‘No Kings’ rallies come to rural, conservative Wyoming

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ALPINE—If history has taught anything, it’s that revolutionary thought often begins at the local watering hole. Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty organized at Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern. The Founding Fathers frequented Philadelphia’s City Tavern. And on April 5, 2025, Sid Woods and Wayne Noffsinger hatched a plan at Jackson’s Snake River Brewpub.

The two old friends, both Star Valley residents for the better part of three or four decades, hadn’t seen much of each other in a long time. Both are self-proclaimed members of Lincoln County’s batch of “other” — queer folks living in a sparsely populated valley steeped in conservative politics and deep religious tradition. Those who don’t fit the mold tend to find one another.

It seemed serendipitous then, that Noffsinger and Woods would again find one another this spring. He, a 57-year-old artist and medical assistant, had just attended his first protest on Jackson’s Town Square — one of more than 1,000 “Hands Off!” rallies taking issue with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s cuts to federal programs and jobs. Woods, 62, a writer recently retired following a career with the U.S. Forest Service, has spent her entire life organizing and showing up — calling out everything from controversial nuclear energy projects in New England to the “usual indignities” affecting women and queer people across Wyoming in the wake of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, in Laramie.

The two have different recollections of whose idea it really was to organize their own “No Kings” Nationwide Day of Defiance rally in Alpine rather than make another trip up to Jackson. “I think we had been imbibed with beer,” Noffsinger ventured. 

Regardless, their work put the town of Alpine on the map as the smallest of 13 participating Wyoming towns and cities. Nationally, organizers said some 2,000 events drew millions of people to protest against the Trump administration. 

Most demonstrations unfolded peacefully. But they occurred hours after another unsettling example of political violence: The shootings of two Democratic state lawmakers and their spouses in Minnesota, leaving two dead and two injured. Police there found “No Kings” flyers in the suspect’s car. Wyoming legislative leaders issued a statement Saturday afternoon calling for civility and mutual understanding as authorities continued to hunt for the suspected gunman. 

“May we come together in this moment of sorrow to reflect on the values that unite us and to work toward a future where such acts of political violence have no place in America,” the Wyoming lawmakers wrote.

Vying for survival

Wyoming was never on Noffsinger’s radar. Originally from Las Vegas, he moved to Los Angeles, where he attended community college and came out for the first time.

“I lived in Los Angeles and I lived in the ‘gay ghetto,’” he said. “I never felt the need to go beat my drum. I’m like, ‘Eh, I’m gay. Big fucking deal.’” 

But after returning to Las Vegas and meeting someone, the 22-year-old packed his bags and followed his new Star Valley born-and-raised partner back home in 1990. The two lived and worked together in their home art gallery in Etna — the same place Noffsinger met Woods and her partner for the first time. 

“Back then, in my recollection, it was mostly queer communities that were being targeted,” Woods said. “After Matthew Shepard’s death, Wyoming felt particularly under the gun, kind of like with the wolf incident last year. When people feel particularly under the gun, they just sort of batten down the hatches and get worse.”

One night while at the gallery, the window of Woods’ truck was shot out.

“There was a long period where it was drive-by epithets. Our house was broken into, we had paintballs shot at the house,” Noffsinger said. “The day that they buried Matthew Shepard, they smashed our mailbox with a sledgehammer.”

His new home wasn’t Las Vegas, and he learned quickly that as a gay man in rural Wyoming, he certainly couldn’t maintain anonymity — or even expect apathy from neighbors the way he could in a place like Los Angeles.

He and his partner wrote a letter appealing to the community via the valley’s newspaper, the Star Valley Independent, and later went on the record with the Casper Star-Tribune, which published a front-page story about their experience being targeted as a gay couple in a socially conservative and deeply religious area.

“After you do that, it changes to where you become the activist in your own life, vying for your own survival,” Noffsinger said. “Especially in a very rural place like this where people don’t know you, so they make up stories about you. That’s one of the impetuses for me to be involved in this. They’re making up stories about immigrants that aren’t true.”

That’s what drove Karellina Kiljander, 22, to show up to a “No Kings” rally in one of Wyoming’s biggest cities, Casper. On Saturday morning, she held up a Mexican flag and wore a Mexico shirt to make a point as she and people she knows have been increasingly harassed as anti-immigration sentiment increases.

“It’s affecting my life. I have people in my life who are from the Hispanic community, and it’s bullshit,” she said. “They’re just here trying to live their lives, working hard and supporting their families. People just hate them, but they work so hard.” 

