Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is skipping the Women’s Convention and heading to hurricane-hit Puerto Rico instead, he announced on Thursday. The selection of Sanders as a keynote speaker at the annual convention was met with uproar after it was assumed he would be headlining the women’s event, which is themed “Reclaiming our Time.” Convention organizers were lambasted online after they announced Sanders’s participation, and a change.org petition lobbied to have him dropped from the opening act. But Sanders bowed out of the event himself.