Arlington, Virginia—Its 4:15 pm on Tuesday afternoon and one can hear car horns blaring a block away from the Arlington Tesla car dealership. Some motorists toot a few times but others blare their horns down the entire length of the protest line, fueling the protesters to cheer back loudly at the passing cars. There are about 50 spread along the sidewalk of South Glebe Road holding an odd array of hand made signs. Across the street there are about 10 more. Others continue arriving, some by bike, others by foot.
The traffic is jumping along the busy road but a traffic light a short distance away slows and stops it for a moment, then it ebbs and clears out. The traffic passes less than a foot from the protest line. A woman worried about safety walks the line with a clipboard listing safety tips. She warns the line away from the street. But it creeps close again a few minutes later. Their enthusiasm pushes them forward.
Some sprint across South Glebe to take photos and videos of the line on their cell phones. They’ll post them on social media later in hopes that next week even more will come. A man is dressed like Uncle Sam and his stars and stripes top hat stands out. Some are Federal workers. Most are just there because they are shocked at what has happened in the country since the inauguration.
I ask several if there is any organization behind the Tuesday Tesla protest but there is none—everyone I speak to is from the local DMV community and heard about the chance to hit back at Musk’s electric vehicle company by word of mouth or from social media. Everyone there knows Tesla stock is dropping as word of the protests has spread from coast to coast.
Some say they have come because Elon Musk’s takeover of Federal government agencies and shutdown of many agencies has worried them about the future of the government. Some are so angry they didn’t know what to do. Calling their representatives was fruitless. They cannot understand how an unelected billionaire got inside the Federal government and has dismantled it piece by piece. So they heard about the Tesla protests and decided to join in for a few hours.
Most of the signs they brought are an odd assortment of messages mostly critical of Musk. But other signs could lead one to the believe that there are many issues driving them other than Musk’s transgressions within the network of classified government information systems.
Along the protest line someone is waving a Canadian flag while someone else waves the flag of Mexico, These are two countries Trump targeted with tariffs for reasons no one there seems to understand.
There’s even a flag representing transgender rights—pink, light blue and white emblazoned over the words “Change the CIS-tem.” This references the attack on the marginalized Trans community, a minority targeted by the right essentially because it exists contrary to their beliefs or for reasons too ambiguous to understand. Yet here the protesters are, set between protecting an almost defenseless community and defending the Federal government from being burned down by a billionaire megalomaniac.
Another sign being held reads, “Black Lives Matter,” an issue playing out in Washington DC across the Potomac River just 5 miles North. On Monday DC street crews paved over the symbolic civil rights memorial letters “Black Lives Matter. This request came from Trump acolytes without so much of a fight from DC City Mayor Muriel Bowser. This issue matters because during Trump’s first term the Black Lives Matter Plaza was the local ground zero for hundreds of arrests and uncounted skirmishes between DC police and activists following the Minneapolis Police murder of George Floyd.
The many signs form a tapestry of issues gnawing at the hearts of the protesters which seemingly lay disconnected entirely from the reason the protesters have come to be outside the Tesla dealership: to get the public to boycott Tesla electric vehicles to somehow affect sales and force the worlds wealthiest billionaire to lose something—or anything—for destroying the Federal government. But this is the essence of protests in this difficult time. There are so many issues and they are all interconnected in some way.
One of the protesters is a DC government retiree who left his position last year. Marcial Lever commented that what Musk was doing was just crazy. Of Musk he said, “He came out of nowhere. He’s dismantling the government. He’s getting all of our data and personal information. That’s crazy.”
Musk’s behavior has harmed his brands as much as Wall Street fundamentals and some of the signs protesters carry reflect that. “Stop the Billionaire Grift,” reads one, “Nobody Elected Musk,” reads another,” “Elon Musk Out of Our Government,” and “Clean Up After Your Doge,” reads yet another.
As for Tesla, its stock value has lost over 50% of its market value over the last two months since the Trump-Musk duo came to power. It equates to $800 billion in paper losses, over $140 billion of which was Musk’s.
The protesters talk among themselves about Tesla stock, reinforcing their rationale for being outside Tesla. They ruminate Musk and Trump while claiming the dramatic crash of his Tesla stock is their doing and perhaps it is they who triggered the massive losses.
Wall Street reporting has up to now barely mentioned the Tesla protests in its daily analysis of the Tesla stock crash, if at all. In fact Wall Street has been playing up its long term value. As for value sake, Tesla stock was already heavily overrated and vastly oversold with low sales. The company had a price to earnings (P/E) ratio more than 120 and many times that of other car companies before protests erupted and its stock cratered. Tesla stock was more likely than not to correct at some point near term.
The Tesla protests may not have caused the precipitous drop to go as fast and quick as it has. But the protesters were on the scene when it began and they helped spread tarnish on Tesla’s reputation and therefore they are claiming some credit for the tanking stock and worsening sales.
But it was Elon Musk’s attitude and behavior towards millions of Federal government employees and if there’s anyone to be personally blamed for the Tesla stock collapse, he is at least in part to blame. His nazi salad salute at Trump’s inauguration did much to harm his image. His chainsaw demonstration at CPAC as a metaphor to government hasn’t endeared him to Federal workers either.
So the protesters are there enjoying their moment in the sun for now. They are taking credit and giving themselves big props for having been there for one of the biggest corporate owns ever in terms of losses for one of the most reviled industrialists have ever lived and it has been some prominent doing that got them here.
Musk has lost $140 billion in two months, that’s more wealth than the individual GDPs of the world countries ranked from 62 to 185.
There has been no major media coverage and it confounds the protesters. Two local journalists walk between several protesters asking questions and taking notes on spiral pads. Up to now the Tesla protests have been covered by the large news organizations only when there has been vandalism or police activity but that’s about to change.
On Tuesday Trump sat in a Tesla next to Musk to hawk the billionaire’s brand at the White House. He said that the protesters who vandalized Tesla dealerships should be targeted for “domestic terrorism” for going after Tesla. He said that those involved would “go through hell.”
It was clear the protesters had finally struck a nerve leading all the way to the White House. And within 24 hours on Wednesday, every major news group was reporting about the Tesla protests.
The protesters had finally struck the right chord for the attention they sought and it was Trump himself who had done that for them.
