Three weeks from tomor­row evening, on Fri­day, April 1st, 2016, NPI will be hold­ing its eighth Spring Fundrais­ing Gala at the Mer­cer Island Com­mu­ni­ty & Event Cen­ter. As in years past, we’ve been work­ing hard to put togeth­er a strong speak­ing pro­gram for the event. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly announced that our keynote speak­er for this year will be U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith, and our mas­ter of cer­e­monies will be Sec­re­tary of State hope­ful Tina Pod­lodows­ki.

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim McDermott

Tonight, we’re elat­ed to share the news that we will also be joined by U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim McDer­mott, who we’ll be hon­or­ing for a life­time of ser­vice to our state and our coun­try. 2016 is Con­gress­man McDer­mot­t’s final year in office, and we’re glad to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to thank him in per­son for all of the good works he has done as a mem­ber of Wash­ing­ton State’s con­gres­sion­al delegation.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDer­mott is known for many things, but per­haps he is best known for stand­ing up against the inva­sion of Iraq at a time when most elect­ed lead­ers at the fed­er­al lev­el — includ­ing many Democ­rats — were fool­ish­ly putting their trust in war­mon­gers George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don­ald Rumsfeld.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDer­mott caught a lot of flak in 2002 for for sug­gest­ing that George W. Bush was will­ing to mis­lead Amer­i­ca into war. He mem­o­rably declared:

It would not sur­prise me if they came up with some infor­ma­tion that is not prov­able, and they’ve shift­ed. First they said it was Al Qae­da, then they said it was weapons of mass destruc­tion. Now they’re going back and say­ing it’s Al Qae­da again.

McDer­mott was ridiculed by the right wing at the time, but his assess­ment was prophet­ic. If his col­leagues in the House and Sen­ate had lis­tened to him, there would have been no vote in Con­gress to autho­rize George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of lives and tril­lions of dol­lars would have been saved.

Aside from coura­geous­ly stand­ing up to neo­con­ser­v­a­tive war schemes, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDer­mott has also worked to reform the fos­ter care sys­tem, reduce traf­fick­ing in con­flict min­er­als, and improve Amer­i­cans’ health­care access.

His lega­cy of pub­lic ser­vice goes back even fur­ther than 1988, when he was first elect­ed to Con­gress. In the 1970s, he was elect­ed to the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (for one term), and lat­er to the Sen­ate (for three terms).

We hope you’ll con­sid­er join­ing us as we hon­or Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDer­mott at our eighth Spring Fundrais­ing Gala. If you haven’t yet bought your tick­et yet, we urge you to do so now using one of the but­tons below.

A house­hold tick­et admits all the mem­bers of an imme­di­ate fam­i­ly and is a good val­ue if you plan to attend with your spouse or chil­dren. (The gala is a fam­i­ly-friend­ly event, and young peo­ple of all ages are welcome!).

These are our tick­et rates:

• Indi­vid­ual ($75, admits one person)
• House­hold ($120, admits an entire family)
• Liv­ing Light­ly ($25, for stu­dents and activists on lim­it­ed incomes)

Buy a ticket to the gala

Click above to buy a tick­et using a cred­it card.

Here’s what else you can expect at our 2016 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala:

• A full din­ner buf­fet with veg­e­tar­i­an and veg­an choices
• Beer and wine selec­tions from our cash bar
• Oppor­tu­ni­ties to min­gle with fel­low activists and elect­ed leaders
• A chance to win a scrump­tious dessert for your table at our sec­ond annu­al Dessert Dash, orga­nized by our Host Committee
• A fam­i­ly-friend­ly atmosphere

If you’d like to RSVP for the gala on Face­book, you can do so here.

Stu­dents who want to vol­un­teer to help put on the event can get in the door free. If you’re inter­est­ed in vol­un­teer­ing, please get in touch with us.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be shar­ing more details about our 2016 gala, includ­ing the names of our oth­er speak­ers. We hope you’ll help us make our biggest event of the year a suc­cess by buy­ing your tick­et and com­mit­ting to attend.

See you on April 1st!