A week-long summit honoring whistleblowers begins July 28 and leads to the annual celebration of National Whistleblower Day. A website, launched last week, promotes the events surrounding National Whistleblower Day. For the eighth consecutive year, whistleblowers, their advocates, and lawmakers celebrate July 30 as a day to recognize the importance of whistleblowers. Every year they gather in Washington, DC, for events commemorating whistleblowers. This year the events will be held online.
The website hopes to make July 30 a permanent day of recognition for whistleblowers. Visitors to the site will learn how our revolutionary forefathers agreed to act in defense of two whistleblowers that had exposed misconduct by the highest-ranking U.S. naval officers. The website asks visitors to a petition urging Congress to establish July 30 as a permeant day to recognize whistleblowers
The website details the history of the world’s first-ever whistleblower law, which was enacted by the Continental Congress on July 30, 1778. Stephen M. Kohn, a founding partner at the whistleblower law firm Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto, rediscovered this law while researching materials for an amicus supporting the constitutionality of the False Claims.
“Recognizing the significant contributions to democracy made by whistleblowers is the key to changing the corporate culture that defines whistleblowers as snitches, ‘rats at the picnic’ or worse,” Kohn said. “Our Founding Fathers unanimously stood behind America’s first whistleblowers, in both word and deed. We expect the same from our current government,” Kohn added. The story behind the history appeared for the first time ever in Kohn’s The New Whistleblower’s Handbook.
Recognizing the historical significance of this first whistleblower law, Senator Charles Grassley first successfully urged the U.S. Senate to pass a unanimous resolution commemorating July 30 National Whistleblower Appreciation Day every year since 2013. The Senate approved the 2020 National Whistleblower Appreciation Day resolution on July 1.
Register for the here to watch this event live.
