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Dear Members and Friends,
Happy Spring. It has been lovely here in Orlando so far.
It is good to have another bad legislative session over. As most are saying, it could have been worse. Some really bad things were passed including allowing teenagers to work more hours, not allowing municipalities to set heat relief requirements, etc. Good news is that our action alerts had impact especially on the President of the Senate who wouldn’t bring several bad bills to the floor.
It has been a tension filled lead up to the Supreme Cour’ts abortion related decisions. April 1 gave us a huge success and a bitter defeat. The Supreme Court approved the language for the 2024 Amendment 4
Constitutional Amendment. So it will be on the ballot. Yea!
But they ruled in favor of the 15-week abortion ban as not covered by the privacy section of the FL Constitution. This means that the 6-week ban, near total ban on abortion, goes into effect on May 1. We will see so much pain and death from the 6-week ban for women across the South. However, I am still pumped for getting the vote out for Amendment 4 and I think the 6-week ban going into effect will fuel us and voters to vote Yes on Amendment 4.
I hope you and your Chapters are getting out to events (e.g., Earth Day), including tabling, to get:
- pledges to vote Yes On 4.
- petition signatures on Medicaid Expansion Ballot Initiative—we have to print our own petitions for now—they are working on hubs.
- people to sign up for Vote By Mail online or on paper form collection.
- people to do their Voter Registration online or on paper form that they send—you can help them with questions about the form.
Take the lead to coordinate for an event! Things too frequently land on the usual suspects.
GOTV for us in 2024 is the single most important thing we can do. This election will be all about getting people out to vote. To that end, FL NOW is submitting a grant request to National NOW for GOTV on behalf of all Chapters that are willing to participate in doing postcarding (more effective than phoning or texting) to those that signed the abortion access petition. They want to vote for Amendment 4. We hope that participating Chapters will have two events to support getting out 1500 postcards, one in June and one in July. More to follow if we win the grant.
Medicaid Expansion is so important to women in Florida as well as for a lot of other beneficial reasons. Over half of the people that would qualify for Medicaid Expansion are women. Medicaid Expansion is key for reproductive health. It is important for us to work these petitions in 2024 and 2025.
There isn’t the passion around it as there is for abortion access. We have to build the passion.
So many of you are coming up to Orlando for the 6-week abortion ban protest and to rally to get out the vote for Amendment 4 on April 13. Thank you. We need this protest and rally to be huge! They have over 1000 people registered so far. Hopefully, most of them will come and we will have many coming that didn’t take the time to register. It will be a success no matter what because the attendees will make it so.
Last, but not least is our Annual Conference May 3-5 at The Florida Hotel attached to the FL Mall in Orlando. Come for the members and friends reception Friday evening. I am proud and enthused about our speakers, on Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday.
We have FL NOW business to update you on. We will have an action at this conference that we’ll do over the three days. Judi has done a wonderful job on this Conference. There are more details later in this email, e.g., information on each speaker.
We truly hope you can come to this conference. It is so important to get together as we launch into getting pledges to vote Yes on 4, get people signed up for Vote By Mail, get people to do their registrations, and get signatures for Medicaid Expansion. We will also talk about Intercultural Competence, and more.
Can’t wait to see and connect with you.
Safe Travels.
Take Care,
Debbie
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