Last night at Provincetown Commons, we launched a capital campaign to establish The Urvashi Vaid Changemakers Fund — a grant making initiative intended to extend and enact the activism and vision of Urvashi Vaid. As part of the kick-off event, we had the great pleasure to screen Mike Syers and Fermin Rojas’s beautiful short film about Urvashi’s life and work, THERE ARE THINGS TO DO.

I got to know Urvashi when we both worked as part of the leadership team that established Provincetown Commons in 2017-2018. Previously I’d known her as an iconic figure  in the national struggles for civil rights. I quickly came to learn that her passion wasn’t only for enacting change on the macro level, but that she was deeply committed to the local — and passionate about helping Provincetown live up to its utopian rhetoric. 

In addition to the Changemakers Fund, this capital campaign will allow us to make our meeting rooms available for free to groups on the Outer Cape who are doing work in the spirit of Urvashi’s vision *and* support the development of a Provincetown Ideas Festival — which was a project Urvashi constantly reminded me had to be part of The Common’s larger programatic vision. 

It’s one of the great honors of my life to chair Provincetown Commons’ board of directors and to work with the extraordinary community that’s emerged in that space. This initiative will allow us to grow the circle of that community — and to help activate the values of community and justice that Urvashi urged us to pursue.

Donations of any size matter in a campaign like this. Please consider joining us in extending the power of Urvashi’s legacy into the far future.