🔥 Joy as Protest: Why Celebration Is a Vital Part of Movement Culture 🔥

We don’t just fight for liberation—

we live it.

We dance for it.

We feast for it.

We raise our kids in it.

We sing it into the streets.

We hold hands and laugh around fires,

even when the world tells us there’s nothing to smile about.

Because joy is not a distraction.

Joy is resistance.

And the timing could not be more sacred:

Tomorrow is Beltane—a seasonal celebration of life, fertility, warmth, and union.

It’s a threshold between spring and summer, a time when our ancestors lit bonfires, made music, and honored the sacred spark of vitality that lives in each of us.

It reminds us:

🌸 We are allowed to bloom.

🌸 We are allowed to feel good.

🌸 We are allowed to come alive—even in hard times.

Oppression thrives when we are depleted.

When we burn out.

When we forget what we’re fighting for and only focus on what we’re fighting against.

But celebration?

It refuels us.

It reconnects us to the why.

It reminds our bodies what freedom actually feels like.

Joy makes the movement sustainable.

Because a movement without music, food, and laughter will eventually collapse under the weight of rage alone.

So yes—rest is protest.

But so is joy.

So is dancing barefoot at the community potluck.

So is bringing your glitter to the picket line.

So is raising your babies with truth and tenderness.

So is hugging your friend a little tighter after a hard conversation.

Joy tells our nervous systems:

We’re still here.

We’re still human.

We still believe in something beautiful.

Let them say we’re too loud.

Let them say we’re too vibrant.

Let them say we’re “not serious enough.”

Let them forget that celebration has always been how oppressed people survive.

We carry protest in our bones.

But we carry joy in our hips, our hearts, and our holy gatherings.

So this Beltane, let’s let the joy rise.

We will not abandon celebration.

We will not abandon each other.

We will not abandon beauty.

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