For 55 years, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater has done exactly what Pete Seeger and a handful of activists set out to do in 1966: build a boat to save the river, and use that boat to bring people to its shores. On the Fourth of July, that boat was escorted out of New York Harbor by the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy and the NYPD — not for a safety violation, not for a navigational error, but for the words painted on its banners.

Clearwater had been invited by Sail4th 250 organizers to serve as the official escort vessel for the Portuguese tall ship NRP Sagres, a place of honor in one of the largest maritime celebrations in the nation’s history. More than an hour into the parade, Coast Guard vessels pulled alongside and ordered the sloop out of the security zone. The reason, according to Clearwater’s captain, was two banners: “Save the Clean Water Act” and “Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, Climate Solutions.” By Clearwater’s account, neither the event’s participation agreement nor its Captain’s Handbook prohibited those banners, and the crew was never given the chance to take them down and stay. They were simply told to leave, and they did — because when a Coast Guard escort tells you to move, you move. The safety of passengers and crew comes first. That the sloop’s crew spent the following hours teaching visitors about the fish of New York Harbor with a seine net, rather than making a scene, tells you most of what you need to know about who these people are.

Here is what should trouble every reader of this newspaper, regardless of where they stand on any particular policy: a nonprofit environmental education organization was removed from a public commemorative event because it said, in public, that it supports the Clean Water Act. Not a fringe position. Not a partisan slogan. The Clean Water Act is a 1972 federal law, signed by a Republican president, that has spent more than half a century keeping raw sewage and industrial waste out of the rivers Americans fish in, swim in and drink from. Supporting it is about as controversial as supporting bridges that don’t collapse.

That is precisely Clearwater’s point, and it is worth taking seriously. The organization was founded on the premise that a clean Hudson River is not a Democratic value or a Republican value — it is a shared inheritance. Pete Seeger did not build a boat to score political points; he built it because the river he loved had become, by the late 1960s, an open sewer, and he believed that people who sailed on it and swam in it and fished from it would fight to protect it. That bet paid off. The Hudson today, while still imperfect, is dramatically cleaner than it was, in no small part because Clearwater spent decades hauling schoolchildren, retirees and everyone in between onto its deck to see the river up close.

This is also not new territory for the sloop. In 1986, during the tall ships parade for the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, Clearwater sailed with banners reading “Peace on Earth, And Sea, and Sky” and a message of solidarity with the crew of the Rainbow Warrior after it was bombed in Auckland Harbor. No one hauled the sloop out of that parade. Raising public awareness alongside its sails has been part of Clearwater’s identity since before many of this year’s parade organizers were born.

Reasonable people can disagree about where a permitted maritime event should draw lines on displayed messaging, and event organizers do have legitimate authority to set rules for participants. But that is exactly why the absence of any clear rule here matters. Clearwater says it was never shown a provision it violated, and was never offered the chance to comply before being removed. An escort out of a security zone by three law enforcement agencies is not a minor foot fault; it is a serious response, and it deserves a serious, public explanation from Sail4th 250 organizers — one Clearwater says it still hasn’t received.

The Hudson Valley has a direct stake in this. This is Clearwater’s river. Communities up and down its banks, including here in Orange and Ulster counties, have relied on the sloop’s education programs, its advocacy and its music to keep the health of the Hudson in public view for two generations. When an organization with that record is quietly pushed out of a national celebration for stating support of clean water law, it is worth this newspaper’s readers asking why — and worth Sail4th 250’s organizers answering plainly.

Clearwater says it isn’t interested in a fight. It says it remains committed to the river, to its communities, and to the next generation of people who will sail its decks. That’s a fair position to hold, and after the Fourth of July, it’s one this region should stand behind.