Nearly every Saturday, Laura Gordon shows up outside of one of metro Atlanta’s Tesla dealerships and spends a couple of hours protesting the company’s leader, Elon Musk, and President Donald Trump.
The “Takedown Tesla” demonstrations have grown since they began in mid-February and are now commonplace at some of the electric cars’ showrooms in Georgia and across the nation.
“The only way that we can succeed is to get more and more and more and more people to show up and to demonstrate peacefully and with great volume and happy noise,” said Gordon, who has organized new rallies outside the Tesla Showroom and Service Center in Duluth.
She is among a rising number of people taking part in protests against Trump as he has pushed to implement his agenda — including mass layoffs in the federal government spurred by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
As elected Democrats have struggled to find a cohesive message against Trump, liberal grassroots activists appear to be finding their voice.
In Georgia, that has taken the form of a rally and march that police estimate drew more than 20,000 people who waved signs and chanted against everything from veterans programs cuts to anti-democracy efforts. It has also meant smaller events — like vigils in front of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention buildings in Atlanta to lament the mass firings there and a gathering outside the state Capitol on Tuesday to oppose federal freezes and the funding cuts for medical research.
Credit: Jenni Girtman
Credit: Jenni Girtman
A group called 50501 has said they are organizing another round of protests on April 19 in 50 states, but there have been few details so far.
State Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, urged Democrats to continue protesting Trump’s policies rather than waiting for the 2026 midterms for change to occur.
“Until then we’ve got to have energy, we’ve got to be vocal,” McLaurin told demonstrators at Liberty Plaza on Tuesday.
Trump’s supporters have not shied away from that. The Republican’s campaign rallies have attracted huge crowds and many participants wait hours in a party-like atmosphere before Trump takes the stage.
The huge five demonstrations were part of a nationwide effort organized by “Hands Off” and marked the first liberal-leaning national mass mobilization since the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 or the 2017 Women’s March, which attracted about 60,000 people in Atlanta. That march came after Trump’s first successful White House bid in 2016.
The Musk factor
But this year it’s not just the president people are protesting.
Demonstrations against Musk are starting to eclipse Trump, said Kieran Doyle, the North America research manager for Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. The nonpartisan organization recorded over 440 demonstrations against Musk in March.
All total, there were around 335 demonstrations explicitly against the president in March across the nation, according to the nonprofit, which began keeping records in 2020.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Doyle said that many of those anti-Musk demonstrations, such as the “Tesla takedown” boycotts, are being organized at a grassroots level through social media. Tesla dealerships, he said, have created a distinct and clear location for activists to rally against Musk and his companies.
As public demonstrations continue, Trump and Musk have defended the cuts, saying they are necessary to reduce federal government spending and bureaucracy, while Democrats have framed the federal cuts as reckless and say they are going too far.
Gordon said she has attended six Tesla protests and plans to continue organizing demonstrations at the Tesla Showroom and Service Center in Duluth “on all future Saturdays until the situation changes.”
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