COLUMBUS, Ohio—When I began visiting Easton Town Center on Saturdays earlier this year, the state was in the grip of fool’s spring, with warm sunny days in the forecast and no cold temperatures in sight. But as we moved into late March, the weather and politics of the region both proved unstable.
The Columbus shopping center, normally a landing pad for awkward and cynical teenagers, has this year become the scene of weekly Saturday protests staged outside of its Tesla dealership. The organic action has continued to snowball in size as retirees, anti-fascist activists, and union organizers have found common ground in opposing the drastic, unaccountable cuts to the federal government initiated by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk in his appointed role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Standing charged with chants like “O-H-I-O, Elon Musk has got to go,” hundreds of protesters lining Easton Loop West faced a driving audience of both supporters, whose collegial honks garnered cheers, and vocal opponents, whose jeers were met with punctual shouts of “fascist” and “traitor.” Dubbed “Tesla Takedown,” it is one of the first coordinated protest efforts targeting the billionaire’s company since Trump’s election and Musk’s subsequent placement at DOGE.
By the time the movement caught the attention of Trump supporters, the protests were enthusiastic enough to line all corners of the intersection and had attracted media attention from across the state and around the country. “Hundreds gather to protest Elon Musk,” one headline read as Easton’s parking garages filled with those opposed to fascism. It might seem impossible as an everyday person to have a hand in any action that could meaningfully impact the richest man on the planet. But the protests have rekindled a familiar, flickering idea in the American imagination, one that even the awkward and cynical teenagers who might otherwise regard the prospect of change as a kind of fool’s spring: whatever terrors the future holds will only intensify without a seismic political realignment led by the people.
It wasn’t until after the July assassination attempt against Trump that Musk started investing wholeheartedly in the GOP candidate, dedicating $45 million per month in the summer of 2024 to the Trump super PAC called America PAC. In August, he hosted a conversation with Trump on X, recommending that he form a commission on “government efficiency” and appoint him to lead it. During public appearances with Trump in the lead-up to the election, Musk began paying voters $1 million a day in swing states to sign an America PAC petition, nominally committing to support the First and Second amendments. Shortly after the election, Trump announced the Musk-led DOGE with the stated goal of cutting government spending and bureaucracy. As the unaccountable department began to hack its way through federal agencies early in 2025, protests outside of Tesla dealerships began to take root across the country, coalescing under the hashtag #TeslaTakedown.
“We’re out here from the labor unions because of the attacks on federal workers, the attacks on collective bargaining rights, the union busting that’s going on,” Jason Perlman of the Ohio AFL-CIO said between chants. “Every weekend we’re out here making sure those billionaires know that we’re not going to go down without a fight.”
Members of the Central Ohio Labor Council joined the weekly protests at Easton beginning in early February, bringing more momentum to the protests that were started weeks prior by Rick Neal, who ran as a Democrat for Congress in 2018. Within weeks, the crowds grew from a dozen protesters to more than a thousand.
“It’s important to stand up against what’s going on and stand for our Constitution,” said United Steelworkers member Mike Noll, a burly, bearded union man who defies right-wing stereotypes of the left with his small-town origins and working-class background. Noll said most of those in his circle are Trump supporters, including his family, which he finds sad above all else. “I kind of feel bad for people like that because they’ve clearly been misled … by Fox News. I see how people fall into it, and it’s heartbreaking. … But I’m also here because I heard the Proud Boys were going to be here.”
“Patriotdadev,” a homesteader and aspiring right-wing TikToker, always wears hats with leather MAGA patches in his videos, though he swapped it out for an American flag hat when he appeared in person at a much-hyped right-wing Tesla Takedown counter-protest in Columbus on March 29.
A shorter man with brown hair, brown eyes, and an uneasy smile, he posted a TikTok a couple of days before the late March Easton protest promoting a counter-rally he called the “Tesla Shield,” subsequently promoted by the local chapter of the Proud Boys. When I asked him if the “EV” in his screen name (PatriotDadEV2.0) meant that he advocated for electric vehicles, he said no, and that he actually drives a Chevy truck. The letters, he said, are the initials for his birth name, which he declined to give.
Despite the buzz online and in activist circles, the “Tesla Shield” counter-protest failed to deliver, attracting only a dozen or so individuals—most of whom were live-streaming the event. (“We’re not paid protesters,” EV said in his video, excusing the small crowd.) On the whole, the “Tesla Shield” counter-protesters, along with a fraction of the population who voted for Trump, continue to believe they are on track to making America “great again.” They see the mass firing of federal workers as a positive development and the fluctuating tariffs as a short-term pain for a long-term gain.
This is not an assessment that requires a particularly close reading. These voters view politics in the same way as Trump’s cabinet – not as a structured set of morals but rather as a shapeshifting and programmatic kind of exploit. For them, politics serves as the rationalization for their figurehead’s contradictory whims, an amplification of the justifications for failures and hypocrisy, and a breeding ground for opportunistic grifters who, at breakneck speeds, spin viral conspiracy theories of current events in real time on platforms owned by Trump’s financiers. In their hands, politics has become little more than a tool for achieving maximum profits for their most reactionary and chauvinistic donors.
The Tesla Takeover protests serve as a means to perhaps interrupt this order, with the publicly traded Tesla existing as one place in which First Amendment actions can materially impact Musk’s finances. (Something that is not the case with the privately held SpaceX.) And despite the criticisms levied by some against the movement, activists have increasingly called out Easton protest leaders for getting too cozy with police; for example, it is having an impact. As of today, Tesla is valued at just under $780 billion, with Musk’s 13 percent ownership stake worth around $101 billion. This is down from $140 billion in late February, when Tesla was valued at $1.08 trillion.
“Just ’cause you’re an American company does not necessarily mean you should get the support of the American people,” said AFL-CIO member Perlman. “If you’re gonna support the firing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees [and] union bust … I’m not sure if that’s a company we should be supporting. So, my argument back would be, let Elon Musk have a better workplace, let him get himself out of government, let him stop his attacks on identity, religion, [and] any race that doesn’t look like him, and maybe we can think about supporting Tesla again.”
This article originally appeared on MatterNews.org.
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