Indivisible Auburn prepares for next No Kings event

Published 10:06 am Friday, March 20, 2026

As he has been doing for almost a year, Joe Hochwalt will take his stand on Auburn’s sidewalks in a peaceful sign-waving protest on March 28 over the policies of the Trump Administration.

The 63-year-old retired U.S. Navy veteran split his 40 years of service to his country between active duty and reserves before his recent retirement as a senior officer and captain. Today, looking at what the administration is doing, he said he can’t reconcile it with the oath he swore at the beginning of his service to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

“I take that oath very, very seriously,” Hochwalt said. “So when I hear all the rhetoric coming out of the administration, and see what’s been done to the military and what’s happening now with Iran, as a military person, all of that really bothers me.”

Hochwalt is a member of Indivisible Auburn, the local branch of the national No Kings coalition, which is hosting the event. As such, he will not be alone on the big day.

In April, Indivisible Auburn marks one year since its formation. Last week, the Auburn Reporter sat down with Hochwalt and three other members to sound them out on their many dissatisfactions with the Trump Administration.

Vicki Bates, herself retired after a 39-year-long career as a public educator, will be out there at the No Kings event next week, too. Bates said she had expected to spend her golden years of retirement in calmer pursuits with her husband.

“I was hoping to do that. Instead, I’m doing this,” Bates said.

Bates, who started out as a math teacher in University Place schools before serving as a principal in King and Kitsap counties, spent six years as an assistant superintendent with Auburn School District before officially retiring from another neighboring district four years later.

“I think for all of us, it’s bigger than this Saturday event,” Bates said. “What I see in our federal government right now is someone who is fundamentally working in corrupt ways to amass his own power and his own wealth without really caring about the people of this country.”

In particular, Bates said, President Trump is accomplishing his ends, “by scapegoating historically-marginalized groups,” thereby diverting the public’s attention from the hash he’s made of things here at home to distant conflicts.

“He’s not doing things that we know would make life better for the people of this country, which would include funding education, providing health care, driving down the costs of groceries and electricity and gasoline, and keeping us out of wars, all of which he said was going to do, but which hasn’t happened,” Bates said.

“A big worry for me right now is just voting rights, and that’s an area where we see that targeted oppression of groups. Now we’re seeing language about denying certain groups — you know, transgender people — the right to vote, and changing the rules, which is really going to impact women in terms of all the hoops and restrictions around proof of names.”

She continued: “Voter fraud is a non-problem. Even the Heritage Foundation, one of the most conservative groups in America, found that in 40 years of data, only 10 non-citizens have voted. It’s a non-issue around which all this distraction has been created. And the president has said aloud he wants to do it because it will help the Republicans hold onto power for 40 more years. That’s not a democracy, and it’s not a system that allows government by and for the people in the way that our government was intended.”

Cara Heany grew up in Nebraska and came to Washington to attend Seattle University, and, she said, “just kind of stuck around.” She would go on to teach kindergarten and first grade for 18 years, then serve as an instructional coach, and is now employed at the district office as a reading specialist.

“Where I taught was one of the highest refugee places in the state. When I taught, I had 12 different languages, and 18 different ethnicities out of 20 kids. There were times I was, like, the only white person in the classroom. So, there was a lot of getting to know the families and the immigrants. I have to use my white privilege to protect who I teach, who makes up who we are. My next door neighbors can’t be there, so I will be there.”

Law-school-bound Ariana Stevens, 24, noted that she was still in high school in 2016 when President Trump was first elected to office, and while she was aware of what was going on, she said, she was not yet old enough to understand the gravity of it.

“To put it bluntly, yes, you can say (we young people) have the whole world in front of us, but they’re taking it away from us. So we don’t have the whole world. They have taken away from us things like buying a house, and being able to afford groceries.”

She continued: “But more importantly for me and everyone else here, they are attacking our friends. They’re coming after my trans friends, they’re coming after my gay friends, they’re coming after other women, immigrants, the’yre coming after our neighbors. So, I guess I approach this from the lens of, ‘how could you not get involved, how could you not do something to stop this?’ It’s morally abhorrent.”

Of course, not everybody agrees with the group’s aims. Members said that, by and large, reactions have been peaceful, the most notable being an unexpected noon-time gesture.

“Somebody mooned me,” Heany explained.

One reader who emailed, identifying himself only by the moniker Anon O’Muss, wrote as follows:

“The No Kings movement is just another left-wing, No-Trump policy activist group whose focus is to impede the policies of a single elected leader, not a principled organization dedicated to opposing all tyrannical acts done by opportunistic politicians,” the man wrote. “Where were they during this state’s edicts under COVID? Where are they as this legislature takes more and more from the poor and the elderly to spend on practices that don’t work?

“No, it is not about principle with the ‘No Kings’ supporters. Just another starkly politically-biased sideshow funded by some unknown whose participants are fueled by emotion and rage against a single leader and party, devoid of true principle.”