Prominent valley residents to speak at Saturday Trump protest in Glenwood 

Auden Schendler, former senior vice president of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, will be at Sayre Park in Glenwood Springs on Saturday, April 5. 

Why? You might have already guessed it: to express discontent with the Trump administration. 

The rally, scheduled from 3:30-5:30 p.m., is part of a nationwide effort to organize protests on April 5 to show country-wide dissatisfaction with the Trump administration’s conduct over the past four months. 

Schendler, who worked for SkiCo for 26 years, will be attending the rally as a private citizen with no connection to SkiCo. He was asked to deliver a speech about the climate at the rally. 

“I was asked to speak about climate, of course, but the reality is, it doesn’t matter what you care about if you don’t have a functional government,” he said. “If you don’t have a functional democracy, then you can’t solve big societal problems.”

The rally is being organized by Mountain Action Indivisible, a local chapter of a national group founded to oppose the Trump administration, in coordination with the nationwide protest effort titled, “Hands Off!” 

The name is primarily in reference to potential cuts the Trump administration might make to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The nationwide rallies, however, also aim to call attention to Trump’s treatment of the U.S. Forest Service, private data, public schools, immigrants, and more. 

“People being taken off the streets, whether it’s immigrants or people who were expressing political views, is really scary,” said Debbie Bruell, a member of the Steering Committee for Mountain Action Indivisible. “That should not be happening in our country.”

Bruell, who is also the chair of Garfield County Democrats, echoed many of Schendler’s points. According to both of them, the country is in danger of sliding toward autocracy, and this rally is just one of the many steps people should begin taking to stop that. 

“Congress has abdicated the power of the purse,” Schendler said. “The courts are being ignored by the White House. People who are in the country legally are being picked up by masked, unmarked agents and exported to prisons without due process. So, you know, we’re in a crisis.”

He and Bruell hope that this is the first in a series of actions that concerned valley residents begin taking to register discontent with the Trump administration. Both emphasized that more action is needed.

People can register for the event at mobilize.us/handsoff/event/765904.

Speakers will include: 

• Autumn Rivera, GSMS science teacher, 2022 Colorado Teacher of the Year 
• Jocelyn Durrance, former Garfield County Library trustee, former assistant director of Pitkin County Library 
• Annalise Grueter, Aspen Daily News columnist 
• Auden Schendler, climate activist and author