Beltane Fire Festivals And May Day Labor Protests Celebrated Around The World: April 30-May 4, 2015 [Video]
Beltane and other May Day fire festivals were celebrated in high style around the world this week.
As May Day rituals were performed and Beltane fires were lit, people moved from the ancient to the modern to the ancient again, costumes were donned, bonny fires were lit, compliments and gifts were delivered, and the fecundity and powerful resilience of nature and humanity, and our relationship with one another were considered and reflected upon.
The United Kingdom has not only a Royal Birth to celebrate this May Day, but a Beltane born blessed child. As Inquisitr reported earlier this week, the young Princess has been named Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, the Princess of Wales.
Beltane festivals are held annually worldwide during the change of months — April to May — and originated in the Northern Hemisphere. The annual Scottish festival of May Day fires of Beltane held each year at Edinburgh Castle were astonishing and impressive.
As reported in the Huffington Post, powerful photos were captured of May Day political protests around the world.
May 1 has become associated with a day of voicing concerns about improving human rights, most especially, the rights of workers around the world.
Beltane is a festival of fertility, growth, and abundance, so it is not difficult to see how worker’s rights and labor rights are inherently ancient and modern concerns of May Day.
The Ontario Secondary School Teachers union, OSSTF of Ontario, District 19, which serves the Peel Board, just north of Toronto, Canada, went on picket strike on May 4, 2015. They are on strike for work conditions; health and safety for students, teachers, and all employees in their respective work locations; fair wages for the overtime and extra hours that that they are ordered to work; reasonable conditions, including class size, for them to be able to educate Canadian high school students; and basic respect for union-company contract negotiation.
The OSSTF, District 19, work contract has been violated at every opportunity during the past 15 years, with teachers beginning each school year working with no contract at all. This May Day strike as a union, a District, and a Canadian organization is very important.
Other OSSTF Districts, one of the largest Canadian labor unions and bargaining units in the country, are already on strike as of the beginning of the May Day weekend. As CBC News reports, Peel Region high school teachers are joining a growing Ontario Ministry of Education Strike. Durham and Rainbow Region OSSTF Districts are already on strike. As the Globe and Mail has reported, several other OSSTF districts and several elementary school unions are also taking work to rule action and are prepared to walk out of the classroom if negotiations continue to fail.
According to CBC, “The OSSTF has identified four more school boards as targets for possible walkouts, while the union that represents Ontario’s public elementary teachers will be in a legal strike position as of May 10. Members of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association gave their bargaining team a strike mandate of more than 94 percent late last month.The contracts for all of Ontario’s teachers expired Aug. 31, 2014.”
Also in great dispute is the “new” Ontario Ministry of Education health education curriculum, which identifies at least six different genders and encourages gender neutral washrooms in elementary schools.
The highly contested and controversial Ontario Ministry of Education physical health education curriculum also has supporting materials, including a poster that was aired on Canadian television and has been posted in several Ontario schools that declares that gender-related titles for adults, including husband, wife, mother, and father, are no longer appropriate to be used in Ontario schools.
Parents, students, and teachers have vocally and loudly opposed this new curriculum but were shocked when a several year review of the documents resulted in no consideration of their objections. As Global News reported this week, hundreds of students were kept at home by parents as a “student strike” against what they believe is not an appropriate curriculum change.
The new curriculum was reportedly designed in part by a former staffer of Kathleen Wynne, currently the Premiere of Ontario, and former Ontario Minister of Education, who was arrested in 2013 on criminal charges related to making child pornography, possession of child pornography, and luring children for sexual assault purposes.
[Image via Shutterstock]
