland for many decades. But it became much worse in the 1970s and '80s when a violent new military régime took over the government. A systematic genocide began, driving the Karen people into the forest while government soldiers burned their villages. The only way to stay alive was to flee to refugee camps in neighboring Thailand, where the families of Ner Clay and Paw Tha found safety.
You might think of a refugee camp as offering temporary quarters. But history tells us the average stay for people in refugee camps worldwide is 15 years. Paw Tha lived 11 years in the camps. Ner Clay spent 30 years there.
Faith and education are important values of the Karen culture, so churches and schools were organized. Ner Clay learned to speak English as a boy. As an adult, he served as a minister and helped charities organize services to the residents of the camp. Paw Tha arrived as a teenager who had already studied languages, history, and science. She taught English to first graders. Eventually, the couple found each other and were married. All three daughters—Victoria, now age 12, Gloria, 10, and Julia, 7—were born in the camp.
In 2008, Ner Clay and Paw Tha and their daughters were granted visas to travel to the United States. They were first placed in St. Paul, Minn., where they lived for three months. The couple's English language skills positioned them in high demand. Then Ner Clay was asked to move his family to Omaha, where there was a need for a religious and cultural leader among the new Karen arrivals.
Ner Clay and Paw Tha moved their family into an apartment complex in North Omaha, and the Karen families followed. Day after day, they labored to settle their own family and jobs while helping dozens of new refugee families translate their mail, make appointments, drive for errands, and function in an all-English world.
Ner Clay became associate pastor of the Karen Christian Revival Church with a growing parish of more than 400 families. In addition to spiritual support and recreational activities, the church became a resource center for the community, offering resettlement assistance, clothing and household items, job-seeking advice, and educational programs that help the families adjust to life in Omaha.
Beautiful, elegant horses competing in The International Omaha horse jumping competition will thrill audiences at the CenturyLink Center Omaha downtown on April 12 and 13.
What is equitation? A quadrille? What does dressage mean? Before heading for the competition, visit InternationalOmaha.com. A glossary of terms unique to the horse world is listed under Show Jumping 101. Also on the website is a map of the course's design. No two courses are ever the same. Jumps are numbered and have flags to indicate directions: A red flag is right, a white flag is left.
There are different types of jumps. For example, the Oxer has two verticals that are close together, making the jump wider. A Combination denotes two or three jumps in a row, with no more than two strides between each.
But there is more to The International than watching horses jump. It's a family and fun event. During the daytime Equine Expo when admission is free, visitors can experience what it's like to be around the 1,200-pound animals. They can also learn about eight different breeds of horses.
Face painting, equine toys, clothes, jewelry, and a living historical display of cavalry days will be part of the fun. Daytime competition with riders and horses begins each day at 9 a.m.
The International's goal is to "foster and develop international-caliber athletes with the equestrian sport," according to Runnels. Competitors come from many countries for the almost two-hour shows. Last year's winner out of 97 competitors was from Germany.
Pick up a program. Everything you want to know about where to go and what to do—and terms that are used in the horse world—are in the program.
See horses warm up in the warm-up area.
Be on time for the opening ceremonies at 7 p.m. Special entertainment on both nights will feature the Strategic Command's joint color guard and the Omaha Police Department's mounted patrol. Singer Marcello Guzzo and the comic act of Tommie Turvey will also perform. "It's amazing what Turvey does with his horse," Runnels says. The Omaha Symphony will play on Saturday night.
Stay for the Victory Gallop at the end. "It's really cool," Runnels says.


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"Using Social to Make the Sale" is Part 2 of the blog series "Social Media in Technology: A Unified Strategy for Success." In this blog post, we look at how tech companies are using social to improve their sales. View Part 1 on recruitment here. To learn more about how tech companies are using social media, download the white paper that accompanies this blog series.
Businesses in every industry need to integrate social media throughout their entire enterprise. Though technology companies are active on social, individual departments don't often practice company-wide sharing of social media strategies. As a result, potential business benefits offered by social media are lost. To mitigate these losses, expanding adoption of a social relationship platform outside of marketing is essential. This will help ensure that businesses can use social media to deliver broader business goals.
Because social has fundamentally changed the way people do business, it's time for Sales departments to take advantage of the potential business benefits of using Social Media.
