Tesla protesters claim a victory as Elon Musk leaves Trump's side

Boston Globe

2 days ago

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'That first one on Feb. 15 was me and like 50 people,' Donovan said. 'And then the next week it was a hundred more people and then a hundred more after that, and it's just grown.'
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Tesla Takedown has since expanded into an international movement, staging demonstrations at Tesla factories, showrooms and other locations in countries including Australia, Britain, France and Germany as well as across the United States. The campaign's U.S. growth has been fueled in large part by anger over Musk's leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed government spending and dismissed tens of thousands of federal workers while gaining access to sensitive personal data.
Musk departed the administration after his involvement in politics hurt his companies, especially Tesla. Sales of the company's cars have tumbled since Trump took office and the start of protests against the company.
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David S. Meyer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies corporate protest movements, said the anti-Tesla movement had been surprisingly effective.
'Most corporate boycotts and corporate actions don't work and don't last,' he said. 'They're a blip and fade away.' The Tesla protests, however, 'gave people something to do to express their dissatisfaction with Trump in general and DOGE in particular, and made Musk's participation in those a liability for Tesla.'
Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson said the protests were not the reason Musk had stepped away from his government role. 'He had to go back to his companies,' the spokesperson said.
The challenge for Donovan, whose academic research focuses on misinformation, and the other activists is keeping their movement going now that Musk appears to be pulling back from politics.
Alice Hu, a political activist who has organized protests at Tesla locations in New York, said organizers were determined to continue, drawing on people's distress over Trump's policies and Musk's support of right-wing causes.
'We want to apply as much pressure as possible to Elon Musk himself,' Hu said. 'We want to send a message to the Trump regime that there is a mass movement and that people are watching, and there will be consequences for what they are doing to our government.'
The group is planning around 50 protests for June 28 -- Musk's birthday -- according to its website.
Donovan said she hoped the protests would expand beyond picketing in front of Tesla locations. On a recent conference call that drew several hundred participants, organizers laid out plans to begin urging city and state governments to sell their Tesla stock and to stop doing business with Musk's other businesses including Starlink, the satellite communications service.
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Donovan has firsthand experience with heated policy and political debates.
Before joining Boston University, she was the research director at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. After leaving the center in 2023, she filed a complaint to Harvard's president contending that she was let go because of pressure from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which was a subject of her research and has financial ties to the university.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Harvard said Donovan's allegations of unfair treatment and donor interference were 'false.' Meta declined to comment.
Hu has political experience as well. A graduate of Columbia University, she founded a climate activist group, Planet Over Profit, that held demonstrations targeting Citi last year.
A handful of celebrities have supported the Tesla Takedown protests. Actors Alex Winter and John Cusack have participated in organizing calls. Winter contacted Donovan early on and offered to create a Tesla Takedown website. He declined to comment for this article.
In April, Tesla reported that its profit fell 71% in the first three months of the year after it sold 15% fewer cars compared with a year earlier. Many Tesla owners are selling or trading their cars in, and prices of used Teslas have fallen sharply.
In early April, Tesla's stock price was down by around 54% from a December high, although it has regained much of that ground in recent weeks and is now down 29%.
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In an April conference call to discuss Tesla earnings, Musk addressed the demonstrations, saying, without evidence, that the protesters were paid. 'They're obviously not going to admit that the reason that they're protesting is because they're receiving fraudulent money or that they're the recipients of wasteful largess,' he said.
Hu and Donovan said they were not paid or funded by anyone to protest against Tesla.
In March, Trump defended Musk and Tesla at a White House event in which he looked over a display of five different Tesla models and said he would buy one of them, a Model S luxury sedan.
'I think he's been treated very unfairly by a very small group of people,' Trump said. 'And I just want people to know that he can't be penalized for being a patriot.'
One challenge for the protest movement is preventing it from becoming linked to recent acts of vandalism against Tesla. The company's cars, dealerships and chargers have been spray-painted, set on fire and damaged in other ways around the world.
Musk and Trump have described these incidents as the work of 'terrorists.' The White House spokesperson said the Justice Department was investigating the vandalism.
Donovan and Hu say they urge protesters to refrain from violence and demonstrate peacefully. But the posters and signs some demonstrators have displayed at Tesla Takedown events often take an aggressive tone.
At one March demonstration in lower Manhattan, a line of protesters strode down the street toward a Tesla dealership, holding a large banner with the words, 'Burn a Tesla, Save Democracy,' painted against flames on a white background.
In Germany protesters recently projected images and videos on the walls of Tesla's plant outside Berlin. They showed Musk making a Nazi-like, stiff-armed salute along with slogans like 'Heil Tesla.'
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While the protests were originally aimed at Musk and Tesla, many events have started attracting people who see them as a way to demonstrate their opposition to other administration initiatives. At a recent demonstration at the Tesla store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Beth Ann Thorrez was dressed in a penguin suit -- a poke at the Trump tariffs levied against countries around the world, including one uninhabited island populated largely by penguins.
Several protesters said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity, saying they feared attacks from supporters of Trump and Musk, or punitive actions by the federal government.
Donovan said death threats arrive in her email inbox and social media accounts almost every day.
But she finds encouragement and resolve, she said, in how the demonstrations have grown. The events in Boston where Donovan is often present typically draw hundreds of participants and have taken on a carnival atmosphere. A marching band provided entertainment at one recent gathering; a chorus sang at another.
'A lot of people who are not incredibly political in their daily lives are coming out and joining,' she said. 'You see a lot of adults, grandparents, kids. I'm energized by it.'
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.