We want to apologize to anyone at the FL NOW conference who was upset, harmed, or distracted by unauthorized literature being handed out during presentations. Presenters may distribute literature to support their presentations, but materials that were not part of a presentation should not have been distributed during sessions. It did not occur to us that we would need to establish or enforce clearer boundaries around this, and we recognize that this created an unnecessary disruption.

We apologize and will work to prevent this from happening at future Florida NOW conferences by establishing clearer expectations around the distribution of materials and ensuring that those expectations are communicated to participants in advance.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the conference, and especially to the many people who engaged respectfully with one another, even when conversations were difficult or perspectives differed. We are grateful to our speakers, panelists, workshop leaders, volunteers, and attendees who contributed so much to making this a powerful weekend of connection, learning, and movement building.

As we continue to learn from one another and work toward building a more diverse, inclusive, and robust organization, we also want to acknowledge the people who have historically been excluded from, marginalized within, or made to feel unwelcome in the narrow, white, middle-class idea of who a “feminist” is and is not.

Florida NOW is committed to continuing to examine how we create space for people with different lived experiences, identities, perspectives, and histories within our movement. Building a stronger feminist movement means not only celebrating our differences, but listening when people tell us where we have fallen short and taking meaningful steps to do better.

Thank you for being part of Florida NOW and for continuing to build this movement with us.