Legendary Folk Singer Pete Seeger Dies at 94
Legendary folk singer/songwriter Pete Seeger, an environmental activist and founder of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, died Monday at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. He was 94.
Together with his late wife Toshi, Seeger founded Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc., and the Great Hudson River Revival, the annual music and environmental festival that takes place at Croton Point Park in Croton-on-Hudson every summer.
Seeger and Hudson River Sloop Clearwater played an important role in the passage of laws to clean up the nation’s waters. In 1972 Seeger and the Clearwater crew sailed the sloop to Washington, DC while Congress was debating the Clean Water Act. Seeger personally delivered a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures to Congress and then proceeded to hold a spontaneous concert in the halls of Congress. A few weeks later the Federal Water Pollution Control Act was passed in 1972 over then President Richard Nixon’s veto.
Seeger, who lived in Beacon for many years, is regarded as an iconic American figure, and a pivotal person of the 1960s American folk music revival, playing a banjo bearing the words, ”This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces it to Surrender.” Through his music, he reached multiple generations and strongly believed that if you can inspire people with music, you can change the world from the bottom up with grassroots activism. His example has become the template for the generations in speaking out about the state of affairs in the world and expressing them.
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