This article was originally published in easternvista.net on February 6, 2020. It was the last article published by Frenchie Mae Cumpio before her arrest on February 7, 2020.

The bourgeois system confused us with the many definitions of love that they wanted us to believe. When we were 5, loved meant being able to receive ice cream and chocolates from our parents who worked away from home. In high school, love was struggling hard to pass all of our subjects regardless of what it takes to satisfy our family. At 18, love was about receiving roses and flowers. And as we get older, love became even harder to reach – love is becoming expensive.

For several years, the manifestation of love is defined by the world’s ruling elite to advertise their goods and products, thus ruining its very essence. Even this emotion has defined and put a barrier between the rich and the poor, who can give more and who cannot, who can pass the standards set by the capitalists and who are unfortunate.

It has always been easy for the ruling elite and those who are blinded by this culture to call the poor neglectful of their duties to show love to their parents and children, to their partners and kins but speak blindly of the poor people’s limitations. Love is tested on a daily basis for those who belong to the economy’s lower strata – whether or not you are able to bring a kilo of rice and fish for the family, whether or not you are able to send and support your children to school or whether or not you are able to pay your debts on time.

But if there’s anything that the history of love taught us, it is that because of the people’s willingness to show love that they learned to fight back.

Activism is the essence of love

Under a rotten system, the best manifestation of love across the globe is through activism. Fighting against the capitalists, environmental plunderers, corrupt officials and mass murderers is always far greater than subscribing to the status quo.

In the Philippine context, this manifestation of love pursued national liberation from the Spanish and Japanese colonizers. Our ancestors militantly took up arms to fight for their rights against the usurpers who wanted nothing but to loot the country’s resources. At present, activists continue fighting against the continuing control of imperialist countries, landlords and bureaucrat capitalists over the toiling masses nationwide.

Parents who can’t give their five-year old child ice cream and chocolates whenever they go home from work should know that love means fighting back against low wages. Love, for students who can barely study in school especially in the tertiary level, should mean fighting for a nationalist, scientific and mass-oriented education. And for teenagers who can’t afford a bouquet of roses and chocolates every February 14 and special occasions should join the fight against the bourgeois culture promoted by those in power.

Unlike what the dogs and butchers told us, love isn’t the absence of war. If there’s a word to replace love, it must be revolution – revolution waged against the world’s oppressors.

The enablers of the status quo are actively redefining love. The world, however, is waging a war to combat it because there is only one way to celebrate love today and it is through fighting back.