Scenes from a South Florida No Kings Day rally

William Prevatel feels he has a lot in common with Donald Trump. Both were born in Queens, New York, graduated from Ivy League universities, worked in real estate, married foreign-born women and eventually moved to Florida.

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Those similarities are among the reasons 68-year-old Prevatel organized a “No Kings” Day event in North Miami on Saturday, outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and City Hall.

“I have a little too much in common with the people in power,” Prevatel said as he held up a sign that said “No Clowns, No Crooks, No Crypto, No Cruelty, and No more Craptocracy.”

No Kings Day is a “nationwide day of action” in the United States organized by left-leaning non-profits, political organizations and unions. The movement has focused on President Trump’s policies and actions. The latest demonstrations, held Saturday, encouraged Americans to vote early in the upcoming midterm elections.

In South Florida, early in-person voting begins Monday. Slightly more than 814,000 Floridians had voted by mail as of Saturday morning.

Prevatel, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration, said he attended previous No Kings Day events in Broward County but felt North Miami needed one closer to home. He decided to organize the local event himself.

He said his goal was to raise awareness and “to let [people] know that there are people that have not been intimidated that will come out here that will stand up for their those people, and you know where I can’t be bought, and I’m not going to give up my soul.”

The North Miami event was approved at the last minute, only being added to the No Kings website on Friday evening, leaving little time for people to find out about it, Prevatel said, which showed in the small turnout.

By noon, the crowd had drawn just over a dozen people.

Donna Stuthers, 72, of North Miami, said she has noticed quieter streets since the Trump administration ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitians. A local Haitian church has lost more than 50 families who once attended services regularly, she said.

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“I don’t want to have people being yanked out of their car, shot in the back, sent to a country they’d never been to,” Stuthers said. “All of that’s ridiculous.”

Moises Sztylerman, of Miami Beach, said his family’s history of fleeing political persecution in Europe and Cuba motivated him to attend the rally.

In 1928, family members on both sides of his family, originally from Estonia, Poland and Lithuania, were unable to enter the United States and instead settled in Cuba, he said. Decades later, after Fidel Castro came to power, his family left the island.

Sztylerman said his father’s side of the family had also lost relatives in the Holocaust.

Sztylerman, who wore a “Make America Native Again” hat which he got from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, said he attended the protest in hopes of encouraging others to speak out, particularly ahead of upcoming elections. Even if the demonstration reaches only a small number of undecided voters, he said, it could make a difference.

“Maybe if there’s just a handful of people that were on the fence, they might think, ‘You know what? These people are making an effort to come out here,’” he said

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This story was originally published October 17, 2026 at 2:14 PM.