Mark Roberts, 70, who never attended a rally in his life, was inspired to come to the “No Kings” rally in Palm Beach Gardens by a Lone Ranger episode.
Police estimated about 1,000 to 1,500 people attended the June 14 rally on both sides of PGA Boulevard near Campus Drive and the mall.
Roberts, a North Palm Beach resident, said he doesn’t like crowds and stayed up until 3 p.m. with anxiety, trying to decide whether to go. “The alarm went off at 8 a.m. and I said, ‘I think I’ll skip it.'”
Then he said he remembered the Lone Ranger episode he watched the day before.
“He was talking about patronism and how you have to fight for things and not run. Fight for what you believe in, fight for justice and stuff like that. That stuck in my mind.
“I like the Lone Ranger. He’s got some good conservative values … and they’re still applicable .. just being a good American, being a good person actually.
“So I just said, ‘I’m gonna get up and go.'”
‘Power is with the people’ says Lake Worth Beach protest attendee
Alex Friedman, 81, of Lake Worth Beach, said she attended the protest rally for one thing: democracy.
“You know, we’ve seen Hitler’s playbook. He took three and a half months. He let it become a fascist state and Trump, I think, beat him.
“You know, what happens every day is absolutely horrendous.”
Friedman mentioned the incident recently when Democratic California Sen. Alex Padilla was physically removed, pushed to the ground and briefly handcuffed after speaking out loudly at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles during the protests there. The Trump administration claimed that he “crashed” Noem’s news conference.
“It was a disgrace,” Friedman said. “You know, if they can do that to a sitting senator, they can do it to anyone.”
She was asked if attending rallies like the one in Gardens matter.
“Absolutely. … There was a point where the rallies against the Vietnam war were so impressive, it actually changed (then President Richard Nixon’s) life.
“Power is with the people,” she said.
Woman said what’s happening now reminds her of her native Cuba
Graciela Catasus, who is originally from Cuba and now lives in North Palm Beach, said she attended the rally because “I see the same thing happening in this country that happened in Cuba, over 60 years ago.
Catasus said her father was a chief in Cuba’s Air Force and she (17 at the time) left the country in the middle of the night, a week before Fidel Castro took over.
“Everybody was saying, ‘Oh, Castro is a hero, he’s this and that and the other thing. And then six months later, he had done away with everything. The media, he had done away with the Ministry of Education, he had done away with everything else, and the Cubans that had supported him ran off to Miami.
“I wonder where we can run off to right now, when that same thing happens here.”
Catasus was asked whether she thought that protests like the one in Gardens matter.
“At this point, I am so disappointed. I think (Trump’s) gone too far. I don’t think, you know, this will do anything,” she said before adding, “but I never lose hope.”
GOP organizer and Trump supporter attends Gardens rally
Willy Guardiola, a Palm Beach County GOP organizer and Trump supporter, attended the Gardens rally to make sure things went smoothly. He said the county GOP urged anti-protesters not to attend any of the seven protests throughout the county. He said he had heard about a group supporting Trump that might attend the Gardens rally, but he said none seemed to be there. He said he saw about three Trump supporters early on and suggested they leave.
Guardiola was also concerned about a pro-Trump boat parade passing through the county later in the day. Because the boats would be passing under some bridges, he was somewhat worried that they could be in danger of people throwing things from the bridges, as some people did on bridges over the highway during the Los Angeles protests. He said he spoke to officials ahead of time to warn them.
Guardiola is a GOP fixture in the county and the organizer of “Trump corner,” a pro-Trump rally that started during Trump’s first presidency. They would gather on PGA and Military boulevards in Palm Beach Gardens.
“I started Trump corner back in June of 2016 … We actually grew up to about 1,500 people there,” he said. “To look around here now and see almost 1,600 people going against Trump … is just amazing.”
Guardiola said he started his day in Jupiter and was working his way south, making sure officials were aware of the pro-Trump boat parade and the potential for dangers on the bridges.
As for the Gardens protest, “Everything is safe and everything is secure,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: ‘No Kings’ protest rally in Gardens draws over 1,000 along PGA Boulevard
Reporting by John Bisognano, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
