Strangers for Ancestors #16: A Year of Descent into Depravity and Insanity

My Jewish ancestors, Clockwise, starting in the top left corner: my great grandmother, Lotte Greene Wilson (birth name Satie), approximately 18 years old; Center photograph: The Green/e family: L —> R standing: Lloyd Greene, age 12, Satie/Lotte Greene, age 17, Clifford Greene (center), age 5; Florence Greene, age 15, Etta Greene, age 13, L —> R Sitting: Joseph W. Greene, age 38, Annie Mae (Martha or Nani) age, 34; Top right photograph: my Grandmother Eugenie (Jean) Kemp Wilson holding my uncle Sande John Wilson, less than a year old, my father, Kemp Jeff Wilson sitting next them on the right, four years old; bottom right: Clifford Eugene Greene, approximately 16 years old; Bottom right photo: Etta Greene, approximately 17 years old.

I have Jewish roots in the United States - this is on my father’s mother’s side, the Green/e families. This feels like a good time to begin to introduce this branch. My Jewish ancestors were Sephardic, part of the first wave of Jews who came to the U.S. according to my father. My great great grandfather Joseph W. Greene's family were Jewish Arabs, and my great great grandmother Annie Mae Green's family were Portuguese Jews. They both had the last name of Green/e and for years, I wondered why the name on the backs of photographs was sometimes spelled with an "e,” others without. The earliest records I’ve found so far of the Greene family included an 1870 census - my great, great, great grandfather, Joseph W. Greene was born in New York in the 1840's and his occupation was listed as peddler, my great, great grandfather Joseph W. Greene’s occupation was listed as moulder. He married my great, great grandmother ‘Nani’ Green. My great grandmother was their first child and they named her Satie, a variant of Sadia which means blessed, successful in Arabic; however, it changed to Lotte when she was three.

Satie/Lotte is the second one standing on the left. She's also the woman in the top left corner. I was always told that I look like her. I was also told I look like my mother, who also looked like my great grandmother.

Here’s another picture of Satie/Lotte in 1907 - she’s the one on the far left (of course), she would be 16 here. Looking at her I feel like I’m looking at myself, in the same way that when I look in the mirror now, I see my mother staring back at me.

I start with my Jewish ancestors because it’s the first anniversary of October 7th, and it’s just one of the many ways in which I feel connected to what has happened over the past year. Both Green/e families were long gone from the region for over a century before, and I never had the sense that they were deeply religious people. I think like most settler-colonizers they were interested in a better life for themselves, without any consideration of the Indigenous peoples for whom they were displacing, and any connection to their religion was likely more of a hinderance than anything else.

My Jewish ancestry has always been of interest to me, I was curious about who these ancestors were and what exactly their story was, primarily because of this center photograph but also because of the many other photographs we have of them, especially since neither I nor my father were raised Jewish. My father had told me they were Sephardic and that was about all I knew. However over the past year, I’ve done more research through genealogical records and speaking with family.

I’ve chosen to place a diaphanous image of the Palestinian flag over my Jewish ancestors, even though I have no idea which region(s) they came from and almost none of the current flags existed before they left and, since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. I now like to see this part of my family as Palestinian, and I like to believe they would be proud of me for this choice. They also look beautiful with this flag placed over them - they were a very beautiful and elegant Jewish family. I also like to think they would be horrified at what has happened to their homeland and the extremely violent and barbaric hordes of unsophisticated Jews who have replaced them and who are executing a genocide on their beloved brothers and sisters who have continued to be the rightful stewards of the land and for whom they would never have treated with such cruelty and depravity. The people who are behind and who are carrying out this genocide now are not of that region, they are foreigners who do not and never have belonged in Palestine, for they would not treat the land or it’s people with such disregard.

In addition to what has happened to Gaza/Palestine, Lebanon, and the greater region, my personal life over the past year has also been one that has shattered in ways I never could have imagined. Yet here we are, living in a world in which genocide has become normalized and the dehumanization of Palestinians has continued to be normalized. And while the vast majority of the world is horrified by this, those who have the power to end it, will not, and billions of people throughout the world will continue to be traumatized daily through the images they/we are seeing in the media and learning about online. For awhile I was predicting a wave of youth suicides to come; however, now I just foresee a world that accepts open violence against specific categories of people, as well as specific protections for other categories of people.

And yet, we still must hear about the Holocaust, blood libel, and/or any number of ways in which Jewish people have been wronged over history almost daily through news stories, and how they are uncomfortable by the site of, or sound of Palestinians and those who support them, to the point that local, state, and federal laws are being created to protect Jewish people exclusively as an extremely special class of people who can only live with Palestinians and allies in ways they deem appropriate, which in general means silent. Jewish students have been deemed by U.S. colleges, universities, and/or the United States to be the Chosen Ones, while those who protest an active genocide, including many who are also Jewish are having their lives turned upside down and are being harshly punished for the crime of doing exactly what the world had decided we should do if ever faced with such horrific circumstances again, such as genocide - the “Never Again” call to never again allow such appalling treatment of human beings, and I of course, would add all the other animals and creatures vital to our ecosystems, and to the land itself. Yet here we find ourselves again, only this time we are witnessing the first live-streamed genocide in real time, and the overwhelming destruction to our environment, which is increasing global warming significantly. This is what hell is, and the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” has just become a hollow retort to justify the continuation of genocide and destruction.

I think back on this past year and it should have been a great celebration filled with lots of love and pride for having spent three years of my time, energy, and livelihood devoted to a project which had deep meaning for me personally, but also on a much greater scale because at its roots in anti-colonialism and the stories it tells, including the story of Palestine, and while much of it was that for those who experienced it, for me it was a year of betrayals on so many different levels, a year of trying to hold myself together while picking up the pieces as they were falling off, and a year that left me feeling empty in the end. I think the best depiction of who I was when all was said and done is the video of me by myself at Minnesota Street Project scooting along on my ass cleaning up the remnants from an exhibition that had so much more potential, had I not failed through my own impetuousness and not following my deeper instincts. The failure was all mine and mine alone, and man have I paid dearly and heavily for it. But enough on that, it’s a different story, which deserves its own space, as does this one.

The following is the documentation of my dissent into the insanity of this past year through my posts on Facebook, which caused so much controversy for some, while for others it was a breath of fresh air to see someone actually putting into words what was and still is happening around us. For myself, it was my outlet to express my experience of living amongst people who were either defending Israel, or who did not want to express the horror beyond, ‘Isn’t this awful, and of course we must condemn Hamas for this horrid crime’ … without acknowledging the history of over 75 years of brutal abuse and land dispossession by Zionists against Palestinians, and that Hamas’ attack was Palestine’s right to defend itself against these horrific crimes. Posting these sentiments was like screaming into a black hole of nothingness, yet knowing it was being seen/heard by someone, even if it was just the moderators of the site, it was a space where I could play my community role as Truth Yeller - I am a Truth Yeller, and below are the truths of the past year.

I end with this beautiful painting/banner by the Indonesian arts collective Taring Padi - The People’s Justice