Some organizers said they are concerned about the possibility of tense or hostile confrontations this weekend, even with drivers who want to use their vehicles as weapons.
“That is scary,” said Connie James-Jenkin, who has helped organize anti-tesla protests near Chicago. “I’m afraid that people do that, and we had a discussion about it,” he said, and added that she and other organizers discussed precautions, such as going back further from the sidewalk.
This weekend, the organizers say they expect larger crowds of pickets, which recognize that they can be more difficult to handle, as well as more counterprotesters pro-muses, possibly increasing the risk of confrontations.
Trump’s supporters are also mobilizing. NBC News found publications on Facebook and X for 10 counterprotets that their followers are trying to organize, saying that they wanted to counteract the progressives and support a Trump ally. Some are invoicing their events as a “Tesla shield.”
Terry Beck, a Pro-Trump organizer in the north of New Jersey, said he is trying to align a caravan of vehicles that support Trump, including trucks and motorcycles to greet the anti-tesla protesters in Lawrenceville, near Trenton, on Saturday. Although it is not a long supporter of Tesla, he said he supports Musk due to his work for Trump.
“He has demonstrated his history. I admire him. Every person should admire him,” he said. He added that even if Saturday’s protests are completely peaceful, his opinion is that anti-tesla protesters are still “supporting the crime” of vandalism committed by others.
At the national level, at least 11 Tesla dealers, accusation stations and other facilities have been reached in informed attacks, including the incendiary devices found in an Austin exhibition room, Texas, Monday. Informed incidents have involved Molotov, graffiti cocktails, shots and alleged fires caused. Tesla’s individual owners have also reported that they have been attacked, even with a key and graffiti. Last week, the Department of Justice announced charges against three people, and this week the FBI said he was launching a working group to investigate the attacks aimed at Tesla.
The officials responsible for enforcing the law say they have not found evidence that the attacks are coordinated despite such statements from Musk and Trump.
In addition, some anti-tesla protesters have been arrested for prickly accusations. On March 1, the New York Police arrested nine people in a Tesla place, including six who sat at the main door and did not leave, according to The Daily News. The police in Berkeley, California, said they arrested a woman shouting blasphemies in a Tesla exhibition room on March 16 and refused to leave.
Last weekend, the confrontations in the Tesla dealers led the arrests of two musk followers on the country’s opposite sides: the driver in West Palm Beach and a man with a bicycle in Berkeley. In the second incident, the authorities arrested the man, Ricardo Ruiz, on suspicion of exhibiting a weapon after taking out an electric gun and greeting towards anti-tesla protesters, according to the local news site The Berkeley Scanner and video of the incident on Saturday.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Ruiz did not play the gun of stunning and said he was defending after he said that anti-tesla protesters aggressively blocked their way. He said he was a Trump voter who was in the protest to show support for Tesla.
“Companies are suffering due to the shock that occurs in the city,” he said. “I really thought someone should say something,” he added. He said he was released with an appointment and a warning to appear before the court.
For some protest organizers, the risk of pro-trump drivers who intentionally hit protesters is the most important after the West Palm Beach incident.
“We worry a lot,” said Adam Sheridan, organizer of protests against Tesla in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, east of Philadelphia. “We are quite aware that it is a busy path and we are quite vulnerable.”
A map of planned demonstrations shows events in more than 30 states, as well as in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries. Many, but not all, the protests are grouped into coastal states such as California and Florida, where teslas are somewhat common. And most of them are planned for the narrow strips of grass or sidewalk between the exhibition rooms of Tesla and the adjacent roads.
In the Cherry Hill exhibition hall, the protesters are next to a state highway, and a video of a Saturday protest showed hundreds of protesters separated from the road by flag flags on the rope. Sheridan said that he and other organizers also plan to wear temporary garden fences to prevent people from spilling on the road, but said there are only many protesters if a driver tries to use his vehicle as a weapon.
“We just try to be honest with people, but we also feel that we have to be out there,” he said.
