Jay Inslee to speak at NPI’s 2011 Spring Fundraising Gala on Mercer Island

I am delight­ed to announce this morn­ing that Jay Inslee — my rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Con­gress and a true cham­pi­on for eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion — will be speak­ing at NPI’s 2011 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala (with all pro­ceeds to ben­e­fit NPI), hap­pen­ing two weeks from tomor­row on Mer­cer Island.

If you fol­low nation­al pol­i­tics, you know that Jay has been a coura­geous leader on a great many issues, who has been unafraid to take tough votes. Jay vot­ed against the cre­ation of the Trou­bled Assets Relief Pro­gram (TARP) in 2008, and more recent­ly, he vot­ed against extend­ing the Bush tax cuts for mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires. He has stood up to save Inter­net radio sta­tions and fought for net neu­tral­i­ty. And he has worked tire­less­ly to per­suade his col­leagues to invest in renew­able ener­gy so Amer­i­ca can break its depen­dence on fos­sil fuels.

Jay is a true leader who walks his talk. He’s trust­wor­thy and depend­able. That’s why we’re so excit­ed that he’s going to be join­ing Peter Stein­brueck, Scott Mack­lin, and Reuven Car­lyle as speak­ers at our 2011 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala.

If you haven’t bought a tick­et to our event yet, now’s the time:

NPI needs your help today to con­tin­ue orga­niz­ing and mobi­liz­ing for change.

We know times are tough and things seem bleak. Fund­ing for vital pub­lic ser­vices is being gut­ted while tax breaks for pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions that are mak­ing big prof­its are being left intact. Con­gress and state leg­is­la­tures are mak­ing short­sight­ed deci­sions… or they’re on the verge of doing so.

But if we want to do some­thing about this sor­ry sit­u­a­tion and pre­vent our qual­i­ty of life from being fur­ther jeop­ar­dized, we need to strength­en our move­ment. We need to build infra­struc­ture that enables us to com­mu­ni­cate and orga­nize more effec­tive­ly. The oth­er side is way ahead of us.

That’s why they’ve been able to frame the debate on their terms. We’ve been stuck in a pure­ly defen­sive mind­set for too long.

I found­ed in NPI in 2003 because I came to the real­iza­tion that main­tain­ing a per­ma­nent defense against Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tives was­n’t enough. When we neu­tral­ize right wing ini­tia­tives, all we are doing is stop­ping bad things from hap­pen­ing to our region. Defense does­n’t move us forward.

NPI was cre­at­ed to help the pro­gres­sive move­ment go on offense. We are here to empow­er fel­low activists, to research and pro­pose ideas that are in har­mo­ny with pro­gres­sive val­ues, and to reframe the debate.

But we can’t do this all by our­selves… your sup­port makes what we do pos­si­ble. We want to give you an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see in per­son how we’re stretch­ing your dol­lars, meet oth­er sup­port­ers, and hear from inspi­ra­tional speak­ers, while enjoy­ing refresh­ments and great music from local artists. That’s what our Spring Fundrais­ing Gala is all about. We hope you’ll join us on April 28th.