Several Tesla employees were effectively barricaded inside the electric carmaker’s showroom on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco Monday afternoon as hundreds of activists gathered outside to protest proposed cuts in government spending by CEO Elon Musk, who heads President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
With a Cybertruck floor model visible behind them, the demonstrators showed their ire toward Musk, which seemed to exceed their dislike of Trump. Above, a sign reading “We Hate Him Too,” seemingly a reference to Musk, was taped to a second-floor window; it was unclear if it belonged to a separate business. The Standard’s attempts to speak with a Tesla employee were rebuffed by a security guard stationed at the door. Representatives of Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Although smaller in scale than another President’s Day protest several blocks away opposite City Hall, the gathering outside the Tesla showroom was feistier. Spilling onto both sides of Van Ness, demonstrators held signs with messages like “Resist the oligarchy,” “Deport Musk,” and — in a reference to Super Bowl halftime show performer Kendrick Lamar — “Musk Trump They Not Like Us.” Participants solicited honks of support from passing drivers, including several in Teslas, while police officers corralled rowdier members of the crowd back onto the sidewalk.
One provocateur, Jeff Grubler, wore a Musk mask, a Trump-branded necktie, and a red armband with the logo of Musk’s social platform X that was meant to echo the swastika on a Nazi uniform. Grubler climbed an electrical box on the sidewalk and performed repeated straight-arm salutes, as Musk did during Trump’s inauguration festivities last month. Musk has unbanned numerous high-profile far-right accounts on X and made his disdain for San Francisco well known.
“Calling Elon Musk a Nazi is not a stretch,” said Grubler, whose group Bad Taste for a Good Cause has performed inflammatory street actions since the 1990s. “He made two Nazi salutes. And there’s a coup going on. You have an unelected billionaire who has gained access to the United States Treasury, access to all our Social Security numbers and who’s outright deleting agencies. None of this is legal.”
Other protesters were there because Musk’s actions had stripped them of their livelihoods. A woman who gave her name as Jenn R. said she was among more than 1,500 people to have been furloughed and later laid off from her job at an education nonprofit that received funding from USAID, a government agency that provides development assistance and which has been the subject of DOGE-led funding freeze. “They got rid of 37% of the American staff,” she said.
The organizer of Monday’s event was fitness instructor and Inner Richmond resident Patty Moddelmog, 32, who has occasionally participated in demonstrations since high school. “But,” she added, clutching a bullhorn, “I have not actually organized a protest on my own before.”
To stir up excitement, she spent a few days on her couch with a cold, posting messages on Reddit and Bluesky. “More people should be organizing,” she said. “It’s not that hard.”
San Francisco’s streets have been noticeably quieter than they were after Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, when far-larger crowds descended on Civic Center for the Women’s March. Moddelmog intends to recapture the enthusiasm of those days. “My goal is to be here every single Saturday,” she said, “until Tesla’s stock price continues to go down and the shareholders vote him out of the company.”