Nine people were arrested Saturday afternoon at a raucous protest against Elon Musk at his Tesla car showroom in downtown Manhattan.
Around 300 protesters flooded the street around 1 p.m. outside the Tesla showroom at Washington and and W. 13 Sts. in the Meatpacking District. Demonstrators’ signs filled the air with slogans like “Don’t Buy a Swasticar,” “Nazi,” “No Dictators in the USA,” “Musk Is Out of Control” and “F— MAGA.”
Brian Flanagan, 66, and his wife, Shawn Haugen, 64 came to the protest from New Rochelle in Westchester to decry the budget-slashing head of DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Musk has aligned himself with Trump,” Flanagan said. “He basically bought himself a seat at the table. We know he has a seat at the table because Trump told all his cabinet members that, if none of them are happy about Musk, they can go take a hike. So this isn’t something that the far left made up or liberals or woke people. This is real. It’s happening.”
“One of the things that I tell everyone, too, is we sit on the couch and we complain and we do all our social media, but we can’t, we can’t complain if we don’t do anything,” Haugen said. “So we’re out here to make our voices heard and to tell people that we’re not happy, that this is not right.”
During the protest, two of the participants went inside the showroom and refused to leave, while six others sat at the front door and wouldn’t budge despite repeated police orders to leave.
Outside, the crowd erupted in songs and chants, including, “No more business as usual! Stop the coup!” and “Nobody voted for Elon Musk!”
The anti-Elon action was organized by Rise and Resist, a group formed in 2017 during President Trump’s first term, over Musk’s being handed control of government payment and personnel systems, with the protest theme of “Pull the Plug on Musk.”
During a moment of anti-Musk mayhem, one of the place’s glass front doors was smashed.
Zack Winestine, a member of Rise and Resist, was one of the two protesters arrested inside the car showroom. He said he held an American flag and an anti-Musk sign and did not touch any of the pricey electric vehicles. He said there was a swarm of photographers at the protest jostling to get photos of them, one of whose gear accidentally swung at the glass door, cracking it.
“Very fragile glass,” Winestine gibed. “It’s like a Cybertruck — you tap the thing and the fender falls off.”
Winestine, a West Village filmmaker and activist, said eight protesters were arrested for trespassing and another for a minor violation. He received a desk appearance ticket. Police confirmed the arrests but did not specify the charges.
“[The protest was] to get the message out that Elon Musk, who owns Tesla, is an unelected billionaire,” Winestine said, “who is seizing power in this country and destroying many of the systems that people depend upon for healthcare, food distribution, disaster relief. …. We were exercising our constitutional right to petition our government, and right now our government is Elon Musk, and if we want to petition our government, it looks like we have to go to a Tesla showroom.
“The courts will catch up with him,” Winestine said, “but he’s doing so much damage now.”
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