CT Senate Leaders Condemn Coast Guard Declassifying Swastikas And Nooses As Hate Symbols

by Staff Report CTNewsJunkie

HARTFORD, CT — Senate President Martin Looney (D-New Haven), Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk), and senators Martha Marx (D-New London) and Paul Honig (D-Harwinton) in a statement Friday denounced the Department of Homeland Security’s recent U.S. Coast Guard policy revision that removed the explicit designation of swastikas and nooses as “hate symbols” and instead labeled these symbols as “potentially divisive.”

“Swastikas and nooses are unmistakable representations of hatred, terror, and historical atrocity,” Looney said. “The decision to soften their classification is a political choice and part of a disturbing pattern of minimizing the significance of the symbols of hatred to appease extremists by President Trump. Coast Guard members and the public deserve leadership that stands clearly and unequivocally against hate, especially as antisemitism and racially motivated violence rise across the country.”

Duff said the decision “shows the rot of hatred that infests the highest levels of the Trump administration” and that Connecticut “rejects hate and the violence it enables.”

Marx, who represents a district where the U.S. Coast Guard Academy is located, called swastikas and nooses “symbols of lynching and genocide” and said their rebranding was despicable.

“I wish the Trump administration would spend more time supporting our men and women serving our country instead of enabling hate that endangers them and their families,” Marx said.

The change helps no one and addresses no national defense concern, Honig said, especially in light of the recent mass murder in Sydney, Australia and rising antisemitism in the United States.

“We must be better than this,” he said.