WBAI spoke with David Toman, the executive director of the Sloop Clearwater, whose mission is to promote the protection of the Hudson River, about the U.S. Coast Guard's decision to force the iconic vessel from the Sail4th 250 maritime flotilla on Saturday. At issue, were the Constitutionally protected protest banners on the Clearwater's sails proclaiming support for the Clean Water Act as well as indigenous rights, racial justice and climate solutions.
"It was very unexpected especially in the way that it happened and it all took place," Toman recalled. "We were engaged with the SAIL4th 250 coordinators to be part of the parade that happened on July 4th. We were assigned to be the honorary escort for the Portuguese ship as it was sailing through the parade."
The Clearwater crew had been aboard since 6 a.m. and headed out from the Atlantic Basin in Brooklyn to sail through New York Harbor--past the Statue of Liberty and under the Verrazano Bridge.
"We raised our sails while we were out there and we had banners on both sides and they were flying where we were circling in the gathering area for probably an hour and a half," Damon said. "As we started moving toward the parade to find our position and align with the parade, two Coast Guard boats came up on either side of us and told us to exit the parade....without any explanation and without some kind of understanding of what was taking place."
Damon said organizers of the flotilla told him the decision was made "above their heads." He subsequently heard from the Coast Guard that the cause for their being forced out was their displaying their protest banners, sort of ironic on July 4th.
Meanwhile, the Guardian is reporting that there are apparent cracks in the GOP over the Trump administration's drive to deport 350,000 Haitians that are in the United States under the Temporary Protective Status program that the US Supreme Court ruled the Trump junta could unilaterally end. Florida Republican Congressman Carolos Gimenez, whose family fled Cuba when he was seven, broke with President Trump. Gimenez represents Miami-Dade County that 110,000 Haitians call home.
The Florida Republican joins Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine who has strongly supported his Haitian constituents from Springfield, Ohio, a rustbelt community that the Haitians have helped revive despite totally false claims made by Vice President Vance and President Trump that the Haitians preyed on their neighbors' pets.
In our region, Republican New York House member Mike Lawler, whose seat is very much at risk in the fall, also warned against deporting Haitian TPS holders observing rightly that Haitian TPS holders were vital to the continued operation of the region's hospitals and nursing homes.
We had more on this developing story in our first hour with New Jersey social justice activist Larry Hamm and labor historian Dr. Joe Wilson.
On this episode we also replayed an excerpt from Mayor Mamdani's Independence Day address as well as shared a City Hall interview with Council Member Chris Banks (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the Council's Public Housing Committee about what he sees as the chronic lack of support for NYCHA which currently houses close to 500,000 New Yorkers.
We also received an update on Binghamton's deepening homeless crisis from our colleague Jonathan Petrick, who is a reporter with WBDY-LP, one of Pacifica's 18 New York State affiliates.
In our second hour we spoke with 9/11 World Trade Center attorneys Matthew McCauley and Andrew Carboy who have been fighting the City of New York to release the many thousands of documents the city has kept from the public from the Giuliani era when the city went along with the US EPA's false and misleading claim that the air was safe to breathe in lower Manhattan.
A subsequent 2003 EPA Inspector General report found the Bush administration had downplayed the environment risks and suppressed the off the charts asbestos readings after the 9/11 attack--- clearing the way for Wall Street could open right back up.
Twenty five years later, thousands more have died from their exposure to the toxic air in lower Manhattan than died on the day of the attack.
Last week, Mayor Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin reached a deal on the City's $126 billion budget that includes $32 million to fund the Department of Investigations reviewing the vast trove of 9/11 WTC documents and posting them online.
In a response to a query, the Mayor's press office confirmed the initial round of documents should be up online for the public before the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
McCauley and Carboy said they had not been told about Mayor Mamdani's pledge for transparency and the funding for DOI to execute on the public release that two prior administrations had resisted doing in the courts.
Carboy expressed alarm that just six hours after that budget announcement, the City Of New York's lawyers "moved to dismiss with prejudice the proceeding Matthew and I have brought on behalf of 9/11 Health Watch to get the documents. It is utterly inconsistent. It is shocking and I think it betrays the politics behind this maneuver."
