Vancouver native Josh Iwata used to dream of driving a fancy new Tesla electric car away from the local showroom. “I was a big Elon Musk fan,” he said. “I used to think, ‘This guy is amazing, with his rocket company and his green cars.’ I was very pro-Musk.” Not anymore. Now, Iwata, 41, joins protesters who rally regularly — lately it’s been twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays — outside the Tesla dealership on Northeast Fourth Plain Boulevard. That’s because Tesla CEO Musk, famously the richest man in the world, has helmed President Donald Trump’s effort to slash the federal budget via mass layoffs and firings. Iwata is among those turning out for rallies not only at the Tesla dealership but at Esther Short Park, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and the local offices of Southwest Washington’s congressional delegation since Trump took office in January. Local organizers say they’ve never seen such a rise in political activism in Vancouver.

“What’s happening now is unprecedented,” said Donna Sinclair, one of the leaders of Indivisible Greater Vancouver, a grassroots, nonviolent, progressive group that’s allied with Clark County’s Democratic Party. The protesters say they are concerned about a range of issues, including federal firings, stepped-up deportations, women’s rights, voting rights, environmental protection, employment diversity and the rule of law. On Saturday, they plan to rally at noon in Esther Short Park as part of a nationwide demonstration under the umbrella of a new group called 50501 Movement. Local organizers include Indivisible, MoveOn, the League of United Latin American Citizens and Hispanic Disability Support. Growing activism Formed in the aftermath of the presidential election of 2016, Indivisible Greater Vancouver meetings used to draw a few dozen people, Sinclair said. That number dwindled with the arrival of COVID-19 and stayed that way afterward. But the November 2024 election sparked a big rise again, she said.

In January, after Trump took office and his administration started firing federal workers and closing agencies, a stunning 250 people showed up for an Indivisible meeting at the Firstenburg Community Center, Sinclair said. “We originally reserved a room for 50,” Sinclair said. Overflow meetings have continued ever since, she said. “We have volunteers coming out of the woodwork,” Sinclair said. One hundred people signed up to be Indivisible volunteers at a recent meeting, she said. The flood of new interest is both welcome and overwhelming, she added. Indivisible Greater Vancouver recently posted a website message saying it has “paused volunteer recruitment” while organizers sort through their many new sign-ups. Meanwhile, Indivisible’s website urges everyone to get active individually and through new subject-matter and neighborhood groups. “People have been so very isolated and fearful in their discontent,” Sinclair said. “More than anything, I think people really want to connect with each other.”

Fellow Indivisible organizer Alan Unell cited research by Harvard political scientist and author Erica Chenoweth about the effectiveness of ongoing civil resistance in democracies at risk. One thing that requires, Unell said, is protesters staying peaceful as they keep showing up, day after day, for as long as it takes. How long might that be? “The answer is, a long time,” Unell said. New and seasoned On a recent Wednesday during the evening commute, even the threat of severe thunderstorms and golf-ball-sized hail didn’t prevent 50 demonstrators from marching on the sidewalk in front of the Tesla dealership. Some were seasoned protesters, others brand new to activism. Norm Hansen, 69, described himself as a committed Democratic Party volunteer. “I’ve been volunteering since Thomas Jefferson was a kid,” Hansen joked. In the last two elections, he knocked on something like 500 doors in support of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Skamania Democrat now serving her second term representing the 3rd Congressional District. “I long for the day when every election was not ‘the most important election of our lifetime,’” Hansen said. “People are worried to the point where it’s affecting their health. They’re having blood pressure issues. They’re not sleeping well.”

Hansen said he’s made it to most Tesla rallies and doesn’t see himself slowing down. “The first day it was raining and cold, and we had 13 people. But the next time we had hundreds,” he said. “We are getting tons of people, and people driving by honking their horns. Tons of honks!” Also protesting that day was a woman from Ridgefield so new to activism that she didn’t want to be named in this story. She said she’s afraid of how her neighbors would react if they learned that she and her husband have been demonstrating against Trump. She feels anxious and fearful about making her opinions known, she said. She also feels like she has no choice but to keep showing up, she said. “This is all new to us,” she said. “We’ve always been voters, but that doesn’t seem like enough right now.”

‘I saw this shift’ Iwata’s distress over the Trump administration goes deeper, and further back, than Musk and job cuts. He and other Japanese Americans are alarmed that the Trump administration recently cited the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. That’s the same law used during World War II to imprison hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans, including Iwata’s own grandparents and father. “There are a lot of people still alive who experienced being locked up by their government, as American citizens,” he said. “This was a trauma not just for my family but for all Japanese Americans.” Iwata’s grandmother, the child of Japanese immigrants, was a birthright American citizen. Iwata’s grandfather was a Japanese immigrant. The couple lived in California, but after the U.S. entered World War II, they were put on a train to the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. Their son, Iwata’s father, was born in the prison camp.

Contributed by Josh Iwata Because of their Japanese ancestry, Josh Iwata’s grandparents were both imprisoned in a camp in Arizona during World War II. Their son, Iwata’s father, was born and lived his earliest years in the camp. Photo “My grandfather was wrongfully imprisoned and held during the war with no evidence or charges,” Iwata said. “My relatives (were) locked up behind barbed-wire fences, all while my uncle served in the 442nd (U.S. Army Infantry Regiment),” a highly decorated and celebrated unit that was composed almost entirely of men of Japanese ancestry. “There is a lot of talk (about) Nazis,” Iwata said, “but you don’t have to go back to Nazi Germany to find examples of prejudice, racism and the abuse of power to lock up and oppress citizens. It happened here … and we as a country are rocketing towards normalizing and allowing it in our society.” Iwata, a software designer and businessman, has worked in the technology industry for 20 years. Now, he said he’s using his tech savvy to help Indivisible Greater Vancouver with digital media and outreach. “In a lot of ways, I’ve been glorifying and idolizing the whole tech industry ‘strike it rich’ story that keeps the masses happy to struggle,” he said. “Then, I saw this shift toward the consolidation of extreme wealth and extreme policies.”

This year, Iwata said, he’s felt compelled to rebalance his time away from work — including family time and hours devoted to personal passions like painting — in order to devote himself to rallying with others and working behind the scenes with Indivisible on its website and event scheduling. “This is my skill set as a product designer and web designer,” he said. “I feel a responsibility to not just be angry but to put my skills and talents to use in resisting tyranny.” Does Iwata harbor any doubt about the value of one person’s participation? Not really, he said. “You have to see yourself as part of a movement on a larger scale,” he said. “We’re not just being passive. Physically showing up is one of the best ways you can ‘worry’ the opposition, and it sends a signal to other people that they should show up, too.” Furthermore, he said, making new friends is always better than sitting at home and “doomscrolling in solitude.”