Fifty years ago Ralph Nader sparked the whistleblower revolution by hosting the Conference on Professional Responsibility in Washington, DC. Notice that the word “whistleblower” does not appear in the title. Nader believed employees who report crime and corruption were only doing their job: “the basic status of a citizen in a democracy,” Nader said at the event, includes fulfilling their “professional individual and responsibility.”
During his keynote speech at the Mayflower Hotel on Jan. 30, 1971, Nader presciently observed that employees’ allegiance to society should outweigh that to a company, citizens’ privacy was being eroded by over-reaching organizations, and whistleblower protection laws needed to be passed – including to shield public whistleblowers.
A half-century after what he calls “decisively” the first whistleblower conference ever held in the U.S., Nader says he’s both gratified and surprised by the progress that’s been made since.
“It was one of the more pretentious and effective conferences ever held in the pursuit of democracy. That was the conference that started the whole whistleblowing movement,” Nader said in an interview with Whistleblower Network News. “The people who came to the Mayflower were amazed that anybody could put whistleblowers from government, the Department of Defense, labor unions, corporations, universities all in one room. It was an unheard of dream.”
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