Advocates for the disclosure of U.S. government records related to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) will attend a sidewalk rally in New York this week in support of Senator Chuck Schumer and his efforts toward greater government transparency, and to urge for future Congressional hearings on the matter.
Citizens for Disclosure NOW is a New York City-based partner of the California-based New Paradigm Institute’s Citizens for Disclosure (NPI), founded by UAP transparency activist and longtime constitutional and public interest lawyer Danny Sheehan.
The inaugural rally event is to be the first in a series of similar gatherings, which has reportedly attracted more than 344 volunteers, and NPI says it is currently vetting candidates to start local and state chapters in 45 U.S. states. The objective of the event is both to engage Americans on the UAP subject, but also to foster global participation, with New Paradigm volunteers currently also working to coordinate rallies in as many as 17 countries.
Known for representing notable clients such as Lue Elizondo, former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Sheehan created the NPI to focus on transparency and disclosure regarding UAPs. The group aims to raise awareness, gather support, and urge government officials to release information related to UAP sightings. The group engages in activities that include organizing rallies, lobbying officials, and spreading information to the public to further their cause.
NPI’s recent calls to action have resulted in over 22,000 emails to Capitol Hill, and now the initiative is beginning to allocate funding to support its ongoing efforts. On February 12, 2024, NPI issued a press release announcing a series of social media advertisements aiming “to educate and mobilize the public” to call on Congress for future UAP hearings.
The advertisements feature imagery from a Congressional hearing held last summer that featured testimony from former U.S. personnel including Ryan Graves, a former fighter pilot and founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, and David Grusch, who logged a whistleblower complaint last June with the Intelligence Community Inspector General.
“Our right as citizens to know the truth and what elements of our government has discovered about this is essential to the Constitutional functioning of our government,” Sheehan told The Debrief.
“We, citizens, will secure the truth about this deeply buried secret only if we get our Congress engaged in digging this truth out of the Pentagon and our Intelligence Community – because both of these once-respected institutions have been lying about this issue not only to us but also to our elected Representatives in Congress,” he added.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been a vocal and active supporter of government transparency and updated legislation regarding UAP. Schumer, along with U.S. Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), co-sponsored the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 (UAPDA), a bipartisan amendment to the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was modeled after the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act.
The amendment aimed to enact a “controlled disclosure campaign plan,” which would have involved revealing to the public as much as possible about the UAP phenomenon without compromising national security.
However, much of the language in the Schumer-Rounds Act was removed from the final legislation, allegedly due to pressure from elements within the military intelligence community and defense aerospace contractors.
The recent release of a widely anticipated historical report published this month by the Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) has further propelled the call for transparency and disclosure among UAP advocates. The recent AARO report states there is no evidence that the United States has collected exotic technology or withheld information about secretive programs that have been kept hidden from Congress, an ongoing position the Department of Defense has maintained on the subject for decades.
“The March eight public release by the Pentagon and the intelligence community’s controlled All-domain Anomalous Resolution Office is nothing more than a tissue-thin transparent continuation of the now 80-year unconstitutional conspiracy on the part of the National Security State,” Sheehan said in a statement he provided to The Debrief.
Sheehan said he believes the DoD’s control of information about UAP has worked “to conceal from us the effort of its members to capture – and reverse engineer – the technology of an enigmatic phenomenon to make ever-more sophisticated secret weapons through which further to assert their full spectrum military dominance over our planet rather than provide the world with a powerful clean source of energy.
“We must educate and mobilize our presently-fractured public around this deeply profound issue and demand that our government become honest and transparent, and, therefore, once more worthy of our trust,” Sheehan added.
To express appreciation for Senator Schumer’s efforts and to demand more Congressional hearings with whistleblowers, Citizens for Disclosure NOW will hold its rally in front of Schumer’s office in New York City on March 21 from noon to 2 PM Eastern. The event will be the first that Citizens for Disclosure NOW and the New Paradigm Institute have partnered on.
“The next great civil rights movement is the right to know,” said Osvaldo Franco, Lead Organizer for Citizens for Disclosure NOW in a statement.
Franco says that extends to “the right to know what’s out there, what opportunities, what mysteries, and what this knowledge means for our destiny as a species.”
“The right to know is why we are here, to thank Majority Leader Schumer for his advocacy and to request his continued support for the truth.”
Chrissy Newton is a PR professional and founder of VOCAB Communications. She hosts the Rebelliously Curious podcast, which can be found on The Debrief’s YouTube Channel. Follow her on X: @ChrissyNewton and at chrissynewton.com.