Timothy Ford joins the outstanding speaking lineup for our 2011 Spring Fundraising Gala

Any sup­port­er who has attend­ed one or both of our two past spring fundrais­ing galas knows that we try very hard to bring some of the bright­est minds from around our region to the stage at our event. That’s because our gala isn’t just about try­ing to raise mon­ey — it’s about thank­ing our loy­al and ded­i­cat­ed sup­port­ers with an enjoy­able and reward­ing evening.

Our speak­ing pro­gram is a big part of that.

We believe we’ve put togeth­er a strong and diverse speak­ing pro­gram for this year’s event. Our announced speak­ers include U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jay Inslee, for­mer Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Peter Stein­brueck, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Reuven Car­lyle, and Dr. Scott Mack­lin of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

This after­noon, I’m hon­ored to reveal that they will be joined at the podi­um by respect­ed Seat­tle attor­ney Tim­o­thy Ford, one of the many great lawyers at Mac­Don­ald Hoague & Bay­less. As his biog­ra­phy says:

Tim’s civ­il prac­tice ranges from major civ­il rights cas­es to claims of legal and med­ical mal­prac­tice, neg­li­gence and prod­ucts lia­bil­i­ty, to high­way design and car truck acci­dents. At the tri­al lev­el, he has won clients in those areas mil­lions of dol­lars in ver­dicts and set­tle­ments.  In the appel­late courts, his cas­es have repeat­ed­ly made law expand­ing the legal rights of patients, work­ers, crim­i­nal sus­pects, and pris­on­ers.  He has been called by one author­i­ty “the pre­em­i­nent civ­il rights lit­i­ga­tor in this region.”

Tim has held an AV rat­ing from Mar­tin­dale Hubbell for over twen­ty five years; he has been list­ed in the Best Lawyers in Amer­i­ca for more than a decade; and he has been includ­ed in near­ly every “best lawyers” list of Seat­tle lawyers ever pub­lished in the pop­u­lar press.

We are among those who are inspired by Tim’s prac­tice. Tim is what our friend and lin­guist George Lakoff would call a pub­lic pro­tec­tion attor­ney — some­body who tru­ly cares about the rights and the health of fel­low cit­i­zens, and who has put his tal­ents to work to help those who need jus­tice the most.

We’re very grate­ful that Tim is tak­ing time out of his busy sched­ule to par­tic­i­pate in our event. And we hope that you will, too.

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

Can’t make the event? You can still make a donation!

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

Unlike many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and unlike cam­paigns, we sink most of the dol­lars we receive direct­ly into infra­struc­ture to sup­port our move­ment. NPI is not for-prof­it. We are the local pro­gres­sive move­men­t’s Swiss Army knife. We are here to empow­er fel­low activists, to help our allies think long-term, to devel­op and refine ideas for a bet­ter future, and to reframe the debate.

The media, research, and out­reach work that we do requires a sig­nif­i­cant amount of dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture — for instance, news­gath­er­ing equip­ment and com­put­er servers. When you con­tribute to NPI, you’re help­ing us build this infrastructure.

The more infra­struc­ture we have, the more effec­tive we can be, and the more time we can spend on offense as opposed to defense.

We can’t do what we do 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.