HootSuite is on the front lines of the rise of the social business and as a result we want to share the insights of HootSuite's key leaders with you. In Part 2 of our "Social Media in Technology" blog series, we will focus on how social is helping the Sales department close deals – including insights from HootSuite's CEO Ryan Holmes.
With the onset of social media there has been a fundamental shift in the way people buy goods and services in an online world. The conversation between business and customer has changed. Buyers are now better informed and better connected than ever before prompting the need for a strategic response from sales organizations.
Decrease the length of your sales cycle. By being active on social, it provides the opportunity to find potential buyers on social networks and starts the conversation with the prospects when they are actively looking to buy.
Establish trust with your potential buyers. If your business is seen as an industry leader, you establish credibility and trust from prospects. Your online presence is your first impression. Establishing that you have knowledge and experience in your industry will greatly influence your prospective buyers reaction to your outreach.
Increase the opportunity to engage with prospective buyers. Collaborate with your marketing team to create content that resonates with prospective buyers. Receiving high quality targeted content from your marketing department, allows your sales team to publish content that builds credibility.
Social media can be a great resource for gaining unique insights into leads that can help you make more impactful first contact. Last year, for example, we landed a new corporate client thanks in large part to Twitter. After following one of the client's decision makers on the social network for months, one of my sales reps noticed that the executive always tweeted passionately about his love of McDonald's seasonal McRib burger. So when the rep eventually decided it was time to reach out and make contact, he used their mutual passion for the menu item as an icebreaker in an email (writing in the intro something along the lines of "It's McRib season again. . . ."). Talk of his favorite sandwich really grabbed the exec's attention. He responded, leading to more exchanges and eventually a major sale.
And social media isn't just for icebreakers. This kind of investigating can also be used to uncover crucial information on businesses, enabling salespeople to optimally time their outreach.
Social media can be a major asset in getting people to be more receptive to you. For instance, another rep at HootSuite recently fused old and new techniques to land a meeting with a huge potential client. He first came across an article in the Boston Globe about a new initiative being launched by a major communications company. The article happened to mention the C-level executive who was leading the initiative. After a quick search on LinkedIn, the rep discovered that he had a first-level connection in common with the executive. He referenced the mutual connection as he reached out, and amazingly, heard back in 30 minutes.
Had our rep tried the traditional route of calling or emailing, it's unlikely he would have received such an immediate response—or any response at all, for that matter. None of this, of course, is rocket science. A warm referral is known to increase the odds of sales success by 200 to 400 percent. What's new and powerful here is leveraging social media to transform a cold referral into a warm one.
There is nothing more tragic than a lost opportunity in sales. Our sales reps have found one easy way to avoid them—working with departments (other than just marketing) to gain valuable intel.
For example, one of our customer support reps recently spotted somebody on Twitter complaining about a unsatisfactory sales demo they'd just had with one of our major competitors. She immediately blasted the message over to a sales manager, using our internal tasking tool. The manager took it from there, looking up the tweeter's professional information on LinkedIn and then tracking down his contact information. This all ended up becoming a promising new opportunity worth tens of thousands dollars. Oftentimes clients are pleased to hear from us in this way, and to be offered a potential solution to their business problem.
Social media-assisted selling isn't just happening at my company. More and more salespeople in both large and small businesses are adopting social media. Last year for example, IBM reported that they saw a stunning 400% surge in their sales after implementing their social selling pilot program.
In the future, the most successful technology companies be the ones who use social media as a part of their overall business strategy.


How close is your closest confederate memorial?
Look at that weird gradient in California.
Have you tried baking with ancient wheat?
Some baby on this plane is singing the ABCs all out of order and a guy just shouted "yes girl remix!!"
I can believe that Park Forest, IL is the most toxic place in the US. The south suburbs of Chicago are full of racist, misogynistic, cranky, jerks. The ones that could sold up and fled to places in northwest Indiana that are still mainly white, but there are still plenty left who couldn't sell for some reason or another and are bitter. That's not to say that everyone in these places is like that. I grew up in the south suburbs, and when I visit Chicago I often stay with a friend in the area. But I know these types far too well.
That Nerdwallet calculator really confuses me. It doesn't seem to allow for a mortgage without PMI. I plugged in the numbers relevant to my home purchase last year (my down payment, my annual salary pre-tax, etc.) and it spewed out a crazy result that was nearly $400k more than I spent on a house. The only way I could "afford" a house of that cost is if I was comfortable not saving any money for retirement. I adjusted the slider to a home price as close to what I paid as possible, and that was well within the "affordable" range. I wouldn't recommend using that as a way of confirming that you can't live in paradise, if that's any consolation.
