Forget the Hanoi Hilton. Jane Fonda is heading to a different jail on Friday.
This time it’s in Washington, D.C. — and it’s all part of her plan to get attention on climate change.
“Look what the students did,” the liberal 81-year-old actress told The Los Angeles Times in a recent interview about recent school protests.
“We don’t want to just go silent. They still have the torch, but the grandmas are taking it now and continuing it right up until the key thing, which is next November.”
Fonda said she’s moved to Washington, D.C. to participate in a series of protest and political rallies, starting Oct. 11 — and they won’t be small affairs.
While she’s in the nation’s capital, she had planned on causing enough of a disturbance to be arrested by D.C. police. Fonda said her arrest will get attention and sympathy for her cause because she’s so popular.
It didn’t take long for her wish to come true —
.@Janefonda is the THIRD arrest here at the US Capitol… The moment it happened…@WUSA9 #ClimateChange #FireDrillFriday #breaking pic.twitter.com/wWoZggYloN
— Mike Valerio (@ValerioCNN) October 11, 2019
“Unlike my earlier activism, I have a hit series at my back,” Fonda said about her plan to be arrested. “It’s so much easier for me. People like me! I used to do this [in the Vietnam era], and chunks of my hair would literally be pulled out.”
“It really makes a difference to have a hit TV series, not a hit movie. … Television is in your room all the time and so it really has an effect,” she said. “And if they like your character and they like the story, then they like you.”
The liberal leader said her planned protests and arrest were inspired by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg.
“She read the [U.N. climate change] report and she realized that the crisis was barreling straight at us, like a train, and looked around and people weren’t behaving appropriately,” Fonda said.
“It so traumatized her that she stopped eating,” she continued. “I hadn’t realized that she stopped eating and speaking for almost a year. And that really hit me.”
The Horn editorial team