Latest news with #Troublemakers
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Protest against Elon Musk and DOGE seen outside of Phoenix Tesla dealership
The Brief Protests against Elon Musk have been becoming more common nationwide with one happening right in Phoenix. "Troublemakers", a group from Seattle, Wash. sponsored the protest outside of a Valley Tesla dealership. Others say that Musk is taking control of work that is needed to reduce the federal government. PHOENIX - Protests against Elon Musk are breaking out across the country. In Phoenix, people took to the sidewalks around a Tesla dealership to stand against Musk and DOGE. The protest was sponsored by a group from Seattle, Wash. known as the "Troublemakers". Their website says they "Resist corporations, governments and institutions" from destroying the planet through "racial capitalism and neocolonialism". Local perspective Protestors say they're fighting back against Musk, who they say is taking apart the federal government. "Elon Musk claims that he is there for efficiency when, in actuality, he's taken that chainsaw instead of a scalpel to necessary services," said Brent Peak, Co-chair of Northwest Valley Indivisble. The campaign is calling for people to sell their Tesla vehicles and stocks to denounce Musk. The other side But on the other side of 19th Avenue, supporters of Elon Musk and the Trump administration say this is what they voted for. "What Musk is doing and what Trump is doing is making the federal government smaller and giving power back to the states. That's why he's eliminating the Department of Education on the federal level and giving it back to the states. Then that will come back to the communities," said Vietnam War combat veteran Mark Del Maestro. Big picture view Musk and members of his DOGE team sat down with Fox's Brett Baier this week and say they're confident they'll find a trillion dollars worth of waste, fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, Democrats say the Trump administration hasn't shown any proof.
The Guardian
13-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Elon Musk targeted me over Tesla protests. That proves our movement is working
On Saturday morning, I woke up to a nightmare of notifications. On Sunday, it got worse. Elon Musk had tweeted and amplified inflammatory lies about me and Tesla Takedown, a growing national grassroots movement peacefully protesting at Tesla showrooms that I'm proudly a part of. Musk tweeted: 'Costa is committing crimes.' As a longtime local activist and organizer in Seattle, I'm accustomed to some conflict with powerful forces. The intention of the Tesla Takedown movement is to make a strong public stand against the tech oligarchy behind the Trump administration's cruel and illegal actions, and to encourage Americans to sell their Teslas and dump the company's stock. Protests like these – peaceful, locally organized, and spreading across the world – are at the heart of free speech in a democracy and a cornerstone of US political traditions. So it's telling that the response from so-called 'free speech absolutist' Musk has been to single out individuals – and spread lies about us and our movement. The harassment that's followed his post has been frightening. It's also proof that the Tesla Takedown campaign is working. I'd like to address the lies spread about me by the world's richest man and X users. I have not committed any crimes. I have not been funded by ActBlue, or by George Soros – that name is simply a tired antisemitic dog whistle. I'm not inspired by Luigi Mangione nor have I ever said that I am. I am not encouraging any vandalism. Nobody is getting paid to come to these protests. I am not the leader of Tesla Takedown. In fact, no one is. Here is the truth: Tesla Takedown is a completely decentralized movement with hundreds of protests taking place around the globe, drawing many thousands of people out of their homes and on to the public sidewalks to stand up for programs that support poor people, older people, veterans, the sick. Out of care and concern for others – a foreign concept to those currently in power – people are offering what they can to help. I've offered to schlep supplies, and helped someone find a bullhorn. The environmentally focused Seattle organization I'm a part of, Troublemakers, hosts a map where other people and groups can post the locations of forthcoming demonstrations. Troublemakers has about $3,500 in its bank accounts. All of this is a bare-bones, low-budget, people-powered movement – which is exactly why Musk is afraid of it, and casting about to find a villain. There are currently 91 Tesla Takedown protests planned across the world this coming weekend, and there will be more the weekend after that. If there isn't one at the Tesla showroom nearest you, you can start one just by showing up with some friends or family, maybe making some cardboard signs. This exercise of our fundamental first amendment right to peaceably assemble is giving an effective outlet to the outrage this administration has caused here and around the globe, and we're making a difference. Tesla stock has fallen precipitously, losing a quarter of its value in the months since the protests began. On Wednesday, JP Morgan analysts told Quartz: 'We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry, in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly.' Donald Trump even got on X this week to defensively claim that he'll be buying a Tesla to support his good friend Musk. More and more people are unloading the company's stock and selling their cars. The movement is growing and the administration is taking notice. When enough of us come together to do what we can, this is what effective opposition can be. Musk's false accusations against me won't stop this movement, because he is inflicting real harm on the American public and people around the world. In fact, Musk and Trump are the ones committing crimes. Just this week they have announced their intentions to slash social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and food stamps. They are gutting public institutions, stripping environmental protections, destabilizing the economy and people's lives. Musk is openly and gleefully firing federal workers en masse and dismantling programs that serve millions at home and across the globe. They've ignored multiple judicial orders, and refused to restart payments that they were ordered to. The unofficial agency Musk leads, the 'department of government efficiency', is digging into systems and pushing out public servants, when its own staff hasn't received so much as a background check. Musk's conflicts of interest are piling up without any disclosures. All of the programs this administration is destroying are paid for by people like you and me through our taxes. Tesla – a billion-dollar company – shelled out zero income tax last year. Justice through government processes will be slow, if it comes at all. If we can't show our opposition to what the government is doing, we are living in a dictatorship. If we are criminalized for calling out the rich and powerful for their illegal actions, that is a dictatorship. I don't want to live in a dictatorship. Make no mistake, it's scary to be personally called out by the richest man in the world on the platform he owns. It's scary to be targeted by a seemingly endless number of his devoted trolls and bots. To be doxxed, to have one's life pored over and exposed, to be smeared, attacked, and falsely accused. It's scarier still when the FBI director gets tagged into the threads and asked to investigate. But I'm not backing down – and even if I did, it wouldn't make a dent in this movement. Hundreds if not thousands of people have participated in the ways that I have. The truth is, the people are powerful. I've always believed that. And now we know that Elon Musk does too. Valerie Costa is the co-founder of Troublemakers and a longtime activist for environmental justice
