Ml user here, I think it’s rad. Gonna radicalize the libs at my local protest with May Day history ¯_( ツ)_/¯
Like, I think the No Kings protests, for instance, while great at getting people out, struggle to give those people direction, beyond the big protest.
But any good Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, [insert preferred flavour of leftist] will know that you go where the masses are. And if the masses are at a big protest, then you go to the big protest to recruit, educate, and even just network with cool people and orgs.
So I’m Wiccan, and while if pulls from things, and arises out of an occult millieu much older than it, Wicca is essentially a modern religion. The Wheel of The Year, the Wiccan liturgical calendar, is newer than the labor movement’s establishment of May 1st as Intl. Worker’s Day.
Beltane, was originally a Gaelic holiday Marking the midway point between the Spring Equinox and the summer solstice (and its not even what the Holiday was originally called in Wicca btw).
It makes sense that a general spirit of resistance would come from working class Irish and Scottish who sat on the periphery of English Industrializations benefits, and were more easily exploited as cheap labor. And it makes sense that they might latch onto an existing springtime festival as a date for a radical workers holiday. Spring means new birth, perhaps even of a world beyond Capitalism.
Also some important labor movement events happened around that time of year, most famously the Haymarket Affair, Which had a huge impact on the son selection of May 1st.
So I don’t think it’s at all bad that international Workers day, the culture of a historically colonized people, and pagan springtime holidays, both ancient and modern, all coincide and intersect. In fact I think it’s a beautiful thing.
It’s like looking at Pride month, and Juneteenth in the US, and asking why gay people stole June from black people. They didn’t. Two oppressed people groups in the US experienced seismic events in the history of their liberation during that month. And that’s sick as hell!
Tl;dr - yeah, mentioning may 1st as also being a pagan spring festival is cool too
Lemmy.ml: “Waah, protests don’t do anything, wake me when there’s a general strike.”
No Kings: “We’re doing a general strike.”
Lemmy.ml: “Oh, fuck, shit, I didn’t… Um… WELL SCREW YOU, YOU’RE PROBABLY GOING TO DO IT WRONG ANYWAY.”
Ml user here, I think it’s rad. Gonna radicalize the libs at my local protest with May Day history ¯_( ツ)_/¯
Like, I think the No Kings protests, for instance, while great at getting people out, struggle to give those people direction, beyond the big protest.
But any good Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, [insert preferred flavour of leftist] will know that you go where the masses are. And if the masses are at a big protest, then you go to the big protest to recruit, educate, and even just network with cool people and orgs.
Are you including Beltane and Wiccan Sabbaths that got coopted by the labor movement or…
So I’m Wiccan, and while if pulls from things, and arises out of an occult millieu much older than it, Wicca is essentially a modern religion. The Wheel of The Year, the Wiccan liturgical calendar, is newer than the labor movement’s establishment of May 1st as Intl. Worker’s Day.
Beltane, was originally a Gaelic holiday Marking the midway point between the Spring Equinox and the summer solstice (and its not even what the Holiday was originally called in Wicca btw).
It makes sense that a general spirit of resistance would come from working class Irish and Scottish who sat on the periphery of English Industrializations benefits, and were more easily exploited as cheap labor. And it makes sense that they might latch onto an existing springtime festival as a date for a radical workers holiday. Spring means new birth, perhaps even of a world beyond Capitalism.
Also some important labor movement events happened around that time of year, most famously the Haymarket Affair, Which had a huge impact on the son selection of May 1st.
So I don’t think it’s at all bad that international Workers day, the culture of a historically colonized people, and pagan springtime holidays, both ancient and modern, all coincide and intersect. In fact I think it’s a beautiful thing.
It’s like looking at Pride month, and Juneteenth in the US, and asking why gay people stole June from black people. They didn’t. Two oppressed people groups in the US experienced seismic events in the history of their liberation during that month. And that’s sick as hell!
Tl;dr - yeah, mentioning may 1st as also being a pagan spring festival is cool too
You are not doing anything, you can’t even get something simple like a protest right