A new round of protests, Fire Drill Fridays, led by actress Jane Fonda are calling for action to address the climate crisis, as bushfires fueled by a historic heat wave threaten Australia, high tides threaten to flood Venice, and the Philippines prepares for a Christmas typhoon. Last Friday, a day before Jane Fonda’s 82nd birthday, the longtime political activist, feminist and two-time Academy Award winner was arrested for the fifth time, as she has been nearly every Friday in Washington since she started Fire Drill Fridays, inspired in part by the Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg. She was arrested along with more than 140 others inside the Hart Senate Office Building, and demonstrators sang “Happy Birthday” to her as she was taken outside. This month Jane Fonda wrote an op-ed in The New York Times headlined “We Have to Live Like We’re in a Climate Emergency. Because We Are.” In it, she writes, “It should come as no surprise that I believe in the power of protest. That’s why I moved to Washington to start what I call Fire Drill Fridays, joining the millions of young people around the world who turned out in the fall for protests to demand that our leaders act to save their futures.” We speak with Jane Fonda about her climate activism and why she started Fire Drill Fridays.
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