Inessential Weirdness!
Posted May 3rd, 2008 by Lisa Rohleder
After reading Nora's excellent post on Myth-busting for May Day, I started searching the Internet for a link that I wanted to add to the comments. It was from a site called "Payday", written by and for people working jobs such as baristas, food servers, etc, and it was titled: "Things you will hear if you try to talk about class". I think there were 25 things, and one of those things that was included three separate times in the list was "Why are you so angry?" Since it applies to Nora's observation of how resistant people can be to talking about class at all, and since it has definitely been my experience that when I talk about class, I tend to get asked that exact question -- or its variation, as instruction, "you shouldn't be so angry" -- I really wanted to include the link! But I can't find it.
However, I did find this:
http://www.classmatters.org/2006_07/its-not-them.php
which I think deserves its own post and its own discussion. "Inessential weirdness" is such a beautiful term, and I have a feeling I will be using it often. I can't imagine a more apt description of how well-meaning acupuncturists tend to alienate working class patients.
Inessential Weirdness and thinking about stucture of a CA clinic
I found this article of such importance as to think of it as something to hand to acupunks interested in learning about CA as a primer for the acupuncture related discussions that would follow.
The whole point of CA is to find a way to be as fair as possible with the dissemination of effective health care (in the form of acupuncture), to break down class divisions, and to provide a workable business model that provides acupunks one way to make a living practicing acupuncture. A discussion of the effect of inessential weirdness in and around acupuncture clinics could be a great beginning point for the CA curious to understand the foundation principles of CA.
As a CA acupunk and/ or CA business owner, once you commit yourself to the idea that providing affordable and accessible* acupuncture is the main priority of your business, more important than all other aspects of your business, ways to achieve this goal will begin to become self evident. For example: You need to charge lower prices than the going rate. These prices need to accurately reflect the amount of money your target patient market (the largest possible group of working people) can afford to pay for acupuncture treatments at least one time per week. You need to consider basing your prices partly on the amount of times you want patients to return for a course of treatment on average. You have to treat many people per day instead of a few; therefore, your treatments need to be completed in shorter increments of time while still retaining effective treatment results. You need to practice in a location that is large enough to accommodate many patients each day. And so on...you get the idea.
The main idea here is to begin thinking about how to define CA by picturing what an acupuncture clinic would look like and feel like and act like if it were welcoming and accessible to the vast majority of working people.
Great article!
* (accessible from class, racial, and religious viewpoints to name just a few...)
Moses
Child care
Great post. I was waiting to have a few moments to really sit down and read it properly to give it its due.So many thoughts about many of the points made but I wanted to answer a little the post made by Nora re childcare at the workshop that she speaks ofI have been struck lately by the opening around Portland of many doggie day cares. Outwardly they are generally in nice parts of town and housed in nicer new or refabbed buildings . I have been in a couple because of a nagging suspicion that some of them may provide more luxurious and attentive care for their canine clients than I have seen in quite a few childcare centers over the 10 years that I have used the latters services to look after my child while I workIn general my impression has been that the 2 doggie daycares that I have seen provide a very impressive provider to client ratio, good balanced meals and canine appropriate socialization with other dogs and interesting things for those dogs to do while their owners are at workThe quality of childcare centers in this country mostly seems to reflect the amount of money that a parent has to spend on it in general and the amount of regulation and subsidization of the industry provided by the city or state that the center resides in. The fact is that if we are to work we need to know that our children are provided with at least the level of adequate provider/child ratios, good nutritious food, socialization oppportunities and interesting age appropriate activities that i have observed in the doggie day cares on the days that I visited. I have seen child care centers in damp basements, children parked in front of electronic media for long periods of time, Providers with inadequate training in basic safety , let alone child development strategies and workers paid minimum wage to look after our children. I have also seen wonderful centers and before and after school programs but mostly at a price that many of our clients cannot afford . These are our clients and their daily concerns. They have been mine , but I have been incredibly lucky to have a middle class family and the education and opportunities that it has bought to ease these daily concerns for me from time to time. I think that until childcare and health care are front and center as something that Government can do better than private enterprise we will have doggie daycares that seem to care better of their clients than some child care centers.I think that just to take these 2 out of the equation of stresses on our clients would help to take a large amount of stress off the people who walk through our doors.
Acupunk Schools
Acupunk schools desensitization
You are so right Chad! Right now Lisa, Lupine and I are teaching a class in CA at OCOM, mainly 3rd and 4th years students, and we are noticing that desensitization that you speak of. Its so different than one of our workshops where people are much more engaged (some are desperate of course). But in the class its not the students' fault; as far as we can tell they've just been in school too long.
They've become professional students which makes them ripe for inessential weirdness. I need to say that I don't think this is particularly a problem at OCOM as any professional program that lasts beyond two years loses its edge in training its students for the type of business that its dealing with. Of course that means practically every acu-school...
Essential reading!
Great Idea
That's a great idea Ann. I have been a class straddler my whole life, and many of those ideas hit a cord with me for different reasons.
Agreed--
That article is great: full of good ideas, well-stated. I also really liked her point about "essential weirdness," with the helpful rule of thumb being: "An essential weirdness is one that couldn't be eliminated without doing a deep injustice to someone." I'm definitely going to do some more reading of that website.
Speaking of exclusion, I got an email invite yesterday for a white anti-racist ally training workshop. It's happening next weekend, from Friday through Sunday, and the lo end of the sliding scale is $240, BYO lunch. I don't know about you all, but any event that costs more than going out to dinner and requires me to take two days off work is either a family emergency or something I need more than 12 days to plan for. There's also nothing on the flier about childcare being provided. And, under "who attends?" the flier says "white people on a spiritual path who seek to make tangible the idea of 'we are all one' by looking at whiteness and privilege...." What if you don't identify as being "on a spiritual path?" It kind of epitomizes the best and worst things about Santa Cruz.
The "25 things" is great too (thanks for posting the link, Linda); the one that struck me is "you're just being divisive." I told my sweetie about the "why are you so angry?" line and she rolled her eyes at it and opened her mouth and pointed to her many, many fillings. 'Nuff said.
I found it.
20 Things About Class You're too smart to be working class sets me off. I am disgusted when people equate class with intelligence. Uh oh, I guess I shouldn't be so angry!