By Nicole Jao<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, July 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard said “politically charged” messages led to the removal of an environmental group’s vessel \u200cfrom a fleet of sailing ships gathered in New York on Saturday \u200cto celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary.<\/p>\n
A ship owned by the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater environmental organization was \u200bforced out of the Sail4th 250 parade in New York Harbor, the Coast Guard said in a statement emailed to Reuters.<\/p>\n
The ship had banners that read, “Save the Clean Water Act” and “Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, Climate Solutions”.<\/p>\n
Participants in the event had agreed to \u200crefrain from displaying political or \u2060politically charged messages or statements, according to the Coast Guard, which said it enforced the agreement on behalf of Sail4th.<\/p>\n
“The owner of \u2060the sloop Clearwater was contacted and requested to remove the message being displayed or be removed from the parade of sail,” the Coast Guard said. “They declined to remove \u200bit.”<\/p>\n
Jen Benson, \u200bdirector of advocacy and communications at Hudson \u200bRiver Sloop Clearwater, disputed the claim. \u200cShe said the Coast Guard did not ask for the messages to be taken down, but requested the ship leave the sailing route or risk arrest.<\/p>\n
“We don’t feel like advocating for clean water is a politically charged message,” Benson said. “People on all sides of the aisle, and no sides at all, have been fighting \u200cin the United States for clean water in \u200bdifferent ways.”<\/p>\n
Sail4th 250 was one of the events \u200borganized by Freedom 250, a group \u200bcreated by the Trump administration to plan celebrations for the \u200ccountry’s 250th anniversary. More than 40 tall \u200bships from 20 foreign \u200bcountries participated, traveling through New York Harbor from near Sandy Hook, New Jersey, up to the George Washington Bridge.<\/p>\n
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater’s website says \u200bthe group’s mission is to “protect \u200cthe Hudson River by stewarding an intergenerational community of river advocates through \u200beducation, advocacy, sailing, and music.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nicole Jao in New York; \u200bEditing by Sergio Non and Jamie Freed)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nicole Jao NEW YORK, July 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard said “politically charged” messages led…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":913810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,31004,78110,369420,405,403,87817,5226,5225,5228,5227,369421,369422,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-913809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-coast-guard","tag-environmental-group","tag-hudson-river-sloop-clearwater","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-harbor","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-politically-charged","tag-sailing-ships","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116866552025069778","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}