00:00So hi, I'm Jane Fonda and I've been asked to very briefly talk about the role of activism
00:06in my life.
00:07It has helped me focus and be a better actor and be a better person and be a happier person.
00:14So I invite you to join me.
00:25Right, this is kind of funny.
00:27I had just finished making CLUT and I was traveling around the country speaking on campuses where
00:34I would be paid $2,000 a speech and all the money was going to fund the Winter Soldier
00:40investigation which was members of the American Armed Forces, all branches, came together in
00:46Detroit, Michigan to discuss what they had seen and done in Vietnam and the documentary was made.
00:53Before I started making CLUT, I became friends with a fashion designer who had a factory of
01:00knitwear in San Francisco named Alvin Duskin and he gave me a lot of free clothes in this
01:06coat.
01:06Even though it's not knit, it was leather, but this was one of them and so that's what I had
01:11on.
01:12It's fortuitous that I was wearing a very fashionable long suede coat.
01:17When I was arrested, the arresting officer told me, as he was holding me in his office,
01:23that he was arresting me under orders from the White House.
01:26That would be Richard Nixon.
01:28I had flown in from my first speech in Windsor, Canada into Cleveland where I was stopped at
01:35customs and all of my notes, my address books, everything were taken.
01:40I had a lot of vitamins in a little plastic, little plastic bags, breakfast, lunch and dinner
01:47and they accused me of smuggling drugs.
01:49Right after this picture was taken, see I have double jointed hands.
01:53I slipped my hands out of the handcuffs and threw a fist.
01:57This was the early 70s so I still had that iconic haircut.
02:02It was the wonderful Paul McGregor in Greenwich Village who gave me this haircut.
02:07I had been making a film in France with Jean-Luc Godard and I went to Italy for a manifestation
02:17that meant a political rally on behalf of women's rights in Italy.
02:21And I had my well-worn knitwear that Alvin Duskin gave me.
02:27He gave me a whole lot of clothes and they were really my wardrobe for years.
02:31I see a little shredding at the cuffs.
02:33I wore them a lot.
02:34Oh yes, well this is a day when it was National Secretary's Day and so I went out in support
02:43of women office workers and talked a little bit about them and the struggles that they had.
02:48I was in the middle of making a film that I produced called Nine to Five.
02:53I'm wearing the wig from that movie.
02:57The struggles that women office workers have today is even more difficult and more challenging.
03:02It's not just sexual abuse.
03:04The spying by employers is worse because they are given computers and cell phones.
03:11And so the bosses know everything of how long they take toilet breaks.
03:16They experience wage theft.
03:18It's really, really bad.
03:20In other words, the fight continues.
03:23That's Marlo Thomas, that's Whoopi Goldberg, Bella Abzug, me, Morgan Fairchild, Ellie Smeal, Glenn Close.
03:33This was a national march for freedom of choice for women.
03:39It was a huge march in Washington, D.C. It was a very important time.
03:45It makes me sad to look at this that we lost Bella Abzug because she was such a force to
03:52be reckoned with.
03:53This was 19, around 1989, white clothing we associate with the suffragette movement, and so we all wore white.
04:04Again, this is a movement that continues today.
04:08The right of women to control their bodies, because if women control their bodies, they control their lives.
04:13And we still live in a patriarchal society that doesn't want women to control their lives.
04:22This is now.
04:24This is now.
04:25I was in Big Sur with my friends Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette, and I was reading about Greta Thunberg,
04:31the Swedish student who began the Friday student school strike that became a global movement.
04:38And inspired by Greta, I decided to move to Washington, D.C., and hold what we're calling Fire Drill Fridays.
04:45You see, Greta said, we have to behave like we're in a crisis.
04:49We have to behave like our house is on fire, because it is.
04:53So, Fire Drill Friday.
04:55And every Friday, we have a rally that focuses on a specific topic.
05:00Oceans, women, war and military, forests, human rights, migration, and how they are affected by climate change.
05:11We have expert scientists, people who are the most affected from frontline communities, and celebrity friends come and join me.
05:20And after the rally, we engage in civil disobedience, which means risking getting arrested.
05:25So, I'm being arrested. Note the white plastic handcuffs, whereas the arrest photo back in 1970 were metal handcuffs.
05:35These are white plastic, and they hurt more.
05:38These rallies aren't in order to get arrested.
05:41They are to try to raise the sense of urgency around this looming disaster of climate crisis.
05:50For 40 years, we've marched, we've rallied, we've written, we've petitioned.
05:55We haven't succeeded in getting enough people and enough elected officials to really deal with this like the crisis it
06:03is.
06:03And so, we have increased our activism to include civil disobedience, which is an extremely honorable thing to do.
06:12To commit non-violent civil disobedience for an important cause like the potential destruction of human civilization.
06:21No kidding.
06:22So, when we started meeting about these Fire Drill Fridays, we decided that we should try to wear something red
06:29every Friday.
06:30And I didn't have anything red, so I found this coat on, I don't even know who designed it, on
06:36sale.
06:36This is the last item of clothing that I will buy.
06:40So much of our identity, especially in this country, is about shopping, buying things.
06:46See, I grew up, I was born in 1937, and for the first decades of my life, we weren't so
06:53focused on shopping.
06:56Consumerism wasn't a big thing.
06:57Plastics didn't exist, nor did television, by the way.
07:01And I'm grateful that I lived at a time when we did just fine, thank you, without television, without consumerism,
07:08and without plastic.
07:10Trying to minimize consumerism, I have to walk the talk.
07:15It's not easy.
07:17I had to do an interview in the upstairs floor of Saks the other day, and as I'm walking through
07:23Saks, you know, I'm going, oh, look at the, oh, no, I can't.
07:25You know, oh, what, well, no, I can't.
07:28It's hard, so I can't shop anymore, but that's okay, because I have other things to do.
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