Badass Feminists Gainesville Founder Gives Interview at ‘Tesla Takedown’ Protest
On Saturday, GnvInfo interviewed Badass Feminists Gainesville founder Monique Costantino at the “Tesla Takedown” protest.
Jack Walden
Q: What is Badass Feminists Gainesville, how did you get started and what do you do?
Costantino: At first I started on Bluesky with creating a list of badass feminists. Gainesville needed a Facebook group that included men or people of all genders. We have Gainesville Women for Democracy, but that’s limited to women so I created Badass Feminists Gainesville to include all genders.
Q: Why are you here today?
Costantino: What’s going on in Washington, DC, is horrendous. We are losing our democracy. Elon Musk and his minions are just tearing through our agencies, ripping them apart and making them useless, which I think is their plan. We are here to protest that. We are here to protest for the rights of the marginalized people. The LGBTQ community, and especially transgender people, who are being targeted. Also Muslims and the people—Mahmoud Khalil, who was illegally detained. They’re just taking people off the street—you know—with their faces covered. It’s ridiculous; it’s like Russia. We have to fight, so that’s why I’m here today.
Dozens of opponents of Musk/Trump gathered across the street from the Tesla dealership (GnvInfo)
Q: Are there any politicians supporting this protest?
Costantino: [Alachua County School Board Vice Chair] Tina Certain has been positive, but she’s not here. I don’t have any politicians that are here today that I know of.
Q: What specific actions would you like to see in response to Musk’s role in the government?
Costantino: I would like to see our democratic representatives fighting more, going out and doing more like what Bernie and AOC did, going on tour and getting people fired up and getting them out on the streets, because we are more than they are, and we can overcome if we all band together.
Q: What do you think the news media is getting wrong or right about the situation?
Costantino: They’ll be saying ‘this is the end of democracy,’ and then two seconds later they’re like, ‘Now we’re gonna talk about today's fashions,’ or something. The world is coming to an end as we know it and we can’t be talking about today's fashions. We have to talk about today’s fascists and what's going on with our government.
Q: Where do you see the U.S. in one year?
Costantino: Different, one way or the other. It’s either going to be a new democracy because there’s gonna be the end of the Trump, or we’re gonna see more loss of rights and more people detained. It depends on what people do. If they stand up and fight, we’ll have a new [world] — and we can have a world that’s better than this world. Women’s rights suck. They have taken away women’s rights. Women need to fight back. Children, vaccines, oh my God. There’s so much fighting.
