Linda Koistinen and her husband Dale stood outside a Tesla dealership in Berkeley, California, on Saturday, protesting.
They were not there to take aim at the company’s electric vehicles, but the person behind Tesla – Elon Musk – and join with others who are upset at the world’s richest man’s work to disrupt and take apart large portions of the US government.
“It’s a place where we can make a visible stand against him personally,” Ms Koistinen told the BBC. “He should not be deciding the fate of our democracy by disassembling our government piece by piece. It’s not right.”
As part of an effort organizers dubbed #TeslaTakeover, clutches of protesters across the country gathered outside the company’s showrooms, having largely planned when to meet and where on the social media platform Bluesky, an upstart competitor to Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter.
In some places, those protests barely numbered a dozen, with people in Washington DC, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and Lyndhurst, Ohio, stamping their feet to stay warm amid snow and cold weather. Some held signs that read “Say no to Doge” and “Deport Musk”.
The protest in Berkeley – a top California city for electric car ownership – numbered 200.
As part of his White House-backed effort called Doge, for Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has been sending teams into government agencies to comb through data and pushing for massive spending cuts as well as “clawbacks” of money already spent.
President Donald Trump, who received an historic amount of campaign donations from Musk, is on the same page, freezing hiring as well as laying off thousands of federal employees.
Musk says he has uncovered wasteful spending and his work is aimed at making the government operate more smoothly. But to many, he is stopping the government from functioning while making decisions that should be left to elected leaders and accessing private information.
“It’s just really grinding on the mind,” said Dale Koistinen. “I’m 84 years old. This is unbelievable. This is a takeover of our government.”
Along with X, Musk also is the primary owner SpaceX, Neuralink and the Boring Company. But it is Tesla he is most known for and Tesla is where people unhappy with his Doge work are taking out their anger.
For days, concerned Americans have been asking fellow citizens to dump their Tesla stock and sell their Tesla vehicles.
Singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow posted a video to Instagram that showed her Tesla being towed away.
“There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with,” she wrote in the caption. “So long Tesla.”
Crow added that she was donating proceeds from the car’s sale to National Public Radio in the U.S., a frequent target of Musk’s ire.
Tesla stock surged following Donald Trump’s election in November. Musk contributed a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s re-election effort, and hit the trail on Trump’s behalf in the final days of the campaign.
But after touching an all-time high in December, the company’s shares have shed 30% of their value with a pronounced selloff since Trump was inaugurated last month.
Saturday’s protests were promoted by prominent disinformation researcher Joan Donovan and the actor Alex Winter, who played Bill in the 80s movie “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”
Teah Jackson, though, noticed the Berkeley protest during an outing with her girlfriend, and stopped to show her support.
“It’s hopeful,” Jackson told the BBC. “It’s an acknowledgement that people aren’t going to go down without a fight and that they’re going to continue to push for what they believe in.”