Tim Mullins
AANR Convention
Welcome to the 2021 Convention issue. In years past, I had the honor of listing the accomplishments of our Alonzo Stevens Government Affairs Award Winners and recounting the comradery of the convention. This year, I was unable to attend the convention and we did not have a GAT Award winner. That is hopefully the legacy of 2020, and the last time we won’t have a winner. We did have activities throughout the year and the beginnings of action that will bear fruit in the future, but mostly we had a year of little activity either positive or negative on the GAT front. Your team still had bills to review, and there were some actions we did take. We have been reporting and watching the activities in Hawai‘i that threatened our cherished nude beaches there. We have seen actions in Florida to normalize nude use at state beaches. Those efforts will develop as 2021 rolls into 2022 and new team members have expressed resolve to see positive actions on both sides of the continent. AANR-Florida has an aggressive plan for making positive changes in the regulations that hinder the approval of new nude beaches. They are pointing to the successful efforts there recently and the positive impact it has had on tourism to bolster support for their actions. They took legislative efforts last year that foundered in Tallahassee among the COVID actions, ultimately not seeing the light of a legislative day. Their approach in 2022 marks a more aggressive effort to recognize the positive impact nudism has on Florida’s economy. In the west, we are supporting the efforts to revive Friends of Little Beach, and the AANR-GAT Team has supported the Naturists Action Committee’s efforts there, too. On our monthly GAT Chat, we review where we are with the support for all the efforts across North America. The team is ready to lead and support positive legislative efforts.