Seattle protesters target Elon Musk, Trump Administration at Tesla Showroom
Feb 16, 2025, 9:36 AM
About 80 protesters gathered outside the Tesla showroom in Seattle’s South Lake Union on Saturday afternoon, decrying Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s new role in the Trump administration. They blanketed the neighborhood with anti-Musk flyers, including “Stop the Broligarchy.”
The protesters condemned what they described as the dismantling of vital government institutions and the so-called erosion of democracy. The Seattle Tesla protesters carried signs demanding Tesla owners to “sell your Tesla, dump your stock” and chanted “Sell it! Sell it!” at passing vehicles.
“As a disabled veteran, watching our democracy fall apart is excruciating,” Shannon Spencer, a former U.S. Air Force service member told The Seattle Times. “Veterans don’t forget our oath to protect the country. Just because I’m too broken to be in the military right now — that doesn’t go away.”
The rally was part of a coordinated nationwide protest effort, with similar demonstrations taking place outside Tesla showrooms in California, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
What were the Seattle Tesla protesters condemning?
Seattle Tesla protesters condemned federal funding freezes and agency overhauls impacting agencies like the Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Institutes of Health. Among them was Raj Kapur, a physician at Seattle Children’s and professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who said this was his first protest.
“I’m so worried about the way things are going in our government,” Kapur said. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say I see parallels with pre-World War II Germany: the scapegoating of vulnerable groups (immigrants today, and Jews in Germany); preying on people’s fears of those groups to unite them; and the attack on intellectualism, particularly science and science-based policy, as well as medical research.”
The Trump administration has engaged in targeted arrests and deportations of criminal illegal immigrants, including felons or suspects involved in sex crimes involving children.
Passing cars and Metro buses honked to show support for the anti-Musk Seattle protesters waving signs reading “Tesla Funds Fascists,” “Stop Musk’s Coup,” and “Smash the Broligarchy.”
