While Elon Musk and his acolytes are going through the federal government that seek agencies to launch in the “Wochipper” A basic effort to hit the richest man in the world, where it hurts is to collect steam.
The courts are occupied by disputing the actions of the Efficiency Department of the Musk government, but the judicial system is slow, and citizens are becoming anxious.
Some in the United States that are horrified by Musk’s blood have sold their teslas, or have gone directly to vandalism.
But hundreds of others now plan to protest in Tesla’s dealerships throughout the country on February 15, a movement that quickly emerged last week by the disinformation researcher Joan Donovan and accelerated by the documentary filmmaker and the Bill & Ted Franchise star Alex Winter in Bluesky.
“As citizens, we have different points of leverage,” Donovan said in an interview with TechCrunch. “One is talking to our representatives, but another is publicly calling attention to the looting of federal government data, and particularly the way Musk is operating without transparency and, apparently, also impunity.”
What began in Bluesky has spread to planned protests outside the Tesla exhibition rooms throughout the country in cities such as Austin, Portland, Seattle, Kansas City and Mesa, Arizona.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comments. Techcrunch will be updated whether MUSK or car manufacturer respond.
The motivation for Donovan, who is also an assistant professor of Journalism at Boston University, but said he is acting in his capacity as American citizen, arrived when he saw the first small protests outside the Tesla stores last week.
“I was inspired by a little protest in Maine, where people had brought some signs to a Tesla load station, and how that had caused a conversation and allowed people to meet and discuss what is happening,” said Donovan.
Then, earlier this week, Donovan began publishing.
“If Musk believes that he can run through DC by downloading personal data, we can certainly hit some pots and pans on the sidewalks. [sic] of the concessionaires of Tesla “, she wrote On February 8, while linked to the Tesla list of its stores in the United States, added a hashtag, “#Teslatakeover”.
Winter, who worked with Donovan to organize exhibitions of his 2022 documentary The YouTube effect on universities, told TechCrunch that it saw the publications and approached it to help organize the effort.
“Sell your teslas, turn your stock, join the picket lines”, winter aware To Bluesky on February 10. “Wounding Tesla is stopping Musk, and stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”
After that publication, Winter and Donovan encouraged people to establish their own local acquisition events of Tesla. Until Friday afternoon, people had established 42 protest events throughout the United States, including California, Florida, Texas and New York.
Winter told Techcrunch in an interview with which he associated The interruption projectA group that offers training for people interested in mass activism. He said that hundreds of people have RSVP in the various events so far, and that they are appearing more every day. Winter also said that he has even heard of people who plan them internationally.
The protests are more than shaping the optics and building a community, Winter said. Musk’s vast richness is largely linked to its property of approximately 20% of Tesla’s actions. That makes something vulnerable to large swings in the price of the company’s shares, double because it has borrowed an incredible amount of money against those actions.
Although the exact amount in dollars is unknown, from a regulatory presentation of April 2024, Musk had used almost 60% of all the Tesla shares that owned at that time as a guarantee for loans. Theoretically, if the price of Tesla’s shares had to sink low enough, Musk’s lenders could demand that he pay what is still due, or at least made him renegotiate his terms.
“The long objective is to devalue, create a vote of distrust in the future of the company and cause a generalized sale of shares, which would legitimately damage it,” he said. “But I also see an enormous value in the aspect of activist education and literacy oriented to the public of this.”
The winter history prepares it well for that educational effort. He has made documentaries about the Panama roles (a project that presented financial crime and corruption worldwide), and possible damage to the algorithmic food of YouTube. It is also involved in the “Free our feedsInitiative, which is an effort to build an open social networks system in Bluesky’s at Protocol.
With that in mind, it is not surprising that he has said that he has been worried about Musk’s influence on technology for years.
Donovan said that he believes that Musk is “really taking advantage of the fact that many Americans ignore how the government works” while disinning this misinformation. She worries that she leads to violence, especially because Musk and her supporters highlight government workers, judges and their relatives.
That is another reason why Donovan said they want people to come out and protest.
“I hope people join, acting locally but thinking worldwide in these protests, and finding other more local ways to resist,” Donovan said. “I think that one of the things Musk has overlooks that power is not derived from the federal government, power derives from the states, and there are many that different state agencies can do to control the power of the federal government to Force the responsibility “.