Advocates want the National Park Service to cough up more information on the mysterious "talent show" forcing a planned rally against mass shootings to relocate.
The liberal-leaning nonprofit Public Citizen has filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for details about the group blocking the student-led effort from the National Mall.
The March for Our Lives rally, organized by the student survivors of the Feb. 14 Florida school shooting, scheduled their event for March 24.
But an unnamed educational institution already booked the famed space in the nation's capital.
"They filed their permit application first, and by regulation, when there is a conflict of time and location for events, precedence is established by the order in which the request was received," Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service told the New York Daily News last week.
The school's permit, which called for a few cameras, two tables and a few bikes and jump ropes, lists March 24 as the talent show's rain date, thus forcing the gun control rally to move to Pennsylvania Avenue.
The March for Our Lives application, in honor of the 17 people killed in Parkland, Fla., expects 500,000 participants, "student speakers, musical performers, guest speakers and video tributes." It included 2,000 chairs and 2,000 portable restrooms in the application.
Redacted versions of both permit requests were released by the National Park Service, but the "talent show" paperwork did not include a date for submission.
The Parkland-linked group submitted its form on Feb. 20, six days after the massacre.
The FOIA request seeks, in part, to confirm whether the policy in this case was properly followed, according to Public Citizen.
"(T)hese records are urgently needed to inform the public about actual or alleged government activity," the FOIA request states. "(T)he public interest in whether unfair processing or some other form of government misconduct is responsible for keeping the march off the Mall, is the greatest now."
