On Social Joy
288 free treatments on May Day
Last weekend I talked with Cohort 10 students (first years) about their experience helping out with WCA’s 2024 May Day celebration, when we collectively delivered 288 treatments! Which is the highest mark we’ve hit on a free day, post-pandemic. The students who were directly involved (pulling needles, staffing the front desk) had a great time. They came away energized and inspired, so we spent most of Saturday morning unpacking the question: why exactly does it feel so good, to so many of us, to celebrate May Day by giving away as much acupuncture as we can?
I asked them, have you heard the term prefigurative intervention?
Yes Magazine defines it like this:
We can’t create a better world if we haven’t yet imagined it. How much better then, if we are able to touch such a world, experience it directly, even live in it—if only to a partial degree and for a brief moment. This is the idea behind “prefigurative interventions,” actions that (…) enact in the here and now the world we actually want to live in… (P)refigurative engagement allows us to experience for ourselves (and demonstrate to others), that another world is necessary, possible—and maybe even beautiful.
That’s what May Day is for.
What would it feel like if nobody had to worry about paying for healthcare? If neither patients nor providers had to think about what treatments cost or how they’re reimbursed? If there were no scarcity at all around getting or giving acupuncture? On May Day, WCA patients and staff get to live in that world. For one whole day.
Or as one student put it, “It’s like a vacation from capitalism!”
Which is one reason WCA emphasizes solidarity, not charity — because we ALL need a vacation from capitalism. Giving away 288 treatments isn’t about pity or obligation or guilt; it’s about creating an experience of what Rebecca Solnit calls social joy. In her book A Paradise Built in Hell, she argues that humans are hardwired for mutual aid, cooperation and altruism, even though our society is constantly trying to persuade us otherwise. To get to be our cooperative selves — fully, in public, without apology — is a joy and a relief. (For more about social joy in community acupuncture, see Punking: The Praxis of Community Acupuncture, pg 36.)
I also think of May Day as a gratitude practice. Certainly the patients who come in for free acupuncture express a lot of gratitude and appreciation, which is lovely (and also not limited to May Day; WCA has exceptionally kind patients.) For the rest of us, though, on a day that money doesn’t play a role in our work, we get to focus on how lucky we are to do it. Like, how extraordinary it is to provide relief from pain, using only tiny needles. How amazing it is that something like acupuncture exists at all.
And because we’re always talking about entrepreneurship at POCA Tech, we also discussed how May Day provides a slew of practical benefits to our small business. While we’re collectively imagining a better world, we’re also doing the most cost-effective marketing ever. Not only are we generating “good vibes” (as the students put it) and good word of mouth, we’re stress-testing WCA’s clinic systems. What happens when we’re fully booked and taking as many walk-ins as possible? So far, every May Day, the answer has been: good things. Having every shift fully booked is fun. Which helps us to believe in our capacity to care for people, both individually and collectively. May Day is not only about celebrating this amazing thing we get to do, but also: Look at how much of it we can do.
Which also makes it a fantastic training experience for students and new practitioners. Working on May Day builds confidence. Once you’ve gotten through a packed shift where everybody’s happy and grateful, you feel like you can handle a regular busy day in the clinic. Because WCA’s resources are limited, as much as possible we need everything we do to serve more than one purpose — and May Day does.
May Day is WCA flexing everything it’s got: systems, relationships, imagination. Six dozen recliners. And its capacity for social joy.
Speaking of imagination — and taking the next step towards a better world here — just imagine what we could do on May Day if we had a 5NP law.