Tesla Takedown - San Francisco Bay Area

TESLA/MUSK PROTEST RESOURCES

• "This is a peaceful protest" guidance leaflets for safety team members to hand out at Tesla Takedown events. These describe the importance of non-escalation and non-engagement with counterprotesters. Print double-sided, then cut. Six per sheet.
  
  

• "You're Better than Tesla"- half-sheet leaflet for Tesla car windshields (v1.3)
  -  California leaflet for Tesla windshields:  Word document PDF document
  -  Non-California leaflet for Tesla windshields: Word document PDF document
      Print pages 1-2 double-sided, then cut.
      Google doesn't correctly render the Word versions, but download the .doc files and they should look correct in Word or LibreOffice.
     

• "Don't Buy Tesla" half-sheet leaflet   -   Word version      PDF version
  Print double-sided in color, then cut in half. These contain a footnote promoting Indivisible.org, but you can easily replace that as desired. The content is intentionally designed to start with specific harms to the consumer, and only then pivot to Musk. 

• "TeslaTakedown" alternate half-sheet PDF leaflet
  This half-sheet emphasizes the #TeslaTakedown hashtag and the text-to-subscribe number. Created by Micah Lee.

• Sample protest event flier -  Word version
  An example of what the Palo Alto safety team handed out on Feb. 16. You'll need to edit this for your own needs. 

• "Guidance for Tesla Protest Leaders", multiple Bay Area authors, Feb. 2025, work in progress
  A best practices compilation based on Sunnyvale and Palo Alto experiences.

• Full-page double-sided protest event flier from TeslaTakedown.com
  (But Bruce prefers the "Don't Buy Tesla" half-sheet above.)

• 10-page background document for protestors from TeslaTakedown.com

SLIDE DECKS

• "Large Standing Signs"
  Slides from presentation to Tesla Takedown California, July 29, 2025

• "Inflatables and Sound"
  Slides from presentation to Tesla Takedown California about air dancers (tube men) and sound systems, July 15, 2025

• "10-minute movement theory #1: Stages of Social Movements"
  Slides from presentation of June 3, 2025

• "10-minute movement theory #2: Nonviolent Movements: How they Win"
  Slides from presentation of June 17, 2025

• "10-minute movement theory #3: Direct Action Campaigns"
  Slides from presentation of July 1, 2025

ONLINE SECURITY AND SAFETY FOR LEADERS

• Surveillance Self-Defense: Tips, tools, and how-tos for safer online communications (landing page for multiple resources), EFF  They have a "Basics" page that collects links to all of their starter guides.

• Digital Safety Guide, Games and Online Harassment Hotline. This page is somewhat difficult to navigate, but try using the "previous" and "next" buttons that should appear at the very bottom of the page if you scroll a bit.

• "Doxxing: Tips to project yourself online & how to minimize harm", Daly Barnett, EFF, Dec. 16, 2020

• "Some steps to defend against online doxxing and harassment", Jay Stanley and Daniel Kahn Gillmor, ACLU, Nov. 30, 2023

• "How to tell if your online accounts have been hacked", Lorenzo Franceschi-Biccchierai, TechCrunch, March 25, 2025

• Online harassment field manual (landing page for multiple documents), PEN America

DE-ESCALATION AND EVENT PEACEKEEPER TRAINING

• Gandhi Team (San Jose)
  They offer de-escalation and other nonviolence trainings. As of March 3, they now have links to videos on "Core De-escalation training" (29 minutes) and "Responding to violent groups" (16 minutes) on their resources page.

• "Streetwise & Steady: A Workbook for Action Peacekeepers or Event Marshals",
  by Daniel Hunter and Eileen Flanagan, released June 2025. Related article: "Timely lessons for keeping people safe in the streets"

• Vision Change Win: Get In Formation Training Series
  Vision Change Win is based in New York and offers a series of three online safety/security classes. The 101 class is "Introduction to Safety and De-escalation". The full series of classes will be offered each month throughout 2025.

• "Verbal De-Escalation Tips", extracted from a larger event safety document from Vision Change Win.

GENERAL CAMPAIGN STRATEGY AND NONVIOLENCE RESOURCES

• Action Strategy: A How-to Guide, The Ruckus Society
  This 10-page guide includes the crucial "Tactic Star" planning diagram, based on work by progressive sociologist Jonathan Smucker, which helps you to ask the right questions to plan a productive action.

• How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning, George Lakey, Melville House Publishing, 2018

• "The Negative Rebel", extract from Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movemnets, Bill Moyer, 2001

• "On the need for movements to avoid secrecy and fear", summary extracts from Gene Sharp, assembled Nov. 2024.

-- Sharp quoting nonviolence expert George Lakey: "[Secrecy] results in inefficiency because you have to cover up much that you do from your own members, authoritarianism because you cannot tell your members what is going on, and mistrust... You should try to plan tactics... which do not depend on secrecy for their value.”"

TESLA PROTEST-RELATED ARTICLES

• "The Tesla Takedown Shows How We Can Make Oligarchs Feel the Pain", Sunjeev Bery, The Intercept, April 13, 2025

• "Tesla Is Elon Musk’s Soft Underbelly", Jonathan Last, The Bulwark, Feb. 10 2025
  "The more entrenched the association between Musk, racism, chaos, illegality, and neo-Nazis, the more toxic the Tesla brand will become."  Original link here (paywalled).

• "Outside Tesla in the Philly suburbs, the green shoots of an American uprising",  Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 23 2025
  "The goal is both to [demolish] new sales of Tesla and also tank its astronomic stock price that underwrites Musk, and there are powerful signs it is already working."

• "Tesla Takeover: How the Protests Against Elon Musk Signal a National Turning Point", Alex Winter, Rolling Stone, Feb. 21 2025
  "This is a bubble that has been waiting to pop, and we can be the needle."

OTHER WEB SITES

• Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit by Anat Shenker-Osorio and friends
  Contains best-practices messaging from national progressive framing expert Anat Shenker-Osorio. Continuously updated.

• TeslaTakedown.com
  The original national site, started by actor and filmmaker Alex Winter.

• Tesla Takedown ActionNetwork list of upcoming protests
  Supports the ability to create and list your own protest event. However in the Bay Area, many groups have had more success using Mobilize.us for their event listings, rather than TeslaTakedown's setup.

• Better-Than-Tesla.com
  This page lists some union-made, better alternatives to Tesla vehicles.

• Ride and Drive Clean
  A nonprofit collaboration focused on increasing EV sales in northern California. They negotiate for special discounts on multiple EV models every few months - sign up for their email list to be notified every time they have new deals. This information is useful for event organizers who want to create a flier for consumers that provides Tesla alternatives.
  
  

GENERAL PROTEST RESOURCES

• ACLU information page: Protestors' Rights

This page is maintained by Bruce Hahne, bruce at maronmedia dot com. This site isn't maintained by the owners of TeslaTakedown.com. Last update July 31, 2025.