Greg Suffanti
Een bijdrage voor het QfWf 2025-jaarthema – 25 december 2025
Praktijken van Wereldburgerschap
Although I’ve lived in Holland for more than 25 years, and gave up my American passport in 2008, I’ll always FEEL American simply because it’s where I was born and raised. I follow the news in both my new and old homeland, and cautioned my 91 year old mom numerous times to be shocked and amazed by the new administration taking over in January of this year. Somehow, I felt prepared for the new Trump administration and was determined that my mom would be too.
Last January I started a series of aquarelles on trees. The idea came from Nivedita Johanna, who compared all the varieties of trees to people, and their root systems, which are relatively indistinguishable from one another, to the myriad ways we humans share great commonality, like a vast net of interconnected humanity/sameness.
I was overwhelmed by the speed of the new Trump administration’s efforts to meaningfully impact virtually all aspects of life for seemingly all Americans, and very quickly, to show countries around the world exactly how powerful “The World’s Most Powerful Man” really is. In this first aquarel, Metaphors of Sameness and Resistance, I looked back to the symbols used by the Polish Underground to fight against a fascist regime during the second World War. Trees are slow growing and in the winter time, all their life’s energies are focused underground. A nice metaphor for the major developments that seemed like a tsunami of changes happening on a daily basis. I’ll learn from trees, I told myself, to be patient, to follow the seasons, and to direct my energies inwards, to my own truths.
Well, I think looking back, I first discovered my ‘inner kaaskop’, or my own stubborn stubbornness! I was determined at the start of the year to objectively follow the news, the latest developments, each and every one of them, each and every day. And I made myself completely miserable in the process! I had to accept defeat. The unpredictability and sheer volumes of changes coming out of Washington,DC overwhelmed me, so that by June, I started taking breaks from reading any news at all. It was like rescuing myself from an overdose, and not following the news felt like life-giving medicine. Worst of all, I could feel myself becoming numb to the world around me. I’ve read enough to know this is exactly what some governments want. Especially the autocratic ones. And the increasing normalization of anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the Western world goes against everything I believe in. I needed water and light, and not the endless barrage of dark, shocking stories that no longer shocked anyone. The world changed quickly this year.
“Wereldburgerschap van de straat”
The previous year, I did a series of 10 aquarelles which I entitled the Migrant Series. There was even one entitled Migrant American History of Dreamers.
That showed, from the bottom of the composition, stars, representing people, moving upwards, toward the top two thirds of the composition, representing the USA, with the stars spreading out everywhere, the migrants fulfilling their dreams by living in America. In just a few short months, that image of migrants fulfilling their dreams seemed quaint at best. More like a relic of the past. Just a couple of weeks ago, I spent the Thanksgiving holiday in the suburbs of Washington, DC, looking for signs of change. My ten day visit to my mom and childhood friend, Donna, included seeing all of two Latin men during the length of my stay. Normally, they would have been impossible to count. One day I asked the woman sitting next to me on the bus if she noticed that there weren’t any Latin men to be seen. “Oh yeah, “ she replied, “They’re all in hiding from ICE,” as if she were telling me something everyone else already knew. I guess she was.
Yesterday, the Trump administration announced that it would start looking at the social media accounts of foreigners looking to travel to America. Foreigners like me. Does this mean I can’t write anything negative about the current US administration? What about what I’m writing now?
Yesterday, I walked in the woods. I woke up early and restless, looking to make sense of this last year. The trees were all bare, a bit moody in the morning light, and I even managed to get a bit lost, having walked around in a literal circle. But walking around in a circle didn’t mean I ended up at the same spot. I entered that forest looking to reconnect with my own roots, my own truths. I left that forest knowing in a few months it would be spring. And once again there is hope in my thinking, knowing spring will come again. Trees know this, and they’re not afraid of a little bit of winter either!
PS… Mom’s given up watching local news as she finds it too distressing. She does however read the Washington Post each day….. Which is a whole (Jeff Bezos) other conversation entirely!
Best wishes for the holidays and for a healthy and balanced 2026!
