​How different would the world be if activist, American woman had signed the Compact? This re-imagined Compact is part of the Democracy of the Land project, which explores the effects of colonization on the Mashpee Wampanoag Nation and First Nation peoples of the Americas, and examines the intersection of environment, race, class and gender – past, present and future. ​

America, America,
​God shed her grace on thee.
And crown thy good with womenhood.
From sea to shining sea. ​

The cultural, political and environmental stakes are high in how we understand and regulate our relationship with the land, climate and culture. Like the layers of soil, we dig deep into layers of human occupation on the land to discover our history, and the filters we use when we view and experience its elements. The Pilgrims weren’t the first European visitors to the Cape tip, but they certainly created an uproar! In 2020, it will be 528 years since the arrival of a wave of invaders – precipitated by the notorious Christopher Columbus and company. 

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Next year we commemorate the historic and exalted Mayflower Compact, a democratic document signed in Provincetown Harbor in 1620 by forty-one bedraggled white, Christian men. Native Americans were not consulted. Neither were women. Now it’s time for women to hoist the sails of state and take command: the Re--signing of the Mayflower Compact 2020. We beseech you to reclaim and recreate a value-added Mayflower Compact - for now and for the future! Caesar said it with flair, as did the Pilgrims: Veni, vidi, vici. We came. We saw. We conquered. And now it’s their turn! 

With so many activist women of importance in US history, the selection process for the forty-one re-signers of the Mayflower Compact 2020 was agonizing. Just how have women unburdened themselves from the thousands of years of oppression, run through the Christian grinder of western ideology and prosper on American soil? 

These forty-one female signers are just the tip of the melting icebergs in my attempt to redress the treatment of women in our country’s narrative. Creative, activist women make up almost half of the signers, from Marion Anderson to Cher, from Audre Lorde to Rachel Carson, from Zora Neale Hurston to Gertrude Stein. And muckraker Ida Tarbell who brought down Rockefeller’s Standard Oil!  Other signers include Lucille Ball, Rosa Parks, Whoopi Goldberg and Sojourner Truth. And two of Provincetown’s local exemplars, poet and activist Grace Gouveia and Mary Heaton Vorse, a radical journalist. We also honor the recently elected Congresswomen, two Native Americans - Debra Haaland and Sharice Davids, and two Muslims - Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. 

Recalibrating our history and our vision for the future begins right here. Rise up and join the insurgency! (Please inquire about exhibiting this two-sided, free-standing banner at your “Get out the vote 2020” action.) Curriculum guides for middle and high school students based on the Re-signing The Mayflower Compact 2020 project are available. Inquire at www.jaycritchley.com/mayflower 
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Longtime Provincetown multi-media artist, performance artist, writer and activist will take a deep dive into his singular, penetrating work, and his historic exploration of the roots of the American landscape and its mythology. How does an artist, or anyone, tread on the Earth with the cultural, political and environmental stakes at an all time high? What is our narrative with the land? How do we occupy our ground? How do we make a stand?
Jay is a longtime resident of Provincetown and the shifting dunes, landscape and the sea are his palette. He has utilized sand, Christmas trees, fish skins, plastic tampon applicators washed up on beaches, pre-demolition buildings and selected sites in his work. He is a conceptual and multi-media artist, writer and activist whose work has traversed the globe, showing across the US and in Argentina, Japan, England, Spain, France, Holland, Germany and Columbia. Jay recently returned from a two-month residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Other residencies include Fundacion Valparaiso, Mojacar, Andalucia, Spain, CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France, and Harvard University where he also lectured. His movie, Toilet Treatments, won an HBO Award and he recently gave a TEDx Talk: Portrait of the Artist as a Corporation. His 2015 survey show at the Provincetown Art Association &; Museum traveled to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. He has received awards from the Boston Society of Architects and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in NYC for his environmental projects. Jay was honored in 2012 by the Massachusetts State Legislature as an artist and founder and director of the Provincetown Community Compact, producer of the Swim for Life, which has raised $6.5M for AIDS and women’s health. He is represented by AMP Gallery in Provincetown.

Notable historic documents:

• Mayflower Compact (Pilgrims, 1620)
  
• Native America (Four-part PBS documentary, 2018)
  
• Document of Discovery (1493)
  
• Florentine Codex (16 th Century)

This event is part of Truro Connections

Transactional Storm Surges
lanoitcasnarT mrotS segruS

The Lord appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and gave him…
The Ten Commandments of Natural Security
1. Brain-pruned prerolled brinkmanship is the Lord Thy God and thou shalt not militarize queer coal-dusted terrestrial protein CHANT after each: lanoitcasnarT mrotS segruS
2. Thou shalt not monetize conspiratorial hardcoded intimacy flooding near-Arctic merchantiled microbial heat islands
3. Thou shalt not unbank throttling multi-planetary flocking behavior interoperably lame-streaming self-salted, two-legged nuclear optioned threequals 
4. Thou shalt keep holy virgin thought-leadered chocolate conscious abusers vaping supply chained filterbubbled self-driving strongmen
5. Honor the father and the mother: Fire + Fury
6. Thou shalt not kill hush-moneyed Club Medicared idolaters bombing energy dominant fear-gassed Marshmallow Tester dwebs
7. Thou shalt not commit hungry Deep State immigrant swine waste pestilence shooting dismembered tipping point monopolies
8. Thou shalt not commit nuclear-optioned racially illiterate cakeism genderizing friction-free climate refugee mergers
9 Thou shalt not border cross tear-gassing market driven extinctions Mobil Warming 
minimum raged free-range parents
10. Thou shalt not covet fake-pewed taking a knee cold warring ice sheet endowment effects white listing tax uncut value-added native land baby fixers
Let it be known that the devils and sinners who deceive us shall be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beasts and false profits are and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. Amen.

At the recent dedication of the Lauren Ewing’s elegant and transcendent AIDS Memorial on Provincetown Town Hall lawn, the community told the story of the town’s valiant response to HIV/AIDS. Jay Critchley was honored to speak as director of the Provincetown Community Compact and the Swim for Life, citing the town’s continuing role and responsibility to share Provincetown's narrative to a fractured and discordant world. TheCompact.org

​HERRING COVE BEACH, CAPE COD NATIONAL SEASHORE, PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS

A project by Jay Critchley

A planetary dream deferred.

Herring Cove Beach in Cape Cod National Seashore was dramatically transformed by four nor'easter storms in the winter of 2018. Although not unprecedented, the break in the narrow sand spit created an enormous breach that threatens the protected salt marsh behind it. Exposed after the barrier dune was washed away were three pilings that formed the base of a measured nautical mile target.

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