Roughly 200 people packed the corners of Delaware and Rush streets outside the Tesla dealership in the Gold Coast on Saturday afternoon, taking part in nationwide protests against billionaire Elon Musk and his role in the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
The group broke out in applause and cheers at drivers who honked in support but booed as Teslas passed by, including a Cybertruck driver who slowed and rolled down his window to wave at the crowds. Similar protests have taken place week after week, but Saturday marked the first attempt to surround all 277 showrooms and service centers nationwide in hopes of fueling a further decline in Tesla sales.
Most of Musk’s estimated $340 billion fortune consists of the stock he holds in the electric vehicle company he continues to run while also working alongside Trump. Protestors urged Tesla owners to sell their vehicles.
Some held up printed signs that read: “We don’t want your swasticars; Take a one-way trip to Mars.” Others showed a photo of Musk next to an image of Adolf Hitler making the Nazi salute, a gesture Musk was accused of making shortly after President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Melanie K, a 45-year-old who works at a local university, said she came to protest “everything,” but was especially concerned about higher education cuts. “They’re coming after universities every way they can, which hurts everybody, right? No science being done, no research being done, students being snatched off the street.”
She read aloud the text of her sign, which said in part, “Our tax dollars, our data, our services, our federal workers, our security, our research, our history and our future,” and paraphrasing the rest of it said “nothing DOGE is doing is efficient, right? They’re taking all of this from us. It’s all ours and it matters.”
“When we’re hurting the stocks it does hurt Elon Musk; there’s not very many ways we can hurt him, he has so much power, so much money, but this hurts him,” she said.
The inside of the Tesla dealership at 901 N. Rush was empty during much of the protest except for two employees and a security guard. Chicago police officers stood in front of the doors outside. The Tesla employees declined to comment on whether anyone had come into the showroom that day.
Chicagoan Nancy Watson, a nonprofit worker, and her friend Maurine, who declined to give her last name, stood with signs, including one that read “Porsche fast; Ferrari faster; Tesla fascist.”
“It’s our first Tesla protest,” Watson said, adding that she had recently attended the Women’s March and planned to attend the upcoming “Hands Off!” rally April 5. Both women said they made their own signs and denied being “paid protesters,” as Musk has suggested without proof.
“I don’t think we should have a president’s largest campaign donor getting his hands in our federal agencies and trying to make changes, much less with his little band of programmers or coders or whatever they are,” Watson said.
“The more people that are out protesting on a continuous basis right now, the more that the government will see that we are not in line with what they are doing,” Maurine said. “It’s a 10-alarm fire.”
Marshall Young, a retiree visiting Chicago from New York City for a wedding, watched from the sidewalk. “This is great,” he said, adding he thought it was “disgusting” that Musk was allowed to promote his business in the White House, along with Trump’s endorsement of the company.
Young said he was also disappointed by what he called national Democratic lawmakers being too quiet in the face of what he said were clear ethical breaches at the White House and Musk’s mass firings of federal employees. “What gives him the right?” Young said of Musk.
The Associated Press contributed.
