Lyndhurst, OhioーHundreds of Cuyahoga residents gathered at the Tesla dealership of Lyndhurst-Cleveland in protest of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and special government employee leading the Department of Government Efficiency on Feb. 15.
Starting at 11 a.m. and ending after 2 p.m., around 200 members of The Lyndhurst Democratic Club and their supporters gathered to demand the United States “Deport Elon” and to “Stop the Coup” of unelected officials overseeing executive programs.
This comes after a month of controversies and executive actions by both Elon Musk and his DOGE team, who was accused of mimicking Nazi salutes and has directed DOGE to fire thousands of employees across separate departments to cut discretionary budgetary items in the national spending.
In a public statement, Mobilize the Vote, a national organization organizing similar protests across the country mentioned their goal to show dissatisfaction with “Elon Musk [the] terrible president.” By protesting, Mobilize the Vote, alongside Progress Northeast Ohio and the Lyndhurst Democratic Club, hoped to “make sure he can’t continue pillaging our government and the future of our country.” The organizers did however stress that this event would “peacefully express our dissatisfaction with Musk’s unchecked power.”
John Carroll University Alumni Jay Dahme ’06 attended with his young family and his neighbors and stressed the importance of coming out as a community.
Another Blue Streak, Carrie Wertheim ’85 of Euclid stressed the importance of the First Amendment and her freedom of speech. “I cannot sit at home and complain, I have to be here if I have freedom of speech,” Wertheim noted. She also said ideally, she would not have to be there, especially on a rainy, near-freezing Saturday morning, but to her, the risk that someone like Elon Musk poses to the jobs, security and rights of Americans was too much to ignore.
Joe Difranco of Lyndhurst, a union member, agreed with Wertheim and worried that as a private citizen “Musk busts unions and attacks worker safety.” Now empowered by President Donald Trump, “he wants to make the executive Corporate Central.”
University HeightMayor Michael Dylan Brennan posted on Instagram just after the protest a letter he received from an anonymous federal employee he was in contact with, who had been supposedly made redundant and fired on “trumped-up” performance violations. In his post, Brennan personally decried the “purge of talent in the federal government.”
Kent Smith (D-Euclid) of the Ohio Senate and legislator for Lyndhurst shared the concerns of protestors. Smith commented exclusively to The Carroll News:
“What I find the most problematic about Elon Musk’s takeover of DOGE is that Trump, as the president of the United States, has put no checks or balances in place to provide oversight of Musk and his actions. Musk’s unregulated authority causes confusion among American citizens as to what his role in the federal government is and how much power he has.
Though Smith was critical specifically of Musk, he did relate the issue back to Trump. Smith noted “While I’ll never support a multi-billionaire running a governmental body charged with firing government workers, the root of the issue is Trump’s complete lack of honesty with the American people.”
Though the vast majority of protesters were anti-Musk at the event, there were a handful of Pro-Musk counter-protesters who walked through the main crowd once, seemingly hoping to instigate. Their signs read “Make America Great Again” and “We did not elect Fauci” referring to the Congressionally appointed Doctor Fauci who informed the Center for Disease Control and Prevention policy during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The Tesla Dealership of Cleveland-Lyndhurst explicitly said that they have “no comment at this time.” They were open for business throughout the protests and stayed open with no issues afterward.
Despite the tensions, and expressed dissatisfaction with Elon Musk and Tesla Motors, there was no violence or issues on site. Though there was rampant jaywalking to both sides of Mayfield Road which was surveyed by Lyndhurst Police, according to the scene commander Lt. Steve DeBow, Traffic Bureau Commander “Everything has been fine.”
Overall, though the protests were peaceful, they were not ineffective. Reporters from as far as Washington D.C. and the United Kingdom were present and covering the event. This was a part of the overall goal of Cathy Corvarrubias, president of the Lyndhurst Democrats, who wrote in a statement that they hope citizens “hear all voices and find solutions that balance the needs of all Americans. Elon is [here] to serve himself.”
