Joe Capozzi
Joel Engelhardt‘Hate won’t make America great,’ one protester says as thousands rally against President Donald Trump in Palm Beach County and nationwide.
Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets Saturday across Palm Beach County, joining “No Kings” protests in all 50 states protesting President Donald Trump and his policies.
In West Palm Beach, a spirited crowd of at least 3,000 marched a mile from Phipps Park on Dixie Highway to within 100 yards of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s winter White House on Palm Beach.
About 2,000 more lined PGA Boulevard next to the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens.
As marchers approached Mar-a-Lago, they shouted anti-authoritarian chants like “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA,” shattering the usual morning calm as motorists passing on the Southern Boulevard Bridge honked approval.
The president missed it. He was in Washington, celebrating his birthday later in the day at a $45 million military parade recognizing the 250th anniversary of the Army, replete with tanks and soldiers in fatigues.
Blocked from Mar-a-Lago
But that didn’t stop a vocal group at the head of the march from shouting insults at about 20 Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies who stood behind a barricade blocking the sidewalk on the south side of the Marjorie Merriweather Post Memorial Causeway at the east end of Bingham Island east of the main bridge.
That’s as far as demonstrators had been allowed to go during protests in Trump’s first term and even during Joe Biden’s presidency. But some Saturday demonstrators shouted their disapproval at being stopped within sight of Mar-a-Lago.
“Let us go! Let us go!” they shouted in unison on Saturday as the deputies, wearing riot gear, stood in silence. The deputies were professional and not aggressive, as were Palm Beach police officers who encouraged marchers to stay off the road for safety.
There was a heavy police presence along the route, including at least two police helicopters. But except for insults hurled at deputies outside Mar-a-Lago, the demonstration was peaceful.
The marchers arrived on the causeway around 10:15 a.m. An hour later, they marched back into West Palm Beach, in some cases rerouting marchers still heading east to Mar-a-Lago, where they made their way downtown for a rally at the Meyer Amphitheatre.
Lev Parnas among speakers
Among more than a dozen speakers at the rally was Lev Parnas, the Soviet-born, Boca Raton resident who joined Trump to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine but fell out of favor and ended up in prison on a 20-month sentence for campaign-finance and wire fraud.
He said he drove by Mar-a-Lago Saturday morning and noted he had never seen anything but pro-MAGA crowds lining the roadway on previous visits.
“It wasn’t just Democrats. It wasn’t just independents. It was Republicans. It was MAGA and people that voted for him that were standing there. But they didn’t have their flags there today, because the flags that we had today were No King flags,” he said. “They were American flags. They were flags that we took back today.”
Parnas concluded his 20-minute speech by urging residents to never bow down to kings.
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t let them scare you. Don’t let them intimidate you. Because they want fear. They want silence. They want us to give up,” he said. “But we’re not going anywhere.”
Protesters explain why they came
In Palm Beach Gardens, protesters organized by Speaking Up for America/Indivisible, lined PGA Boulevard for about a half-mile across from the Gardens Mall, a site that has drawn several large anti-Trump protests since April. Crowd estimates were hard to calculate as people came and went over two hours. One city police officer put the number at 2,500.
Toni Mauro, a Palm Beach Gardens resident who worked as a general manager at car dealerships, expressed concerns over threats to democracy she said came from ignored court rulings and TV hosts in the Cabinet.
“It’s sad we have to be here,” she said. “But we have to be here.”
Carl Youngblood, a Navy veteran from Wellington, hoisted a flag with the letters FAFO, the online slang term for F*** Around and Find Out, or as he explained, it could mean Federalist Attitudes Foster Opposition.
His beef: federal troops on the streets of Los Angeles.
Politics and the military need to stay separate, he insisted.
Patricia Delehanty, a retired teacher from Jupiter, wore a T-shirt saying “I Need To Be Able To Tell My Grandchildren I Did Not Stay Silent.”
She ran off the reasons for showing up, from Elon Musk firing federal employees to Trump’s decision to send the National Guard to Los Angeles, before stopping herself.
“I don’t want it sounding like I’m repeating what I see in the newspaper,” she said. “But how many ways can you say it?”
Retired Boynton Beach firefighter Luis Garcia hoisted a pack to hand out water, Gatorade and granola bars. He carried a portable defibrillator and said he was there to save lives.
Garcia, a veteran of rallies wearing a firefighters’ helmet and an orange T-shirt proclaiming “Firefighters for Biden Harris,” called to protesters through a megaphone: “Don’t pass out.” And “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
Like many protesters finding solace in the shade, Kim Byrne, sat with her “Dump Trump!” sign. But Byrne, a retired special education teacher from Loxahatchee, came to the protest in a wheelchair with her husband’s help, just a week after spinal surgery.
It was her first protest and she pledged to attend more.
Her beef? Requirements and limitations on teachers from state and federal directives.
“Hate,” she said, “won’t make America great.”
Check out the videos
Drone footage of PGA Boulevard rally.
Leaving Phipps Park in West Palm Beach.
PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens.
More photos
Joe Capozzi is an award-winning reporter based in Lake Worth Beach. He spent more than 30 years writing for newspapers, mostly at The Palm Beach Post, where he wrote about the opioid scourge, invasive pythons, and Palm Beach County government. For 15 years, he covered the Miami Marlins baseball team. Joe left The Post in December 2020. He publishes the Lake Worth Beach Independent on Substack, covering the town where he lives.