That's good to know about the nerd wallet calculator. I did notice that it includes closing costs in with your down payment but that is unlikely to account for a 400k discrepancy. Also if you change anything it resets your down payment to the min and you have to restart to get the down payment back to your original setting.
Yes, that was the other thing I noticed and meant to comment on. When it asked for a down payment, I put in just the down payment, not the down payment with closing costs. There doesn't seem to be a way to get it to calculate the down payment only as a down payment unless you "game" it by adding down payment plus your expected closing costs into that field. (But then, why just call it down payment?) I guess it's geared towards people who forget that there are other costs to buying a home other than just a down payment and monthly mortgage. It still bugs me that I couldn't get it to drop PMI, though.
The first white household in the location that is now Park Forest was in 1833 and in 1834 it became a stop on the underground railroad. As a planned community, Park Forest was integrated on paper from it's start in 1946 and in reality in 1959 (shoutout to the Unitarian Church for that one). Today it's 60% African-American.
Yes, there are racist, misogynistic, cranky jerks in the south suburbs of Chicago. They concentrate in Orland, and are perpetually bitter because they can't afford Winnetka.
Park Forest has many issues, but erasing it's history because of two terrible trolls isn't quite fair.
I saw that thread back in Feb. It's not true. Wall Street is exactly why immigrant parents are being rounded up. I mean, check the tickers for CXW and GEO (which donated to Trump) over the last year. It's depressing, but I think the only reason we have detention centers at all is because somebody figured out they could take tax payer dollars for locking people up AND get forced labor out of the people.
You can't blame all of wall street for a couple of racist rich people.
Ha, ha, ha. I lived in Orland Park for a few years. I didn't experience it as any more racist than other south suburbs, although I would agree about it's "inferiority complex" of not being a north shore suburb. Flossmoor is pretty stuck up, too. (Although, Friend that I visit has relatives there and lives in nearby Olympia Fields.) My old stomping grounds from childhood through mid-twenties was Hazel Crest, Homewood, Markham, Harvey, South Holland, Thornton, Lansing, Dolton, Matteson (mainly for the mall), Oak Forest, and Orland Park. Now that I reflect on it, Thornton was probably the most racist at the time since I heard about a black family being run out of town at one point. And that may still be the case.
CXW and GEO aren't "a couple of racist rich people". They are giant corporations that are profiting off of human suffering. And CXW's largest institutional holder is Vanguard. We are all the "good Germans" on this one.
The worst case scenario with Trump is literal concentration camps (I doubt it'd be Jews as a focus this time, but I wouldn't put money on any given marginalized group being safe). That's why he pardoned Arpaio. Not (just) because they are like-thinking racist buddies, but because the idea of legalizing any inhumane treatment of people in detainment (oftentimes people who are not even convicted of anything) is so crucial for Trump's long game.
Wall Street has plenty of redeeming features, but private prisons have very few. Human rights are violated regularly in our jails, detainment centers and prisons, and corporations have found a way to profit from this. I don't "blame" all of Wall Street, but I do blame the incentives our current incarnation of capitalism has cooked up in terms of why people are being rounded up.
Linda- I'm being somewhat flippant about Orland, but I do think there are some perniciously racist people there. Flossmoor may be stuck up, but specifically on the racism front there is a meaningful difference between 47% black (Flossmoor) and 0.7% black (Orland).
Just noting that your two arguments about whether or not to denounce an entire group based on two members exactly contradict each other.
The calculator also hilariously underestimates the taxes in my zip code (they are actually about 3 times as high as the estimate). And yeah – it said that I could afford an $850k house. We actually just bought a house two months ago, which cost about $500k less than that, and that was the top of our budget. There is no way we could afford $850k. The calculator asks about debt, but no other monthly expenses. It also assumes that we can spend 40% of our gross income on a housing payment, which seems like a bad idea, even for people who don't have two kids in daycare. That's more like 65% of our take-home pay (after taxes, retirement savings, insurance premiums, FSA contributions, etc). Terrible, terrible advice.
They were pretty spot-on on the taxes in my zipcode. I wonder if they use average tax rate rather than tax rules (which would underestimate taxes for places where the tax value doesn't change to match sale prices each year). We really can't afford a home in paradise!
