Join a Tesla protest this Saturday as part of the global day of action

Last week I participated in a livestreamed mass mobilization call for the #TeslaTakedown movement – alongside US Rep Jasmine Crockett, Alex Winter, my friend John Cusack, and a bunch of other rad people – and it just now occurred to me that maybe I should post about it here. I'm not used to having a newsletter.

But first, I want to encourage everyone to nonviolently hit the streets this Saturday, March 29, as part of the #TeslaTakedown global day of action. There will be 500 events around the world, and we're trying to hit all Tesla locations in the US. Check teslatakedown.com to find an event near you.

I spoke for about three minutes, and my cat Malcolm made an exciting cameo too.

Here's what I said:

Hey everyone. I'm Micah Lee, calling in from Northern California. I'm excited to be here. I'm an investigative journalist and a hacker.

So yeah, back in 2022, when I was the Director of Information Security at The Intercept, I wrote a lot of articles about Elon Musk taking over Twitter. I wrote about how he immediately started purging prominent leftist accounts. How he brought back previously-banned neo-Nazis and anti-vaxxers.

Oh, sorry, this is my cat, Malcolm.

And I also wrote about how basically Twitter users were now subject to Elon Musk's arbitrary whims. So, naturally, I was one of the eight journalists that he decided to permanently suspend from Twitter because he didn't like my speech.

But then a few days later, after posting a Twitter poll, he changed his mind and unbanned me. But I was still locked out of my account until I deleted my tweet that the billionaire didn't like.

So instead of deleting it, I just didn't use Twitter for about a year, and oh my god, it was so much nicer. If you are still using X, I highly recommend that you quit. Even if you have a lot of followers. It's not worth it.

Now I'm part of a worker-owned collective that makes open source security and privacy software. We make an app called Cyd – you can find it at cyd.social, that's C, Y, D, for Clawback Your Data – that helps you delete all of your data from X, including deleting all of your tweets for free. If you want to, Cyd can also help you migrate your old tweets into Bluesky, and we're adding support for Facebook and Instagram too, because we need to defeat all of the oligarchs, not just Elon.

Freeing yourself from fascist social media is really good for your mental health. But I'm really excited about #TeslaTakedown. We're a nonviolent, grassroots protest movement that's focused on an actual winnable strategy to bring down Elon Musk.

If we kill the Tesla brand, if we drive down the stock price low enough, we can force him to sell his stock to pay back the billions of dollars of debt that he took on to buy Twitter. This will drive Tesla stock into a death spiral.

The fascists are purging the government of their critics. They're sending innocent people to Guantanamo Bay. Democrats are either asleep at the wheel or actively collaborating with them. There are no elections coming up. Tanking Tesla's stock is a very solid strategy, and it's one of the only solid strategies that's really been articulated to deal with this moment. And if we're successful, we will collapse Elon Musk's wealth, and with it, his power.

After the event, "free spirit" Laura Loomer – the far right conspiracy theorist who once handcuffed herself to a Twitter office building to protest her account getting suspended, and who recently joined Trump at a 9/11 memorial ceremony (she's a 9/11 truther, lol) – used her sharp sleuthing skills to tweet out an exclusive report about me on X:

She accused me of encouraging vandalizing Teslas because of what I wrote in this blog post, where I encourage people not to draw swastikas on Teslas, and made a joke about drawing penises instead:

On social media, I've seen photos of Cybertrucks that are vandalized with swastikas. Please, don't draw swastikas, even if you're just trying to make a point. If you're going to vandalize a Cybertruck, write "fuck Nazis," or draw a penis or something. Don't put more swastikas into the world.

To be clear, I am not advocating vandalism. I'm telling people not to draw swastikas.

However, this news report from The Onion is relevant:

I've had swarms of harassment on Twitter in the past, in multiple waves in fact. Normally when a fascist influencer tweets about me it triggers a wave of hate. But since I don't actually use X anymore, I barely even noticed it this time. My mentions are, blissfully, empty of MAGA nonsense. I only heard about Laura Loomer's tweets because a stranger sent me a Signal message and told me about them.

Seriously, if you're still using X, you should stop. It's not good for you. It's not "fighting back." It's just subjecting yourself to propaganda. Your time is better spent building up a community on Bluesky and/or Mastodon. If you want to prevent anyone from taking over your username, and if you want to let your followers know where to find you outside of X, you can stop using X without deleting your account. Instead, delete all your tweets using Cyd, and if you want, delete your likes, DMs, unfollow everyone, etc. You can even migrate your old tweets to Bluesky, if you feel like you still want them online.

After Laura Loomer's tweets I did, however, get some hate mail.

I also got an email from Karen!

Karen, without any self-awareness, included a George Orwell quote in the email where she informs me that she's reporting me to the FBI because I spoke about protesting a company on a livestreamed video.

Anyway... make sure to hit the streets to protest Tesla this Saturday!