It’s time to take down Tesla

Links and picket locations at the end

A target has come into focus. As Elon Musk gives press conferences in the Oval Office, parading his son X around as a prop and answering questions while Trump sits at his desk, it’s become clearer than ever that we must go after President Musk. Despite wins in court, the world’s richest man and his DOGE minions are ignoring the judiciary in some cases, continuing to infest every agency they can get into, and enabling the billionaire to consolidate power. The rules are out the window, the law is being ignored, and we have no choice but to escalate. One way to up the ante? Go after Tesla.

Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Every avenue should be pursued when it comes to combating this administration, and particularly Musk’s administrative coup. But when Congressional Dems are bemoaning liberal activist groups like Indivisible and MoveOn for pressuring them, when it’s unclear how court rulings will be enforced, and when DOGE and MAGA are comfortable breaking the law, other measures are called for.

Unions are proving themselves to be one significant line of defense in a way we didn’t see during Trump’s first term. That’s in part because of the blitzkrieg of executive orders and Musk attacks, and in part because the stature of labor in this country has grown and unions know how many people are ready to rally beside them in this fight. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union, has grown to a record size of 319,233 active members. Nearly as many new members have joined in the past five weeks as in the previous 12 months. The union has held rallies in DC, increased its public presence and messaging, and has signaled its readiness to keep pushing back against DOGE along with AFSCME, SEIU, and others.

Hopefully this is just the beginning of union pushback. Federal workers understand the severity of this moment as well as anyone, and they can move their unions to take more decisive action. But we need to be right there with them, fighting back against the richest man on Earth, his coup, and his fascist beliefs. And there are countless levers we can pull, many of them far from DC and far from the halls of power. As we speak people are organizing to hit one of the crucial pressure points that could weaken Elon Musk: Tesla.

Tesla is one of the most overvalued companies in the world. Its market cap is about 20x that of General Motors, even though GM made $6 billion in profits last year while Tesla made only slightly more at $7 billion. This massivly inflated valuation is due largely to investors’ expectations around what Tesla will earn in the future. Musk’s increasing power plays a major role in these future earnings expectations, with Wall Street assuming he’ll get more and more federal contracts. The billionaire’s companies, primarily SpaceX and Tesla, are already awarded over $3 billion in government funds each year, and the number could certainly rise precipitously given his new position as shadow-president.

But Tesla is vulnerable. Its high valuation also relies on goodwill, and that goodwill and confidence underpins Musk’s wealth. Seeing this vulnerability, people across the country have been coming to the conclusion that it’s time to take the fight to Tesla. Multiple organizations and individuals have simultaneously and organically turned their attention to the trillion dollar car company. If the world’s richest man wants to play with our lives, we’ll play with his fortune. Given the way he’s going after funding for cancer research, education, housing, livelihoods and more, it seems only right that the company that props up his lifestyle and power become a target of our anger and mobilizations.

Protests of Tesla have already begun at locations across the country. Tesla stock is now down 18.8% in February, and down almost 32% from its all-time high on December 17th. The declining stock price means that Elon Musk is $43 billion poorer than he was a month ago, although there’s still a long way to go. It’s now up to us to make that number decline sharply — and people are organizing to make it happen.

To begin, countless people are no longer buying Teslas, and many are trying to sell their vehicles. Scattered pickets are also popping up, as well as occasional acts of vandalism targeting Teslas and company locations. But now these sporadic actions are morphing into a more coordinated movement to protest at showrooms and dealerships and systematically affect the company that forms the primary pillar of Musk’s wealth. Thus far the Disruption Project has announced protests at Tesla locations everywhere on February 15th, and federal workers have launched a similar initiative for the 19th. People in cities across the country have taken up the call, announcing actions in Seattle and Austin and New York and numerous places in between.

These actions, and those that have already taken place, serve to shake consumer confidence in the long-term viability of Tesla and can turn customers away in the moment. Some people simply won’t want to go into a dealership that’s actively being protested, some will no longer want a product with such severe negative associations, and some will be physically blocked by hard picket lines at certain locations.¹

Photo by Saw Wunna on Unsplash

These coordinated escalations are vital to decreasing Musk’s wealth, thereby decreasing his power. As the billionaire builds strength from within the federal government, we’re seeing him begin to use and abuse his position it for his own gain. SpaceX has already received $43 million in new contracts under the Trump regime, and the State Department is on the verge of giving Tesla a ludicrous $400 million contract for armored cars. Given that Musk’s company has never produced this type of vehicle, and that Tesla’s cybertruck is dysfunctional and dangerous, this projected lucrative deal is clearly just the latest and most naked corruption to come out of the world’s richest man’s new role in federal affairs.

We have to take him down a notch. As Musk muddies the line between tragedy and farce, those of us outside the government need to step up. The billionaire’s vast wealth has given him legal firepower, the respect of Trump and other members of the ruling class, and has insulated him from the consequences of his actions. We need to strip away the insulation. This week we blockade Tesla locations, and that’s just the beginning. Pickets at Tesla will surely continue, but this movement can grow into unionizing Tesla locations with the UAW, systematic divestment from Tesla and SpaceX stocks, getting folks in other countries to boycott Musk brands and more.

The richest man on Earth is a Nazi consolidating power from within the federal government and briefing us from the Oval Office while the President looks on. His DOGE program is economic and political warfare against the working class. It’s all out class war that’s already hurting preschools and health care and housing and the basic needs of millions of people. In Elon Musk’s eyes his bank account is worth more than all of our lives put together.

All of us must reject both these actions and the sick logic that says one man has any right to trample on the lives of everyone else on Earth. As Che Guevara said, “We understood perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.” It is in that spirit that we must hit Elon Musk’s bank account, hit his Tesla stock, hit the one thing that will register most strongly with this sociopath — his bottom line. We must enforce the fact that our lives are worth infinitely more than his companies, his brands, his hoarded wealth.

This movement won’t just affect Musk; the effective targeting of Tesla will register with the ruling class as a whole. The world’s richest man must not only lose that title, he must become toxic, harmful to be associated with. His actions and the approach that he embodies to our country, the world, and the people in it can and will be defeated. Isolating and defeating him will not only help stop his coup, it has the potential to propel us forward toward other victories against the oligarchy that threatens us all.

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February 15th events are being planned at 11 a.m. in:

• San Diego: 4545 La Jolla Village Drive #C17

• Sunnyvale, CA: 750 E El Camino Real (https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/755137/)

• Encinitas, CA: 1302 Encinitas Blvd.

• Seattle: 435 Westlake Ave. N

• Salt Lake City: 2312 S. State St.

• Salem, OR: 25th and Mission

• Austin: 1 Tesla Rd. (https://actionnetwork.org/events/teslatakedown)

• Portland, OR: 4330 SW Macadam Ave (https://actionnetwork.org/events/teslatakeover-portland)

• Golden Valley, MN: 700 Ottawa Ave N (https://actionnetwork.org/events/teslatakeover-golden-valley-mn)

• Find other actions via the hashtag #TeslaTakedown, or organize one with folks in your area! The links above and below also have graphics you can use or adjust for your event.

February 19th link: https://actionnetwork.org/events/save-our-services-day-of-action

Note that most of the above events are often autonomously organized. The call, both here and elsewhere, is for people and organizations to find the best ways to target Tesla in your area. Share this if it’s helpful, and you can find Tesla locations here: https://www.tesla.com/findus/list/stores/United%20States

1. For reference, hard pickets are typically used to block scabs from entering a struck workplace, as opposed to soft pickets which inform people that a strike is taking place and ask them to turn away but don’t physically block entrances.