Others who feel the same were too scared to come out, she said.

“Just because of our skin color it doesn’t make us any different,” she said. “We work just as hard as anybody else.” 

Some 600 people showed up at Healing Park for the demonstration in Casper, according to Allyse Taylor, who organizes with the Casper Unity and Solidarity Project. The group has held numerous “Kick out the Clowns” protests in the park and were organizing another one before the “No Kings” wave took off. Other than a handful of critical comments from passing vehicles, and one person who briefly stopped his truck to angrily engage with some of the protesters, the event was otherwise uneventful and cheerful. Many of the protestors were planning to attend a PRIDE celebration at David Street Station later that day in downtown Casper. 

The Casper Pride event was lively and well attended. The Alpine protest, meanwhile, was an opportunity to offer up some visibility in a place where, according to Woods and Noffsinger, being the “other” is often punished. 

They wanted to make sure that people who are part of marginalized communities in Alpine and further up the valley — namely queer people, people of color and immigrants — could see that they didn’t necessarily need to drive an hour north and join the hundreds of people protesting Saturday in Jackson to feel safe and accepted in Wyoming.

“For me, it was what was being said about people that I knew. I have trans friends. I’m watching their rights being eroded,” Noffsinger said. “Nobody wants to be born to be the target of derision for the rest of their fucking life. Nobody chooses that.”

“I come from an ecological background where, hello, ecological diversity is understood as a positive. Why can’t social diversity be understood as a positive?” Woods said. “It’s not about the administration or the issues so much as the idea that, to me, we are a more diverse state than the false image of what this state is.”

A small-town rally

By 10 a.m. Saturday, more than 60 people joined Woods and Noffsinger along the bridge over the Snake River in Alpine. It’s a high-traffic choke point for commuters and tourists heading to Jackson, for locals towing boats out to the Palisades Reservoir — basically anyone moving in or out of the northern valley had to pass through Alpine’s “No Kings” gauntlet.

Pamela Thompson, of Alpine, was nervous to be there and had planned to drive to Jackson or some other nearby rally instead.

“The division and aggressiveness is frightening,” she said. “I feel like as long as I assimilate, everything’s going to be OK. But honestly I don’t even care anymore if I put myself out there because this is bonkers. We have to do something. 

“It just feels good to be with people who recognize this is wrong because you question your sanity sometimes. Does anyone pay attention, does anyone care?”

But supportive honks seemed to vastly outnumber vocal opposition throughout the morning. Plenty of middle fingers were thrown, chants of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” occasionally oscillated by at 35 miles per hour. One motorist yelled “All illegals must go!” as he passed. A couple times, a pickup would slow to a stop while rallygoers seemed to brace for potential trouble.

It’s not uncommon for residents of smaller towns to head to more populous places for political demonstrations. People from Pinedale and Driggs, Idaho, joined hundreds of demonstrators under the antler arches on Jackson’s Town Square. 

Rebecca Bercher lives in Shell, population of less than 100. She attended the rally in Sheridan, a nearly two-hour drive northeast, to express her disagreement with how the Trump administration is handling the military. She served eight years in the Army, her husband retired after 23. They have two sons, who both are active duty military. 

“I’m upset about the communistic parade that’s going on that looks like something out of the Soviet Union today,” she said of Saturday’s massive military parade celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, an expensive display intended to honor America’s military might. 

“And I do not like federalizing the National Guard above the wishes of a governor of a state,” Bercher added, referring to the federal deployment of National Guard troops to L.A. protests, despite opposition from state and local leaders there. 

Bercher and her husband also depend on the Department of Veterans Affairs for their health care, she said, “I hate that they’re cutting it as well.”

Back in Alpine, as the clock hit noon and people began to filter out, Noffsinger and Woods walked along the highway making sure the area was cleaned up. Noffsinger’s nerves from earlier in the morning seemed to have faded after seeing dozens of his friends and neighbors who chose to stay and plant a flag in their own valley rather than drive to another larger city.

Woods was told by some they were disappointed in the turnout, as if they expected better of their hometown.

“We need to really reach out to one another right now, especially in our community so people don’t feel like they’re alone,” Noffsinger said. “That was what hit me up in Jackson, was that idea that there are people like us. It’s like you’re coming out again.”

Oil City News reporter Dan Cepeda and WyoFile’s Rebecca Huntington and Daniel Kenah contributed to this report.