State Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self to speak at NPI’s 2016 Spring Fundraising Gala

With the sea­son of renew­al less than a week away, and NPI’s 2016 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala not far behind, it’s now time for us to announce who the final speak­er at this year’s gala will be. Pre­vi­ous­ly, we had the plea­sure of reveal­ing that U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith would be our keynote speak­er and Tina Pod­lodows­ki would be our mas­ter of cer­e­monies. We also announced that we will be hon­or­ing U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim McDer­mott for a life­time of pub­lic service.

Tonight, we’re thrilled to announce that State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lil­lian Ortiz-Self of Muk­il­teo will help anchor this year’s speak­ing program.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ortiz-Self was appoint­ed to the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives two years ago, suc­ceed­ing fel­low Demo­c­rat Marko Liias, who moved over to the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate. Both rep­re­sent the 21st Leg­isla­tive District.

Aside from her ser­vice as a state law­mak­er, she has co-chaired the Edu­ca­tion­al Oppor­tu­ni­ty Gap Over­sight and Account­abil­i­ty Com­mit­tee, and was a mem­ber of the Governor’s Com­mis­sion on His­pan­ic Affairs, the Achieve­ment Account­abil­i­ty Work­group, and the Stu­dent Dis­ci­pline Task Force.

As a coun­selor at the Everett’s North Mid­dle School, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ortiz-Self under­stands first­hand the impor­tance of ful­ly fund­ing our pub­lic schools. She cur­rent­ly serves as the Vice Chair of the House Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee. She also sits on two oth­er com­mit­tees: Trans­porta­tion and Ear­ly Learn­ing & Human Services.

Last week, dur­ing the long and some­times tedious House floor debate over Steve Lit­zow’s bill to divert lot­tery mon­ey to char­ter schools (2ESSB 6194), Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ortiz-Self bright­ened up the House cham­ber a bit by intro­duc­ing an amend­ment requir­ing that mem­bers of the Wash­ing­ton State Char­ter School Com­mis­sion and mem­bers of char­ter school boards file per­son­al finan­cial affairs state­ments (F1s) with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion, just like leg­is­la­tors and school board mem­bers do.

Repub­li­cans were ini­tial­ly opposed to the amend­ment, but after hear­ing Democ­rats’ argu­ments in favor of it, Matt Man­weller stood up to say, “You’ve won us over”. Most Repub­li­cans sub­se­quent­ly vot­ed in favor, and it passed. It was one of the few amend­ments that the Repub­li­cans and the Lar­ry Springer-led pro-char­ters fac­tion of the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus agreed to add to the bill.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ortiz-Self vot­ed against 2ESSB 6194 on final pas­sage. We great­ly appre­ci­ate both that coura­geous “no” vote and her work on the trans­paren­cy amend­ment that the House agreed to add. We des­per­ate­ly need more cham­pi­ons for Wash­ing­ton’s youth like her in the Legislature.

We hope you’ll con­sid­er join­ing us and our dis­tin­guished speak­ers at our eighth Spring Fundrais­ing Gala on April 1st. 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!