Individuals are gathering in cities everywhere in the United States and globally to protest an “unlawful, billionaire energy seize” by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They’re being placed on by over 150 totally different organizations, together with civil rights teams, labor unions, and LGBTQ+ advocates, and span greater than 1,200 places.
Final weekend, “Tesla Takedown” protests focused Tesla showrooms across the nation to indicate disapproval for Musk, its CEO, who has spearheaded an effort to hold out mass federal workforce layoffs and hole out authorities companies. As Tesla’s gross sales have plummeted this quarter, Musk has threatened to “go after” the corporate’s critics, whereas the FBI has created a job pressure to analyze particular person acts of vandalism and different actions aimed on the firm.
The scope of those protests is way broader, focusing on each Trump and Musk, who the Arms Off web site accuses (precisely) of “shuttering Social Safety places of work, firing important staff, eliminating shopper protections, and gutting Medicaid.” The Verge’s Mia Sato is in Manhattan’s Bryant Park in New York Metropolis, the place she took the above video. She advised me it wasn’t clear how many individuals are there, however that it’s “wall to wall in every single place” even if it’s “raining right here and actually nasty.”
My colleague Lauren Feiner, who attended the protest in Washington, DC, mentioned the protest there “may be very huge, 1000’s right here across the Washington monument.” She described it as “very peaceable and orderly,” with attendees listening quietly to the audio system, often chanting in response.
Jessica Toman, who went to the protest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, texted the above picture to me. An individual posting photos of the identical protest on Bluesky guessed that protesters numbered within the 1000’s.
It appears to be like like the same story in Boston, the place “1000’s” are seen on this video from at present:
Fox 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul posted aerial footage of a large crowd gathered on the State Capitol constructing in St. Paul, Minnesota:
Demonstrators gathered in huge numbers in Daley Plaza in Chicago, Illinois, too, the place a CBS Chicago livestream confirmed what regarded like many 1000’s of individuals streaming from one aspect of the road to a different for a lot of blocks whereas this story was being written. Protests are additionally going down abroad, in cities like Berlin, Germany and London, England.
It’s not simply main cities. A whole bunch seem to have proven as much as protest in cities like St. Augustine, Florida, which the US Census Bureau estimates has lower than 16,000 individuals, and Riverhead, New York, the place solely about 36,000 individuals stay. Vehicles honked in obvious assist of a protest in Manhattan, Kansas (underneath 54,000 residents), in response to the Bluesky consumer who posted this video:
An identical scene performs out on this video, apparently taken in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a city of fewer than 4,000 individuals, at present:
Right here’s a gallery with some extra photos taken by Sato, Toman, and The Verge’s Chris Welch:
1/13
