As Elon Musk and his acolytes rip through the federal government looking for agencies to throw into the “wood chipper,” a grassroots effort to hit the world’s richest man where it hurts is picking up steam.
The courts are busy contesting the actions of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, but the judicial system is slow — and citizens are getting antsy.
Some in the U.S. who are aghast at Musk’s government bloodletting have sold their Teslas, or gone straight to vandalism.
But hundreds of others now plan to protest at Tesla dealerships across the country on February 15 — a movement that quickly spun up this past week by disinformation researcher Joan Donovan and accelerated by documentary filmmaker and Bill & Ted franchise star Alex Winter on Bluesky.
“As citizens, we have different points of leverage,” Donovan said in an interview with TechCrunch. “One is talking to our representatives, but another is publicly calling attention to the ransacking of the federal government’s data, and particularly the way in which Musk is operating with no transparency, and, it seems, also impunity.”
What started on Bluesky has spread to planned protests outside Tesla showrooms across the country in cities like Austin, Portland, Seattle, Kansas City, and Mesa, Arizona.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. TechCrunch will update if Musk or the automaker responds.
The motivation for Donovan — who is also an assistant professor of journalism at Boston University, but said she is acting in her capacity as a U.S. citizen — came when she saw the first few small protests outside Tesla stores last week.
“I was inspired by a little protest in Maine, where people had brought some signs to a Tesla charging station, and how that had brought about some conversation and allowed people to meet each other and to discuss what’s happening,” Donovan said.
So, earlier this week, Donovan started posting.
“If Musk thinks he can speed run through DC downloading personal data, we can certainly bang some pots and pans on the sidewalks infront [sic] of Tesla dealerships,” she wrote on February 8, while linking to Tesla’s own list of its stores in the U.S. She added a hashtag, “#TeslaTakeover.”
Winter, who worked with Donovan to organize showings of his 2022 documentary The YouTube Effect at universities, told TechCrunch that he saw the posts and reached out to her to help organize the effort.
“Sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines,” Winter posted to Bluesky on February 10. “Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk, and stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”
After that post, Winter and Donovan encouraged people to set up their own local Tesla Takeover events. As of Friday afternoon, people had set up 42 protest events throughout the U.S., including California, Florida, Texas, and New York.
Winter told TechCrunch in an interview that he partnered with The Disruption Project, a group that offers training for people interested in mass activism. He said hundreds of people have RSVP’d to the various events so far, and that more are popping up each day. Winter also said he’s even heard from people who are planning them internationally.
The protests are about more than shaping optics and building community, Winter said. Musk’s vast wealth is in large part tied to his ownership of about 20% of Tesla’s stock. That makes him somewhat vulnerable to large swings in the company’s stock price — doubly so because he has borrowed an incredible amount of money against those shares.
While the exact dollar amount is unknown, as of an April 2024 regulatory filing, Musk had used nearly 60% of all the Tesla shares he owned at the time as collateral for loans. Theoretically, if Tesla’s stock price were to sink low enough, Musk’s lenders could demand he pay back what’s still owed, or at least make him renegotiate their terms.
“The long goal is to devalue, to create a vote of no confidence in the company’s future, and to prompt a widespread selling of shares, which would legitimately hurt him,” he said. “But I also see enormous value in just the public-facing activist education and literacy aspect of this.”
Winter’s background makes him well-prepared for that education effort. He’s made documentaries about the Panama Papers (a project that exposed financial crime and corruption around the globe), and the potential harms of YouTube’s algorithmic feed. He is also involved in the “Free our Feeds” initiative, which is an effort to build an open social media system on Bluesky’s AT Protocol.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise he said he’s been concerned about Musk’s influence over tech for years.
Donovan said she believes Musk is “really leveraging the fact that many Americans are ignorant of how the government actually works” while spreading this misinformation. She worries that it will lead to violence — especially as Musk and his supporters single out government workers, judges, and their family members.
That’s another reason why Donovan said she wants people to get out and protest.
“My hope is that people come together, acting locally but thinking globally at these protests, and find other more local ways to resist,” Donovan said. “I think one of the things that Musk has overlooked is that power isn’t derived from the federal government, power is derived from the states, and there’s a lot that different state agencies can do to rein in the power of the federal government to force accountability.”
