PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — A local artist is helping the grieving community in Orlando remember their loved ones lost in a nightclub massacre nine years ago on Thursday.
Every year, prayer ribbons are hung outside the former Pulse nightclub. The ribbons are coming from Provincetown with love.
“I think they see these ribbons as a beacon of hope. They’re colorful ribbons, but they’re also commemorating a very tragic event,” Jay Critchley of the Provincetown Community Compact told Boston 25 News.
On June 12, 2016, a night of dancing at the gay club came to a horrific end. Forty-nine people were shot to death, and more than 50 others were hurt in a spray of bullets.
“Provincetown had a vigil on the same day, the first in the country to respond to this violence,” Critchley recalled.
Critchley knew he wanted to show support for the victims, and he wasn’t alone. The Provincetown Community Compact came together within 24 hours and started designing prayer ribbons.
The group made 49 black ribbons for the souls taken, with messages of love on each one. The other ribbons for those injured, family members left behind to deal with the agony and loss.
“It’s really kinetic, it’s like the people are dancing,” Critchley said. “The ribbons are dancing in the wind, you know, so it provides this sort of movable memorial.”
The prayer ribbons project dates back to 1993, when the Provincetown Swim for Life group started the ribbons to remember victims of AIDS.
“I set the ribbons up in my yard, and I go through and make sure that every name and every person has a ribbon, and so I read the beautiful names of each person,” Critchley said. “It shows the power of love, it shows how urban, rural, seaside, it doesn’t matter, you know? We’re all part of the same threads of humanity.”
Family members of the nightclub attack victims will walk past the ribbons one last time to look inside the former establishment before it’s demolished.
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