By Eduardo Munoz and Rich McKay
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nine people were arrested during a raucous demonstration outside a New York City Tesla dealership on Saturday, protesting owner Elon Musk’s role in sweeping cuts to the federal workforce at the behest of President Donald Trump.
The protest, which police said involved hundreds of people, was one of a wave of “Tesla Takedown” demonstrations staged across the country targeting billionaire Musk, who is spearheading the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
Throngs of protesters also descended on the electric vehicle maker’s showrooms in Jacksonville, Florida, Tucson, Arizona, and other cities, blocking traffic, chanting and waving signs reading “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy,” and “No Dictators in the USA.”
Musk, the world’s richest person, is leading an unprecedented push to shrink the federal government that has resulted in the firing of thousands of employees and the termination of hundreds of aid contracts and federal leases.
Tesla and a White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to attempts to seek comment by phone and email on Saturday night.
In some cases, federal agencies have been forced to try to hire back key workers that had been fired, including some responsible for America’s nuclear weapons, scientists trying to fight a worsening outbreak of bird flu and officials responsible for supplying electricity.
At least 100,000 of the 2.3 million federal employees have agreed to buy-outs or have been fired since Trump took office on January 20.
“We are taking action at Tesla, Musk’s flagship company,” the organizers said on the website actionnetwork.org, calling for people to dump Tesla stock and “join the picket lines.”
“Detaching Musk from Tesla would be a meaningful blow against this administration and its prerogatives, because it would be a strike against what they hold most dear: money and power,” actor and filmmaker Alex Winter wrote in a Rolling Stone article. Winter has posted on social media that he helped organize the protests.
(Reporting by Carlos Munoz in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty and William Mallard)
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