Power, Passion and Perseverance - Dan Glass
Portrait of Dan Glass, photo by Darren Black, 2020
Martin Luther King speaks to love's power, “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love”
I am fascinated as to how people collaborate to create powerful, loving meaningful social change, largely due to my background. My grandparents were all Nazi Holocaust survivors. There is wisdom in the darkness I've inherited which I believe guides many descendants of war and oppression, such as myself and my sibling today, to rekindle loving culture and strive for a world of love by understanding what brings community empowerment. In the spirit of Camus' teachings, amongst life's meaninglessness, I want to embrace life to deal with the darkness. Huey Newton, founder of the Black Panther speaks to this, “I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.”
The power of love's meaning has preoccupied humankind throughout time and across the world and has been the catalyst for many movements for revolutionary change. However, in 'Broken Britain' political and economic solutions are readily advocated for social change in our culture, love doesn't appear within political manifestos.
I believe this situation cannot be faced merely from an intellectual focus; it requires a more complex vision. Love doesn't appear within human development indicators or its contribution to a nations' Gross Development Product (GDP) isn't understood. Currently the UK is the 7th richest but most unequal country in the industrialised world with the highest levels of child poverty. We are incessantly told that 'we are all in this together' yet the gap between the rich and poor is wider now than in the times of Dickens and we have the highest rates of social isolationism in Europe. Particularly since the reign of Margaret Thatcher, people are conditioned only to look out for number one, as Thatcher reminds us “There is no such thing as society.”
Public discussions of love in our culture right now are rare unless packaged by a corporation sold to us on Valentines day telling us 'all you need is love'. What has love pushed people to do for social change? Where can it take humanity? These are the useful questions to read our reality.
50 Years of Radical Gay Pride, London, Photo by Gaz de Vere, 2022
“The power of love's meaning has preoccupied humankind throughout time and across the world and has been the catalyst for many movements for revolutionary change.“
The lack of understanding and definitions surrounding love are highlighted by Diane Ackerman who declares love as “the great intangible.” The dictionary defines it as 'passionate affection for another person, especially when based on sexual attraction.' Does deep affection adequately describe love's meaning? This illusion, perpetuated by so much fantastical romantic lore, stands in the way of our learning how to love and the power that derives from it. Furthermore, M Scott Peck's book 'The Road Less Travelled' echoes the work of Erich Fromm, who defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.” Adam Kahane expands on the potency in the fusion of power and love as not separate or oppositional but in fact are intertwined and generative to each other.
Power generates love to be meaningful and power and love drives power to become meaningful for more than those who hold power. This grounding helps to understand the delicate interplay between power and love in order to better understand ourselves, reach out utmost humanity, provide meaning and become whole. So if love is therefore an act of will, it is necessary in our survival toolkit to explore how we can collectively act upon it, through mutuality, integrity, radical education, hope, soul activism and cultural fearlessness.
Dan is an ‘Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) healthcare and human rights activist, performer, presenter and writer. Dan has been recognised as Attitude Magazine’s 'campaigning role models for LGBTQI youth', a Guardian ‘UK youth climate leader’, 2017 'Activist of the Year' with the 'Sexual Freedom Awards' and was announced a 'BBC Greater Londoner' in 2019 for founding 'Queer Tours of London - A Mince Through Time. Dan is an artist with the global In Place of War artist network and an educator from the ‘Training for Transformation’ movement. Dan recently presented ‘Never Again - Fighting the Polish far-right’, Censoring Palestine: The Weaponisation Of Anti-Semitism and the Coronavirus cabaret: the online show combating social isolation’ and his book United Queerdom: From the Legends of the Gay Liberation Front to the Queers of Tomorrow was recognised as Observer book of the week June 2020. Dan recently founded self-defence empowerment programme Bender Defenders and Queer Night Pride to confront rising hate crime and is loving being part of the ‘This is My Culture - George Michael sexual freedom tribute party’ collective since it began in 2016. Contact dan at www.theglassishalffull.co.uk and at alright@theglassishalffull.co.uk - @danglassmincer