At ‘No Kings’ Protests in Palm Coast and Flagler Beach, Cheer, Energy and Defiance in Throngs, But Effects Elusive

Of course there were all the “No Kings” signs, the “Sick of Trump” shirt, the American flags and “We love America” valentines, the appeals to the Constitution, the reminders about Epstein and felonies and innumerable crowns with a slash across them. 

But what there was more than anything at today’s trio of “No Kings” demonstrations in Palm Coast and Flagler Beach, where many hundreds gathered and protested as millions did across the country, was cheer and charm as much as challenge and conviction, making you wonder where all that energy was as Trump’s opponents floundered in gloomy defeat a mere 11 months ago. It made you wonder where all that energy is even now, especially now, as his political opposition continues to grope for relevance. 

The political opposition hasn’t found its voice. The street has.

There was an older woman offering “free balls for Congress,” a man brandishing a skeleton with a hot-pink tie and that recognizable bleach-blond whoop of hair, a man in a Taco costume, another inside a blow-up Trump doll in diapers. There was a trio of dinosaurs (“We aren’t scared of tiny hands”) and someone in a chickenhawk suit. There was the Native American hoisting the American Indian Movement flag that flew during the occupation of Wounded Knee. There were innumerable veterans wondering what on earth they’d served for, if it was to end up with a banana-republic authoritarian. 

And there was the double-sided sign held up by a grandmother wearing shades and a big smile, the rainbow-lettered sign saying on one side, “Love my Hispanic Heritage Love my LGBTQIA fam Love my right to my body,” and on the other, “Get ur nasty old white hands out of my Latina pussy” (a reference to the president boasting, before his 2016 election, of predatorily garbbing women “by the pussy”) along with a few additional choice logos. Like mother, like daughter: “Soldiers didn’t die for this shit,” the daughter’s sign read, its flip side steaming with echoing puns.  

What there wasn’t was a sense that any of it would translate to the sort of political opposition that could slow, let alone stop, the Trump juggernaut. With a single visible exception, there were no counterprotests in Flagler Beach and Palm Coast. There didn’t need to be. Not in a county where almost two of every three voter cast a ballot for Trump, a ratio that appeared unaffected after the first large-scale “No Kings” protests four month ago, and will likely be unaffected by today’s equally thronged version. 

So demonstrators were left to their voices as their last–as their only–resort. 

“We have a president that doesn’t care about everyone. He only cares about his people,” a local resident who declined to give her name said. (Many more people declined to be identified today, compared to four months ago.) She and her husband had moved from Monticello, Va., home of Thomas Jefferson. “I’m a Jewish person. I worry about that. I worry about immigrants, I worry about health care, I worry about the life my grandchildren are going to have. I can go on and on.” 

Karen Martin was holding up a sign decrying the drain of students and dollars from public schools to taxpayer-supported private education through vouchers. A local resident, she has no children or grandchildren in the district. “The people that are taking this money, in my opinion, that are not using it for their private tuition, are putting it in their pockets and homeschooling, and they’re not homeschooling their kids,” Martin said. “There’s no direction for homeschool in our county. There’s no protocol, there’s no check-ins, there’s nothing.” 

Martin was not exaggerating. While the local district requires homeschooling parents to submit a “portfolio” of work homeschool students accomplish, there are no standards, no required curricula, no required testing, and the submissions are annual. Home-schooled students are entitled to the same $8,000 per student (more if the student is in special education) as are students attending private schools. “You’re walking away with eight grand per student, and these people are pocketing the money. They can go to Disney for free. That’s BS. That’s just garbage. That’s garbage.”

What does all this have to do with Trump? “The dismantling of the Department of Education trickles down to us until we’re all affected,” Martin said. “And we are all affected by every single thing that this king, or non-king, this administration, is doing to us. We’re all affected by it.”

Peter Birtolo, an independent, wasn’t holding a sign. He was just participating, almost out of desperation. “I’m a little tired of what I see going on. Somebody’s got to say something, because I don’t know what else to do. That’s why I’m here. I can support people. I can find friends. I can find friends,” he said, standing at the southeast corner of State Road 100 and A1A. Traffic was heavy. Horn-blasting was frequent, the drive-by insults less so, but arresting. “I marvel at the intensity of the negative energy that drives by. There’s a lot of it. And it’s frightening to me. We’re supposed to hug and kiss, you know? We’re supposed to get along. And we always used to get along. We did, back in the day.”

Did we though? 

“Yeah we did,” Birtolo said. “We got along. It was underneath. There was always that current underneath. It was bubbling underneath. There’s a big difference.” 

