Working Class Privilege

LarryG January 2, 2011

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New Years Eve was somewhat of a slow day at clinic.We had three punks working and saw
about 30 people.Keith did the
morning shift, while Michele did the swing shift and I worked the afternoon
into the evening.Shoshana and Melissa
split the desk.All stations were covered for the final day of the year.When we figured the holiday hours, we decided to end New Years Eve an
hour early, making the last appointment 5:50pm.I closed Christmas Eve last week and on that day, which was also
a Friday, we closed shop an hour early.2010 has come to a close and with it our third holiday season as a social business project, as community organizers and as participants in a social movement.Three years of community acupuncture
and I am privileged.

My father never knew this kind of working life.He never will, I figure.He has always been under a boss.Always.He’s never been any kind of boss to anyone else.He’s not been a supervisor or a
manager.He has been an unskilled
laborer his whole life.And I
love him.

Visiting home last spring I had watched him assistant coach one
of my adopted brothers baseball games.I watched him casually, with his prop-like amaretto flavored decaf
coffee, though no cigarette these days. And he was doing what he has always
done at one of his kid’s baseball games: cheered people on.He is that guy at the game that stands
behind the backstop, giving frequent encouragement through the repetition of
sound and reliable tips.“Keep
your head up, John.”“Watch for
the curveball.”As kids he put
himself into our baseball teams with such devotion that as a relatively new
father I can only now marvel at his commitment and affection for us.He was always there.He lived through us.That could be good or bad.

The kids on the team seem so different than when we all grew
up.I can’t imagine what it is
like to be a teenager today.I am
saying this at 35 years old.Still, I can’t imagine growing up thinking that this kind of
overwhelming media saturation is normal.That Wal-Mart is normal.I
can’t imagine thinking that the endless and homogenized corporate sprawl is
normal or not having a personal understanding from experience that it has not
always been this way.The
continuing devastation of our communities is not natural, not right and not
something that is just happening.

Growing up in the 80’s and through the 90’s allowed me to experience the
dismantling of the rules and regulations supporting the financial integrity and
power of the working class from the inside, participating unknowingly in the
chaotic strain placed on relationships when what was once just enough slips
into scarcity.Hardly unique was
this experience, yet the time worn memories of childhood seem alien to me these
days.Long Island, New York has been
thoroughly developed up the middle, while the coastal lands north, south and
east have been almost entirely preserved for the upper class. They own the land in one way or another. When a park, arboretum, university or museum is placed within a exclusive hamlet or village that has its own police force, it sends a clear message about who is welcome and who is not.Though not on the coast
and practically right smack in the middle of the tuning fork shaped landmass, I
grew up in Ronkonkoma. A mostly white suburb in Suffolk County, it serves as a stark example of Nassau and Suffolk County’s status as the most racially segregated suburbs in the nation. My parents
bought their house when it was still possible for working class people of whatever background to buy a
home in Ronkonkoma.My brother recently
left a union roofing job after he couldn’t get a home loan while making $70k a
year.He worked his ass off and is
one of the hardest working people I have ever known.So, he and his family transplanted on the assurances of a
private roofing job as a supervisor to Buffalo, New York.After training, he was promptly laid
off.They are still in Buffalo.

Most of the coastal areas, as does
much of Long Island, retain the names of native lands and
people.

And so, we were a working class family in an increasingly
middle class neighborhood and watched as the green spaces around us, undeveloped lots really, were transformed into expensive housing structures and retail spaces.There used to be more neighborhood
stores and small businesses.Now
it is a seemingly endless sprawl of corporate chains that connect together like
some never ending strand of capitalist DNA.That and the growing number of closed small businesses.This isn’t normal.Or, it wasn’t normal.But it is now, I suppose. And of course, the middle class is now feeling the crunch too.

To me my father
represents a sort of battlefield that the class war has been fought on, a
canvass for the human drama that unfolds when people are crumpled up like a
pieces of paper and thrown in the garbage.But he always uncrinkled himself, pulled himself out of the
can and got back into line though, even when the line went nowhere.And I love him for that.

So, with a partner I opened Tucson Community
Acupuncture.I have decided my own
hours and helped decide my wage.I
never have anyone checking my work, looking over my shoulder or telling me what
to do.The work is stable and
sustainable.I have no boss.The clinic and the community are my
boss and I serve them.But they give out what I put in: love.And
this is the life that neither my mother or father will ever know.And that hurts me.

Connecting with a patient in clinic that feels like family,
that feels working class, fills me with a feeling that is hard to understand
but feels good nonetheless.I like
being in a position to offer service to people that remind me of my mother and
father.As a kid I watched them
consistently struggle, stress, strain and fight.Things were always tense, I still don’t totally understand
why.Money was no bit player in
this routine.We seemed to have
always been struggling, my parents always fighting, my mother always depressed
and my father always at a new job.I am three thousand miles away from them now and they still live in the
same sad house.My mother has seen
my clinic once while my father has yet to.And sometimes I am sure that they will never sit in a community
acupuncture clinic and get treatment back home, able to go because it is priced
in their range.There are no CA
clinics on Long Island.7.5
million people and no CA clinics. There is Brooklyn, but that is just too far. We don’t consider that Long Island anyway. More like “the city”.

The one time my mother came to Tucson I got to treat
her.I almost cried putting in the
needles.She is so wounded from
her youth.She does not take care
of herself and is always in pain, emotional and physical.And she won’t let anyone help her.The only way I cannot feel heartbroken
over her hurt is to be angry at her most of the time or just not think of
it.And so I live in the desert now
and I do not blame her.But
touching her soft skin while she lay in our best recliner, a thrift store score
if there ever was one, it pained me deeply to take care of this sad, beautiful,
working class woman.

Meeting and interacting with people that feel like family on
a daily basis, being myself while sharing in their joy as well as their sorrows
and frustrations is the best form of privilege I can think of.As someone that ran three
thousand miles to escape the wreckage of a family falling apart, I will never
know the experience of needling my mother or father on a weekly basis, nor my
sisters or brothers, adopted or blood.That kills me sometimes.I
may have a dysfunctional wreck of a family.But I am addicted to them.They are my blood and I love them, and I am drawn there in spite of or perhaps
because of the hurt.And so I’ll
always go back there, as I am able.

This community acupuncture clinic, where I experience the
autonomy of the middle class professional in my working experience while
interacting with people that feel like me, even if they do not necessarily look
like me is my privilege.Being a
part of a community that I know and understand, pouring my heart into my hands
with each and every needle is my working class privilege.It is not something I can ever stop
doing.

Now will someone please open a CA clinic in Ronkonkoma? Or Brentwood? Or Hempstead?