I got most of the financial milestones (and am now probably done, depending on inflation), but probably in this order: 4, 1, 7, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 10/12/13/14. In other words, I had to pay off my student loans first, and paying cash for my second car happened very early and is also a big part of what allowed all those other things to happen. Qualifying for my pension let those last 4 things happen blam-blam-blam.


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Home Coronavirus Trump and the Coronavirus Task Force talk about development of possible treatments...
Trump and the Coronavirus Task Force talk about development of possible treatments in press conference
Lucas Southwell
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic with members of the Coronavirus Task Force on Thursday, March 19, 2020 at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca Press/TNS)
On Thursday Morning March 19, President Donald Trump and his Coronavirus Task Force outlined the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) current endeavors to find appropriate treatments to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Concerns over the economy and a shortage of medical supplies were also discussed.
According to Dr. Stephen Hahn, Commissioner of Food and Drugs for the FDA, a vaccine for the virus has reached phase 1 trials with an estimated time of 12 months before it will be ready to be distributed, which is actually much faster than normal. In the meantime, the FDA is looking at other options to help patients fight the symptoms of the disease.
Trump talked specifically about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as drugs that may possibly be used to combat the coronavirus's symptoms. Both are primarily drugs used to treat malaria but are also used to treat other ailments like rheumatoid arthritis. The exact way these drugs affect the body is not completely understood, but they can be very effective at reducing pain.
"This has been used in different forms, very powerful drug, in different forms and it's shown very encouraging, very, very encouraging early results," said Trump.
Trump also emphasized the convenience in using old, already tested drugs to treat the virus, since they have already gone through the FDA testing, unlike new drugs which need to go through an approval process.
Another drug mentioned that could possibly help combat the virus was remdesivir, an antiviral drug that, according to Hahn, is already in clinical trials and has been approved by the FDA for what's known as "compassionate use," officially called Expanded Access, which allows some severely ill patients to seek help through experimental treatment.
According to Hahn, the FDA is looking at both of these drugs and a myriad of others to try and find the best solution for short-term treatment prior to the creation of a vaccine.
Hahn also discussed the "possible" but "not proven" treatment known as convalescent plasma that could possibly be developed in the short term. This treatment would involve collecting and concentrating the blood of people who contracted the virus and then recovered fully from it, and then taking that concentrated blood and giving it to other patients in an attempt to boost their immune system's response to the virus.
Hahn and Trump both praised the workers at the FDA for all of their hard work. Hahn made sure to clarify that all drugs were still going through the proper testing and vetting process. Hahn said everyone at the FDA was working overtime to solve the immediate need for Coronavirus treatments specifically.
Trump also promised to support businesses during this tough time and said he believed that the economy would bounce back after the country gets through this current crisis.
"We'll be back, and I actually think we'll be back stronger than before," said Trump.
Trump responded to questions concerning the lack of supplies hospitals are dealing with as they attempt to fight the virus and his decision not to make heavy use of the Defense Production Act to solve that issue. According to Trump, it won't be necessary because they have already scaled back potential company liabilities regarding the sale of medical supplies and that should immediately help make things like masks more available and make it easier for companies to sell them to hospitals. He also emphasized that it was the job of the states and governors to ensure medical supplies are available and that his administration was working with and helping those governors.
"We're working with the states, we're working with the governors, we're working with everybody, the relationships are great," said Trump. "Nobody ever heard of the number of masks that's been ordered (but) they're being made now and they're available now."
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Tox: Puzzle Roguelike – Don't Do Drugs Kids!
Was it you or him that put the needle to your arm? It doesn't matter. He is your jailer, and he has to die!
Fight the Jailer's minions and your addiction in this roguelike puzzler. Your ability to survive will depend on your tactical insight, use drugs to stay alive and ohhh a bunny.It's a cute bunny! Much cuter than those OH MY GOD THE FLOOR EYES STARE INTO MY SOUL.
Fight the Jailers minions and your addiction in this roguelike puzzler. Your ability to survive will depend on your tactical insight, use drugs to stay alive and ohhh a bunny.It's a cute bunny! Much cuter than those OH MY GOD FLOOR EYES.
Just a little roguelike-ish we're slapping together to get a feel for Android games! Feeling happy about the product so far. Flaterectomy has done some awesome work on the art.