Arlington, VA—At about 12:30 on Saturday afternoon about 20 arrived early and circled up nearby the Arlington Tesla dealership to discuss safety and security of the ongoing weekend boycott rally which was to begin at 2 pm. The main organizers of Third Act of Virginia asked participants to agree with a thumbs up of a short list of positive behaviors that would keep the boycott action inclusive, safe, and non-confrontational towards Tesla customers. They discussed deescalation as a method of diffusing tensions during conflict.
Third Act of Virginia is a grassroots organization dedicated for those 60 years and older, or in the “Third Act” of their lives and wanting to give time and resources back to their communities. But many members are much younger and like the stability and wisdom the organizers bring to the table.
During the school circle, there was a discussion of sign-making techniques and free materials provided to make them. Someone brought homemade cookies and there were drinks and snacks for everyone. A box of Budweiser non-alcoholic energy drinks was set out again—the same box left out the week before—and several were opened and gone as it was much warmer than last week. A street medic volunteered to provide care in case of injury. There were flyers and information passed out and several joined in the action for the first time.
Then the main organizers stood back while the line of boycott resistors walked to the Tesla dealership and did their boycott thing; they danced to a playlist over a sound system, cajoled motorists to blow their horns and cheered when they did; and they gave out magnet bumper stickers to Tesla owners who agreed to take them. A woman with a bubble making toy returned to spread bubbles everywhere. Someone brought their dog and he rolled in the grass. Many took pictures and short videos to share with others on social media. But the number one reason they keep growing is because there isn’t anything the Trump-Musk regime can do to stop them. And they feel empowered to take legal street action against Elon Musk’s illegal takedowns of democratic agencies and institutions by protesting his most profitable business. They’re urging the public to boycott Musk’s electric vehicle company. It’s called the Tesla Takedown boycott action and it’s going on across the country at other dealerships.
Several stepped up to be volunteer safety marshals to keep participants from getting too close to passing traffic and several others designated as police liaisons. No police showed up. Police didn’t need to show up. That’s because, there were no incidents, no confrontations, no vandalism, and there was even someone who stayed to pick up stray pieces of trash after the boycott action had mostly cleared out at 4 pm.
Over the past two weeks the Attorney General has spoken out against the First Amendment Tesla boycott actions by conflating their actions with “terrorism” because there have been several unrelated incidents of vandalism at Tesla dealerships usually late at night. The vandalism has not been linked to any of the Tesla Takedown boycott actions. Despite the Attorney General’s veiled threats, many of the participants have expressed desire to keep up the momentum of the actions by returning next week, March 29, when there will be an effort to expand the boycott actions to 500 locations globally.
For this, the sixth week the boycotts continued expanding as more joined in the actions. The boycotts are an improbable success story. They continued captivating attention, and they are gaining popularity. They are improbable in that they are one of the few prominent resistance actions that continue flourishing against a backdrop of institutional failures to repulse the spreading web of Trump-Musk authoritarianism. They are gaining popularity and captivating attention because those participants that are coming are actually creating a safe space for others to have fun blowing off steam despite the stress of watching their democratic institutions taken apart by Trump and Musk. The stress of watching democratic institutions and legislative opposition leaders fold has burdened everyone. The mainstream media is beginning to report on the Tesla Takedown boycott actions and that as well as a spectacular drop in Tesla stock value over the past three months gives evidence that the Tesla Takedown actions are successful too.
According to a published report in the Guardian, 20% of Americans support boycotts of corporations supporting Trump policies. This includes firms that have backed away from diversity and equality human resource hiring policies. A national boycott of Target stores beginning on March 6 over its rescission of diversity and inclusion human resource policies resulted in billions of lost sales. Tesla owners are turning in their cars as public pressure builds on the Tesla brand, increasing the percentage of market trade-ins for the brand according to a published report.
The Tesla Takedown boycott actions are an effervescent grassroots response to the failure of the legislative government and its institutions to protect the people against power hungry authoritarians who want to takeover and steamroll democratic institutions. They are composed of ordinary citizens who will not sit quietly while this is allowed by others too weak to stand against it.
At the end of the action, a person who goes by the name “Mac” read a quote by Gil Duran, a journalist who writes about tech fascism. He read the quote by Duran in its entirety but the salient points are,
It’s not just about money, it’s about power. Silicon Valley’s favorite word is disruption and tech companies have disrupted communication, shopping, travel, and many other aspects of our lives and some of those changes were good connecting us across cities, states and continents as we’re doing right now, but now Silicon Valley billionaires don’t want to just disrupt markets. They want to disrupt democracy itself. A small group of tech billionaires, people like Elon Musk and Peter Teal under the influence of a man named Curtis Jarvin and other right wing philosophers, believed democracy is obsolete.
“Their vision is to replace democratic nations with corporate dystopias under billionaire control. These are ideas that sound crazy, but they have been openly discussed in Silicon Valley circles for years. Its a dangerous ideology of tech supremacy.
These billionaires believe they are destined to the rule of the world. They believe the time has come to capture existing governments and remake the rules in their own favor. They seek to collapse democratic societies like the United States and replace democracy with corporate dictatorships.“They want to replace the dollar with crypto, giving them even more power over our world. They desire to control every power center, government, police, media, academia, even religion, and they are already trying to build new corporate controlled cities, which Trump calls freedom cities, but they’re not talking about freedom for us. They mean freedom for billionaires who want to escape democracy, rules, and the law.
“This sounds unhinged, but look at what’s happening in the news. They’re trying to do this right now. These men pose an existential threat to our freedom and our way of life.
“But here’s the thing they built their empires with help from our labor, our government, our money, and our public trust, and we’re not going to allow them to use that power that we gave them to dismantle the very democracy that enabled their success.
That’s why the Tesla takeaked down matters so much because you’re proving that even the world’s richest man can be held accountable and can be cut down to size but this isn’t just about one man or one company.“This isn’t about being the opposition or the resistance. This is a moral movement in defense of freedom, justice and human rights, and this is a mission to defend our country, our democracy, and our future. And we’re going to win, because ours is not a government of by and for billionaires.
It’s a government of by and for the people, and together we have a moral destiny to make sure that Elon Musk and his weird cronies learned this lesson and never forget it.”
