NEW YORK – The U.S. Coast Guard says the removal of an environmental group’s vessel from a flotilla of sailboats gathered in New York to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4 was due to a “political” message.
The Coast Guard said in an emailed statement to Reuters that the vessel, owned by the environmental group Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, was forced out of the Sail 4th250 Parade in New York Harbor.
The ship carried banners that read “Clean Water Act” and “Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, and Climate Solutions.”
Participants at the event agreed not to display messages or statements of political or political content, the Coast Guard said, and the Coast Guard enforced this agreement on behalf of Sail4th.
“The owner of the sloop Clearwater has been contacted and asked to remove the message displayed or remove it from the parade of sails,” the Coast Guard said in a statement. “They refused to remove it.”
Jen Benson, director of advocacy and communications for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, disputed that claim. He said the coast guard did not ask for the messages to be deleted, but did require the ship to leave the route or risk arrest.
“We don’t feel that advocating for clean water is a political message,” Benson said. “In the United States, people on all sides of the aisle, and people on no side at all, have fought for clean water in a variety of ways.”
Sail4th 250 was one of the events hosted by Freedom 250, a group created by the Trump administration to plan celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary. More than 40 large sailing ships from 20 foreign countries participated in the event, which sailed from near Sandy Hook, New Jersey, through New York Harbor to the George Washington Bridge.
The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater website says its mission is to “protect the Hudson River by curating an intergenerational community of river defenders through education, advocacy, sailing, and music.”