Sheridan said that, in addition to the support comments and the horn of the drivers, the protests that he attended have sometimes met with ugly answers. He said that at least five people in vehicles have responded with the Nazis greetings, that one shouted “Heil Hitler” and that someone else threw a cup of ice water in the protest.
In a 10-page Google Doc, anti-tesla organizers share tips on how to stay safe, including not sharing personal contact information online, minimizing interactions with counterprotestors and filming any confrontation that occurs. In some places, the organizers say they are naming some protest attendees as designated “unfairy” that use neon vests.
“We are firm that Tesla’s demolition protests are not violent and will always be violent,” said Alice Hu, executive director of the Environmental Group Planet on profits. She has helped organize anti-mudgo protests in New York and said she helped write the tips to stay safe.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comments on protests. Musk, in an X publication this month, claimed that Tesla’s demolition protests were not authentic base events, but were organized by established defense groups. Musk also alleged this month, without evidence, that those involved in the protests have also sold Tesla’s actions in short and, therefore, they benefit financially from a fall in the price of the shares.
Musk has pointed to an organizer based in Seattle in particular. In response to an X position that accused her, without evidence, of feeding vandalism, Musk said she was “committing crimes”, again without evidence. She told NPR that Musk’s publication was followed by violent threats from her followers.
In a Fox News interview on Thursday, Musk promised to “go after” the people who spoke badly about Tesla, calling them worse than the supposed vandals.
“The real problem is not the madman who bombs a Tesla dealership. They are the people who push the propaganda which made that guy do it. Those are the true villains here, and we are going to go after them,” he said.
Anti-tesla organizers accuse Musk of trying to cloud the waters so that casual observers confuse peaceful protests with acts of violence.
“It seems a fairly clear political strategy that they are doing to combine protests that are peaceful with sporadic incidents of vandalism,” Sheridan said.
In the Tesla dealership in Delray Beach, Florida, the company’s grass sprinklers have soaked protesters. Katz said he believes that spray is a deliberate tactic and that he has seen a Tesla employee adjust the sprinklers. The company did not respond to a request for comments on the sprinklers, and a person who answered the phone in the exhibition room said they were not authorized to answer questions from the media.
“While it is inconvenient, it is also 85 degrees here. Everyone is highlighting the sun, so the sprinklers are not going to kill anyone,” Katz said. He said he plans to cover his protest poster in a plastic wrap.
People who organize anti-tesla protests said in interviews that are mostly decentralized phenomenon. They said that local residents take the lead as volunteers to establish the events, helped in some cases by local or national organizations established as indivisible, an anti-trump political group based in Washington, DC
Indivisible said in a statement that people in their local chapters are “celebrating peaceful protests on the sidewalk, not damaging cars, and are talking because they are worried about our country. Elon Musk was not chosen to direct our government, and he is making reckless decisions that could damage millions of us.”
James-Jenkin, a 56-year-old school library, said he decided to organize a picket of a Tesla exhibition room in Schaumburg, Illinois, northwest Chicago, at the end of February after learning of a protest elsewhere. She said she had never organized anything like that, despite her commitment to progressive causes.
“I had no place to put my anger and I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
She said that the scope of her initial organization was filling a form on a commonly used protest website, Action Network, so that the event would appear on the map of all anti-tesla protests and persuading her husband to join. She said she also investigated the Illinois Acu website on the rights of protesters. She said that the Local Police has been present for the two protests she organized, and attributes them to ensure that there were no disputes with the counterprotest.
She said that now, with the mid-period elections 2026 so far in the future, she sees anti-tesla protests as the best exit to oppose Trump.
“It is literally the only pressure point that we as citizens have right now,” he said.
Helping local activists is a national network that includes a map that shows all protests that occur locally, a website, suggested song lists and group video calls. A public video call last week included interviews with actors John Cusack and Alex Winter.
Some organizers expect protests to continue beyond this weekend, and help boost a larger mass mobilization to resist Musk and Trump.
“We are seeing a time when incredibly powerful institutions such as the Democratic Party are not facing the Trump administration,” Hu said. “We believe it is important that people get up and that people meet the moment.”
