2/ “It’s the constant Hitler salutes,” DeCarlo told me, as passing motorists on the busy commercial strip honked their support in the background. “My family is half Italian and half Jewish, and we were told to remember — to remember what happens when they come for marginalized people. It’s really hard to turn away from."

3/ "That’s what prompted DeCarlo to go to the store and produce his large, emoji-packed, fact-checked-true cardboard sign — “ELON MUSK CHEATS AT VIDEO GAMES” — and hold it up against the cruel February winds, one man raging against the machine."

4/ "But DeCarlo was not alone. He was joined in Devon by those other hearty souls — a mix of scientists alarmed by Team Trump’s research cuts and data abuses, Holocaust descendants, and concerned citizens — and by several thousand protesters at auto showrooms from coast to coast in what was dubbed a #TeslaTakedown."

5/ "Consider these pickets the 1st green shoot of an early spring uprising across America, after a winter of discontented hibernation by many of 78 mil who’d voted against Trump & his anti-democratic vision..Tesla protests were leading edge of rising voter outrage. There were large protests over last wk by laid-off fed workers, by LGBTQ activists in NYC furious over scrubbing of transgender references from the Stonewall Nat Monument, & here in Philly & elsewhere for last Mon’s Not My Pres Day"

6/ "The idea behind the nationwide #TeslaTakedown protests — with Week Three planned for next Saturday — is to weaken Musk by attacking the main source of his wealth, his massive stake in the EV giant where he still serves as inattentive CEO. The goal is both to cripple new sales of Tesla and also tank its astronomic stock price that underwrites Musk, and there are powerful signs it is already working."

7/ "Many experts say the CEO’s right-wing politics are why U.S. sales of its EVs flattened in 2024 and fell below 50% of the domestic market, and also why Tesla’s value on Wall Street has plunged as much as 21% since Trump’s inauguration...

One protester said that in Week One, a Tesla-driving motorist pulling into the lot slowed down to say, “We didn’t know! We’re sorry.”

8/ "It’s striking how many of the first wave of protesters say they are motivated by relatives who fled Europe before, during or after the Nazi reign of terror and genocide, or who have cited experience with other authoritarian regimes around the globe."

9/ "Another picketer, a 63-year-old retired physicist whose resume includes a stint at the government’s Los Alamos lab, and who like several others didn’t want his name used in a time of rising authoritarianism, said Musk and Trump “want a cultural revolution to destroy education and science ... to start with.“ He added that “tech bros are trying to start a monarchy” as he held aloft a sign that read “No Kings.”

10/10 "The protesting scientist had to raise his voice over the honking horns, the first clatter of an uproar that is building rapidly in grassroots America, even as leaders in the Democratic Party and elsewhere among the befuddled elites are slow to catch on. The spring equinox is coming and temperatures are rising. As a great American bard once said, 👉🏼from small things, mama, big things one day come."👈🏼

@Danetteb

Never say anything bad about the people out there on the street doing their best.

Instead, join them.

The fascists are planning to present you with a fait accompli in very short order. You have the power to sabotage their timeline.

It takes a critical mass of people saying hell no.