"We're just getting started": Tesla Takedown to protest at James Murdoch's home on Earth Day

All Rise News exclusively reports the details of the anti-Elon movement's plans to visit the Murdoch scion.

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Tesla Takedown plans to hold an Earth Day protest at the proverbial doorstep of James Murdoch, the company’s board member and son of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch.

James Murdoch at a digital media conference in 2006. Image courtesy of Esther Dyson, cropped and resized, CC by 2.0

“Protests work and boycotts work,” the movement wrote in an unsigned statement. “As long as Musk runs a regime that exploits our data, dismantles public services, and accelerates environmental destruction, the backlash against Tesla will only grow. We're just getting started and we think that TSLA earnings will reflect our collective efforts.”

The protest is slated to begin at the younger Murdoch’s Lenox Hill home in Manhattan with the stock market’s closing bell on Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time just 90 minutes before Tesla plans to announce its first quarterly results of the year on a live webcast. Tesla stocks have taken a beating this quarter, plummeting by 36 percent amid public outrage about CEO Elon Musk’s role helping the Trump administration gut government services, access private data, purge federal workers, and shut down agencies created by Congress through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Potential Action Items:

-#TeslaTakedown and Planet Over Profits announced the protest’s details and location here.

-Find details about Tesla Takedown protests near you here, searching by Area Code.

Bracing for the backlash

According to Inside Climate News’ sources within the Justice Department and Capitol Hall, Donald Trump is planning his own Earth Day announcement: a series of executive orders targeting the tax-exempt status of environmental groups.

It’s an escalation of Trump’s targeting of law firms, civil society, and his perceived enemies through the weight and force of the federal government. Federal judges have ruled that Trump’s orders attacking multiple major law firms violated the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, and Sixth Amendment.

Lauren Regan, the director of litigation and advocacy for the Civil Liberties Defense Center, emphasized that now is not the time for civil society to relent.

"For over 25 years, I’ve defended environmental and social justice activists in some of the most serious cases of our time — including during past waves of state repression. Silencing dissent is always the goal of those who abuse power, which is why it’s critical to stay sharp, effective, and unyielding,” Regan said. “Lawyers like me now stand on the front lines, facing real consequences for doing our jobs. But we do so knowingly, and we won’t back down. We’ll win — in court, in public, and in the history books."

Tesla Takedown organizer Alice Hu told All Rise News in an interview that Trump’s anticipated executive orders would be, if enacted, “another step in the attempted authoritarianism.”

“It’s in these moments that it’s really, really important that people across the board — grassroots movements, grassroots networks, civil society organizations — don’t back down,” Hu added.

A map of other scheduled Tesla Takedown events in N. America. Full list here.

Next up: Other Tesla board members?

A New York-based organizer, Hu noted that her peers in the Tesla Takedown movement chose Murdoch’s house in part because he lives in New York.

Four years ago, his Lenox Hill residence was sold for $30 million, but the group’s team looked deeper into New York City public records over the property. The deed listed the buyer as Seven Hills Trust, an entity that holds some of Murdoch’s shares in Tesla, according to financial disclosures.

“We wanted to visit the one board member that happens to have a residence in New York City,” Hu said. “There's other board members that have permanent residences in other places, and we want this to hopefully be a sign of encouragement to anybody else that has a board member in their backyard to also pay them a peaceful visit.”

Photo by Jason Gooljar, courtesy of Tesla Takedown

Murdoch dumped $13 million in Tesla stock on March 10, a day when its shares plunged by 15 percent in what CNBC called its steepest drop in five years.

Hu called for Murdoch to act out of more than just personal interest.

“It’s important that Murdoch doesn’t just take action to protect his own wealth because as this stuff is going on, he actually has to take responsibility at this moment, using the power that he has as a member of the board of directors of Tesla to remove Musk altogether of from Tesla,” Hu added. “It’s not okay that Musk continues to do all that he’s doing to the government and in the government and doesn’t face any consequence for it.”

“A Family-Friendly Event”

Tesla Takedown has routinely disavowed and denounced the acts of vandalism seen across the United States and Canada, and organizers regularly emphasize the movement’s peaceful intentions.

Even the movement’s parody video titled “Tesla Regret Syndrome,” featuring actor and documentary filmmaker Alex Winter’s voiceover spoofing a pharmaceutical ad, ends with a joke about how property damage does not treat the mock medical condition.

“Acts of vandalism, violence or self-flagellation are not recommended, and have shown no effectiveness in curing TRS,” the voiceover says.

But the Trump administration keeps conflating the peaceful protesters with the bad actors — and seems to be dedicating the Justice Department’s full attention to defending Elon Musk’s brand. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been seeking 20-year sentences against alleged arsonists, scolded a Democratic lawmaker in a Fox interview for calling for Musk to be “taken down.” FBI director Kash Patel convened a Tesla Task Force, after the Trump-era bureau disbanded other task forces going after Russian oligarch money and foreign influence operations.

Ho emphasized the organizers’ desire to make the Murdoch visit a “family-friendly event.”

“People should feel free and comfortable to bring, for example, their children to this protest, and so, we're making it clear with this event,” Hu said. “That doesn't mean that the other side won't or couldn't make up lies, or insinuate things that are not true, but, you know, we can only just control what we do.”