About a dozen people protested outside the Whole Foods Market in Mount Washington yesterday, urging motorists to boycott the upscale grocery chain because of the alliance that its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, has forged with President Donald Trump.

“Starve fascists, shop elsewhere,” “Defund the oligarchy” and “Honk if this is your last Whole Foods run” were among the signs that protesters, standing on either side of Smith Avenue, displayed to the cars turning in off of Falls Road.

The many beeps of support and thumbs-up from passersby brought whoops and cheers from the group.

Many of their homemade signs called also for a boycott of behemoth online retailer Amazon, which Bezos founded and which acquired Whole Foods in 2017.

“Don’t give your money to Trump’s billionaire Bezos,” said the sign held by organizer Isabel Lipman.

When she and a friend started their first protests outside the store two weeks ago, Lipman recalled, they were the only ones out there. The second weekend, it was, again, just the two of them.

Yesterday, perhaps because they posted a notice online with the local Indivisible Baltimore group, the women drew a bigger crowd to their action in the affluent neighborhood.

Asked what she would say to a Trump supporter to explain why she was out there, Lipman replied with a sigh, “I could never get them to change their mind.”

“I’m just trying to get people who basically think like me to stop and think: why spend your money here?” she said. “We live in a blue state. This is one way we can make a difference – using our financial power.”

Let Billionaires Feel the Pain

The power-of-the purse philosophy is behind other more formally organized boycott actions taking place in the Baltimore area and beyond to decry the actions of the Trump administration.

Street protests outside of Tesla dealerships are urging a boycott of the automaker to protest its CEO Elon Musk, who is leading Trump’s push to slash federal spending and kill off major programs and entire departments.

Local protesters joining the Tesla Takedown movement have been gathering regularly on weekends outside the Tesla dealership on Reisterstown Road in Owings Mills. A March 1 protest there drew nearly 300 sign-waving participants.

At yesterday’s Mount Washington protest, organizer Lipman said, “I just don’t want Elon Musk to be the only billionaire feeling the pain.”

Asked what prompted her to take to the street with a sign, Lipman cited Bezos’ attendance at Trump’s inauguration alongside Musk and other tech billionaires. She and several others also pointed to the changes Bezos has made to The Washington Post, which he personally owns.

Last October, after Bezos killed a planned endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, more than 200,000 digital subscribers canceled The Post, according to NPR.

“This is not what the Land of the Free should be. This does not epitomize our values”  – Baltimore resident Nirav Shah.

Last month after Bezos announced a radical overhaul of the paper’s opinion pages to reflect libertarian priorities and exclude opposing points of view, another 75,000 digital subscribers reportedly canceled.  The opinions editor and multiple prominent columnists and reporters also resigned in protest.

Jennifer Amann, who held a sign that said “Bezos Bullies Journalists,” said she was particularly angry about the rightward shift of The Post under Bezos’ leadership.

“The idea that a billionaire could come in and so completely change such an influential newspaper like that is so troubling to me,” said Amann, who lives in Baltimore and works for a nonprofit focused on energy efficiency and climate change.

Nirav Shah, who lives in Mount Washington and whose work involves health care data, decried “the consistent stream of chaotic, poorly thought out and truly insane decisions made by our current administration, funded and fueled predominantly by oligarchs.”

“It’s critical we keep the same level of energy that they are insisting upon throwing at us, to make it very clear that this is not what The Land of the Free should be,” he said. “This does not epitomize our values.”

“You have to stand up”

For Lisa Lent, whose sign said “Rights over Profits,” the actions out of Washington that most bother her are those related to immigration.

After Trump’s promise on the campaign trail to conduct mass deportations, his administration has taken new measures to conduct them, enlisting military planes, pressuring other countries to retrieve their citizens, sending people to third countries far from their homes and invoking a wartime law to remove migrants without due process.

Last week the administration transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador in defiance of a federal judge’s order blocking the deportations.

“This is so sad. Folks need to understand that these are real people, human beings,” said Lent, a social worker who lives in Parkville. “And the people being shipped off to El Salvador with no due process? There’s so much.”

Lent said she has stopped using Amazon and plans to let her one-year prime membership lapse.

“I’ve gotten a Costco membership because of DEI,” she said, referring to that company’s decision to continue Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies while other big companies, like Target, Walmart, McDonald’s, Pepsi and Home Depot, have made the post-election decision to scale back or abandon them.

“It’s unfortunate because all these services and companies are very convenient,” Lent observed. “But at the same time, you have to stand up for what’s right.

At that moment, a driver rolled down his window and shouted, “Find a real cause!”

“Thank you, enjoy fascism,” Lipman shot back.

At another point someone yelled, “Lame! Lame! Lame!”

Lipman took a stab at answering that, saying, “See how lame it is when you don’t get your Social Security check anymore. Or your parents get kicked out of their assisted living because they don’t have Medicaid.”

– To reach a reporter editors@baltimorebrew.com