By Helen Coster
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Chanting “Elon Musk has got to go” into a pink bullhorn, Carolanne Fry led about 350 demonstrators in a noisy march outside a Tesla electric vehicle dealership in Portland, Oregon, this week.
Fry, 38, a public employee and registered Democrat, is among hundreds of organizers in an emerging grassroots movement to protest Musk’s role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce at the behest of President Donald Trump.
The target of their so-called “Tesla Takedown” protests is the brand at the heart of the business empire controlled by Musk, Tesla’s chief executive. “Take action at Tesla showrooms everywhere. Sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines,” its website urges.
“We need to make Tesla a toxic brand,” said Fry, who has called on her state’s retirement system to divest its Tesla stock. “Every economic angle that we can attack Elon is for the best.”
The protests are still relatively small-scale but also significant as one of the first signs of activism in early weeks of the second Trump administration. Some Democratic voters have complained about an ineffectual response from party leaders to dramatic cutbacks Musk and Trump have made at federal agencies.
In addition to overseeing the firing of thousands of federal workers, Musk has orchestrated the cancellation of contracts at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds humanitarian programs around the world.
The share of Americans who give Trump positive marks overall remained steady at 44%, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey.
Through his leadership of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk and his team have gained access to some agency systems. Critics decry this as overreach by an unelected individual, and worry about possible conflicts of interest if Musk uses his post to try steering lucrative contracts to his own companies. Musk’s supporters say he needs to be aggressive to overhaul a bloated federal government.
As of December, Musk owned a 12.8% share of Tesla’s outstanding stock, worth about $114.7 billion at Wednesday’s closing stock price.
The world’s richest man also owns the X social media platform, the space exploration company SpaceX and brain implant company Neuralink, among others.
Tesla’s sleek, innovative electric vehicles have long been beloved by liberal-minded Americans as an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline-powered cars. But for some, the brand has morphed into a symbol of Trump’s aggressive remaking of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, making Tesla a natural target of the incipient protest movement.
“The idea is to tarnish the Tesla brand, bring down the stock price of Tesla and have a real impact on Musk’s pocketbook,” said Carlo Voli, 59, an interpreter in Washington state who has organized six protests at Tesla dealerships in the Seattle area. “It’s something ordinary people can do.”
Musk did not respond to a Reuters request for comment about the protests, nor did a representative for Tesla.
An anti-Tesla campaign is also underway on platforms such as Instagram and X under the hashtags #teslatakedown and #swasticars – a nod to a hand gesture made by Musk that drew scrutiny for its similarity to the Nazi salute. Musk has dismissed criticism of his hand gesture as a “tired attack.”
Some Tesla drivers are facing the ire of anti-Musk strangers, even as they prepare to sell their vehicles. Rainer Eckert, a 69-year-old forensic engineer in Wallingford, Washington, who voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, is planning to sell his six-year-old Tesla and donate proceeds to charity.
Until then, he has affixed a “Bought Before We All Knew He Was a Jerk” sticker on the car – which he says has not deterred a stranger from taping a “Nazi car” sign to it, as frequently as three times a day.
ACTION VERSUS RESTRAINT
Other DOGE-related protest efforts are starting to gather steam. On March 1, thousands of people gathered at national parks across the country to protest the Trump administration’s firing of 1,000 full-time National Park Service staff. Two days later, more than 1,000 protesters gathered outside a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) building in Boulder, Colorado, decrying Trump administration layoffs at the agency.
At least one high-profile Democrat is urging restraint. In a New York Times column, political strategist James Carville called for “the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead.”
It is difficult to determine how much Musk’s political activities are factoring into Tesla’s vehicle sales, which last year declined on an annual basis for the first time.
Analysts pointed to other factors in the global EV market, including increased competition from Chinese brands and legacy automakers such as General Motors.
Still, a growing body of polling evidence suggests that Musk’s vocal role in politics is alienating potential customers.
A poll conducted after the November election for the advocacy group EV Politics Project showed that far more voters who supported Harris had an unfavorable opinion of Tesla compared to those who supported Trump. Among Harris voters, 59% said they had an unfavorable opinion of Tesla, compared to 36% of Trump voters surveyed.
(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York; Additional reporting by Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty and David Gregorio)
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