Randi Anderson, 55, was protesting with her two children, Brendan, 21, and Jordan, 18, and a blue and red sign that read “MILITARY VETERAN Served for FREEDOM not FASCISM.” She’d served in the Navy in the 1990s. The tipping point for her was Jan. 6, though when she was in college, she worked at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. That was when it was losing money, violating anti-money-laundering regulations and disintegrating into bankruptcy before it became a Hard Rock Cafe.

“He was an asshole then. We knew who he was. I’m from South Jersey,” Anderson said. “He screwed everybody out of a shit-ton of money, hired a bunch of contractors come in, do all this work for him, and then never paid them. He was supposed to bring Atlantic City back, and it just turned into a bigger red-light district. I was never a fan to start off with. But even getting past that, getting past the person, and then just looking at it straight politically: January 6. At that point in time, I called my son and I said, right now, I wish I was at that Capitol helping those police. I wish I was at that capitol. I was so mad to see people just shit all over our Capitol way that they did. It was an insurrection. He shouldn’t be in office. He’s a felon.”  

Her son Brendan aligns with traditional Republicans, she said, but not Trumpism. He held up a no-kings sign. 

“ We’re very excited that we have a larger turnout than last time, and we’re also seeing a lot of independents and unaffiliated and even Republicans voicing their disgust at what America has become,” the Flagler Beach Democratic Club’s Sayre Berman said. 

Every protest has its counterprotesters, or at least one counterprotester. Four months ago it was a lone man at the southwest corner of Belle Terre Parkway and State Road 100, holding a sign supportive of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency whose masked agents are routinely conducting raids across the country, sweeping up documented and undocumented migrants. The ma included a phone number for those inclined to join the paramilitary’s ranks. 

Today it was a young person–man, woman or in between, it was difficult to tell–in a maga hat, holding up an unusual flag: Trump on one side, trans colors on the other. “Trans rights are gun rights,” the person would yell out periodically, followed by “Fuck Democrats. Fuck Democrats,” a few steps away from a more humorous woman with a “Free balls for Congress” sign globular with ball-sized balloons. 

“I’m just having a debate with them, that’s all,” the person said, moments after having a few words with protesters walking by. “Some of them were telling me not to interact with them, but some of them were pretty chill.” The young person explained the flag’s unusual conjugality: “There’s a lot of LGBTQ Trump support. Trump isn’t anti LGBT. He’s just anti-transitioning kids, which I agree. We can’t–you shouldn’t let kids transition without, you know, parents, right? And they’re just too young.” The person spoke supportively of Trump, citing “the border,” the economy, lower taxes, but though the person is 23, they had not voted for Trump–or for anyone–in 2024. The person declined to give a name. 

Steve Lunsford, a Marine who served three tours of duty in Vietnam and earned three Purple Hearts, is one of the last remaining members of the local Military Order of the Purple Heart. He was protesting today, from a rise above State Road 100 where Flagler 50501 had set up a booth with trinkets and giveaways, and where Eric Yonce, a Democrat running for Congress against Republican incumbent Randy Fine, was gladhanding anyone who’d listen. 

“Anybody that is not aware ain’t paying attention,” Lunsford said. “Anybody that would look down to their generals and their admirals, guys who have shed their blood for this country–” Lunsford stopped himself, saying he was “going to get dirty.” He was referring to the president’s summoning of the nation’s military brass to Washington on Sept. 30 for a televised lecture. “This is a guy that has never picked up a rifle or a sickle or a pitchfork and served for his country. Never.”  He was protesting with his wife. His daughter had gone to a protest in England earlier in the day. 

Down the rise, in the thick of the protest along 100, was long-time Palm Coast resident Tom Hanson, who’d seen his share of drivers flipping the finger at protesters (every time one did, one of the protesters blew a horn). “The administration just hasn’t affected them yet. Whether it affects them directly or a family member, it hasn’t struck them yet,” Hanson said. “I’m curious about, if it does, would they still hold that finger out.”

Hanson, who has a Bill Moyers air about him, was asked the question the protest’s energy begged: why then is the opposition still losing, why is it at such a loss to find its way? 

“Well, Trump has done such a good job of chaos and disruption of the message. That tends to unify people,” he said. “His divide and conquer methods work, and it’s a matter of time before the Democrats find a message and a voice to rally behind that will be strong enough to counter what’s going on on the other side. Right now we’re all over the place. And when you blow something up, rhetorically, figuratively, and you have a lot of pieces, it takes time and effort and ingenuity, creativity, to put those pieces back together, and that’s kind of the stage where we’re at now. We’re scrambling because Republicans have been so effective at creating chaos and disruption–in our homes, in our workplace, in our bodies. In other words, so many levels of disruption that it’s very difficult to counter.”