By Julie BUTCHER

“Twenty million people will die,” said a local Glendalian protesting at the Tesla dealership on Saturday in the Americana shopping mall who explained his sign urging the restoration of the federal PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) funding. “That’s at least 20 million people – according to this report: https://pepfarreport.org/ – and that’s more people than died in the Holocaust,” he said explaining the result of cutting global AIDS funding.

Around 100 people peacefully demonstrated on Saturday afternoon on a grassy area in the middle of the mall, just across from the electric car store, with chants of “No Elon, No KKK, No Fascists in the USA!” “Trade It In!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”

A local journalist shared that she “did not have Elon Musk dismantling the federal government on my bingo card. I knew it would be bad; I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Joel Lava helped organize this action and several other local protests as part of #TakeDownTesla and the national Indivisible https://indivisible.org/ organization. Many similar protests occurred or are scheduled across the country; to learn where and when visit https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown.

A participant shared that there had been “a whole bunch of people out yesterday in Alhambra. In the rain.” 

“And we don’t do rain,” her friend shared.