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Elon Musk Searching for Mysterious Billionaire Who's Making Everyone Hate Tesla
Remember that iconic skit on "I Think You Should Leave" where a hot dog-shaped car crashes into a building, and then as the crowd demands answers, a man in a hot dog outfit — who clearly crashed the car — appears and starts demanding that the driver be identified? "We're all trying to find the guy who did this," huffs the hot dog man, played by Tim Robinson. Well, that's pretty much the situation with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He's spent the last few months rampaging through the federal government, resulting in an enormous amount of chaos and a historic decline in Tesla sales that's currently causing the automaker's stock value to collapse. In other words, there's clearly a billionaire whose unpopular actions are responsible for Tesla's woes, and it's Musk himself. But the multi-hyphenate businessman, who's never been comfortable looking in the mirror, is instead blaming a shady cabal of Democratic billionaires for his self-inflicted woes. In a post on the social network he spent $44 billion to purchase, Elon Musk claimed that an "investigation" had found that ActBlue, a fundraising platform used by liberal and progressive campaigns to raise money, is responsible for the increasing number of protests against his electric vehicle company. According to Musk, the mysterious investigation named five groups — Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise & Resist, Indivisible Project, and the Democratic Socialists of America — that were "funded by" ActBlue and were the main drivers behind the spate of Tesla protests roiling the company in recent months. It doesn't take all that much investigative prowess, however, to find that all of those grassroots organizations have publicly posted information about protests against Musk at Tesla dealerships. After erroneously claiming that a nonprofit fundraising platform is ponying up the money for nationwide protests, Musk claimed to call out ActBlue's founders. In his rush to place blame on anyone but himself, the South African emerald scion pointed the finger at George Soros, a fellow billionaire who acts as a popular conservative punching bag, and who doesn't have any documented ties to ActBlue. Along with Soros, Musk also named multiple other ActBlue "funders," including LinkedIn cofounder and PayPal mafia member Reid Hoffman, progressive oil money heiress Leah Hunt-Hendrix, ProPublica financier Herbert Sandler, and Brennan Center patron Patricia Bauman — the latter two of whom, strikingly, are both dead. Were this level of "investigation" to be presented as-is in an undergraduate journalism class, the student behind it would probably fail. Musk, however, is no J-school pupil, and the final forte of his argument centers around a real-life recent revelation from the New York Times about several senior ActBlue officials resigning from the nonprofit — though he claims, incorrectly, that they did so "this week" when that staff exodus reportedly occurred weeks ago. It remains unclear which investigation Musk is getting his information from. Both the House Republicans and an outside counsel hired by ActBlue's staff unions are looking into the nonprofit platform's practices, with the former alleging that some of its donations broke campaign finance regulations and the latter presumably looking into whether those employees were subjected to wrongful internal retaliation. None of that context, of course, matters to the billionaire whose own donations allegedly broke campaign finance law — especially because he's the reason people hate Tesla now. More on Tesla protests: Arsonists Set Fire to a Dozen Teslas, Charging Stations Amid "Anti-Capitalist Coordination to Target Tesla"
Russia Today
10-03-2025
- Business
- Russia Today
Musk blames Tesla protests on Soros
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has accused ActBlue, a major Democratic fundraising platform bankrolled by several powerful figures, including billionaire George Soros, of staging a coordinated attack on his company. Musk made the accusations against the platform and its backers in a post on X, urging users with knowledge on such activities to share more evidence online. 'An investigation has found 5 ActBlue-funded groups responsible for Tesla 'protests': Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise & Resist, Indivisible Project and Democratic Socialists of America,' Musk wrote. 'ActBlue funders include George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Sandler, Patricia Bauman, and Leah Hunt-Hendrix,' he added. The Democratic fundraising platform is currently 'under investigation for allowing foreign and illegal donations in criminal violation of campaign finance regulations,' Musk said. Over the past week, seven senior officials, including its associate general counsel, have resigned from their posts, he added. Tesla has been targeted by intensified protests over the past few weeks, with over 50 locations across the US hit by demonstrations. Protesters have urged Musk to 'go,' with the rallies using slogans like 'We need clean air, not another billionaire' and so on. Apart from that, multiple Tesla dealerships have been targeted by arson attacks. This is crazy The latest incident occurred overnight in Seattle, where a number of Cybertrucks were torched at a local dealership. Before that, on Saturday in Loveland, Colorado, an unknown suspect attacked a local Tesla dealership, with several cars sustaining damage from what appeared to be thrown rocks and fire. The same business was attacked by an arsonist last month, with the suspect spray painting 'Nazi cars' and hurling Molotov cocktails at them. The transgender suspect, Lucy Grace Nelson, who formerly identified as Justin Thomas Nelson, was booked on a $100,000 cash bond and released the next day. Local police bemoaned the release of the suspected attacker, warning that failures of the criminal system were bound to encourage similar attacks in the future. 'It's incredibly challenging to keep our citizens safe from copycat behavior when there are no repercussions to lawlessness,' Loveland police chief Tim Doran said in a statement.
