We don't. We're simply tired of the word "revolution" being bastardised in a way that is inherently anti-revolutionary.

Love without solidarity is empty rhetoric. Those who wish you harm do not say they have solidarity with you. But step inside a narcissist's house and you may see "LOVE," "FAMILY," "KINDNESS" plastered on the walls. Property developers "love this neighbourhood" while displacing its residents, The abuser says "I love you" as they make your life smaller.

We don't hate love, but love is not enough. Revolution is a word with meaning. Meaning earned through the blood and sweat of millions of working-class people, often the people in developing countries who have built our iPhones or harvested our quinoa, who have fought for a better future. We refuse to let revolution become a hollowed out word, devoid of political action, devoid of its history.

This is why we started The R/evolution is Solidarity.

Saying "the r/evolution is love" is like selling Che Guevara t-shirts at H&M—a hollow cheapening. It's capitalism taking something anti-capitalist and turning it into a commodity.

It functions like all commodities by triggering the urge to consume. Like Coca-Cola claiming to be "the real thing," it offers to sell revolution for $22 a bumper sticker. (With production costs of $1.50-$3, that's a profit margin most capitalists would salivate over). It is Starbucks charging an extra $1 to build a well in Guatemala to ease one's guilt at purchasing Starbucks in the first place.

The "r/evolution is love" functions as a pure form of capitalist ideology, selling some higher transgressive liberation whilst reinforcing the very system it operates within.

The revolution should not profit any individual. It will not function as a sexy commodity one can merely consume.

Love is a doing word. Love without action is apathy, love with action is solidarity. But the word "love" has been so thoroughly bastardised that it now serves as perfect cover for its opposite.

Love has become an empty signifier that anyone can project their narcissism onto. Contemporary "love" functions as ideological obfuscation, a warm, harmonious feeling that obscures real power relations.

Politically, ideologies of "universal love" serve reactionary purposes. They convince the oppressed to love their oppressors rather than analyse power structures. They ask us to love in the abstract while ignoring concrete material conditions.

Revolution means the 99% disrupting and overthrowing the system that benefits the 1%. It's when those who actually do the work—who grow the food, build the houses, teach the children, care for the sick—collectively organise to control society themselves instead of enriching bosses and landlords.

Revolution is the moment when the impossible suddenly becomes possible. When the excluded and marginalised—who don't even count in the current system—suddenly appear and demand recognition.

We can more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But if we are to survive we must.

Solidarity is not an emotional bond but a material necessity—the complete unity of interest among all people oppressed and exploited by capitalism. Solidarity emerges from the recognition that our liberation is bound up with yours, that we have a concrete stake in each other's struggles.

It's one of the greatest weapons we possess, forged through mutual exclusion from power rather than warm feelings. True solidarity requires understanding that the ruling class divides workers—men against women, straight against queer, citizens against migrants—using these divisions to weaken all of us.

Solidarity means standing up for each other in the workplace, collectively refusing to be exploited, organising across borders because capitalism is global. It's the cold recognition that individual liberation under capitalism is impossible—only collective struggle against the system itself can win freedom for any of us.

Solidarity is horizontal, connecting as equals in struggle, unlike charity which flows from top to bottom and leaves power structures intact. This is why "revolution is solidarity" represents genuine political action while "revolution is love" represents feel-good commodity consumption.

Testaments of love let you off the hook. It let’s you transgress against those you claim to love. It let’s you center your experience and remain in ignorance of the others.

"I respect women, I love women, I cherish women" - Donald Trump
"Yes! In fact, I was with a gay friend of mine just two days ago... they know that I love them because they're my friends" - Rick Santorum
"I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis" - Kanye West
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning" - Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore

Solidarity demands action:

"Solidarity entails the awareness of being part of a single body, while at the same time involving a capacity on the part of each member to sympathize with others and with the whole. When one suffers, all suffer. For solidarity is no mere ideal; it is expressed in concrete actions and steps that draw us closer to our neighbours, in whatever situation they find themselves." - Pope Francis

"I don't believe in charity, I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from top to bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person" - Eduardo Galeano

"The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings" - Albert Schweitzer

"We have assembled once again…as humanists to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine" - Nelson Mandela

"Solidarity is something much more than mercy: usually when you appease your conscience (donate money to starving children in Africa, to use the usual Starbucks example), you can go on with your daily life as if nothing really happened. However, once you are enacting solidarity you can even abstain from charity or mercy: even if you don't give a dollar to every beggar, you can't go on with your daily life as if nothing really happened. Why? Because you carry him in your life; you live with him not like with some "integrated reject" (as we live with immigrants or refugees today), but he is a part and even a presupposition for your very action: he can never be fully integrated, because injustice can't be integrated in acts of love. This is why solidarity already contains love." - Srećko Horvat

We think that if one graffitis over large amounts of public space then one has made an invitation for others to participate. Graffiti has a long tradition of functioning as a public conversation, and we intend on participating in that conversation.