Jane Fonda on getting arrested: ‘We have to up the ante’ in climate activism

Jane Fonda on Tuesday discussed her recent arrests during a series of climate protests, telling “The View” that the demonstrations were necessary to “up the ante.”

“I am following what the young people are doing. I’m not telling them, they are inspiring me,” she said. “All these young people who are leaving school to protest their future that we’re taking from them … they’re a huge inspiration for me.”

{mosads}“We’ve got to get out there and join them,” she added.

Asked whether there were ways to push for action without civil disobedience, Fonda said that after decades of environmental activism, “the fossil fuel industry is doing more and more to harm us and the environment and our young people’s future, so we have to up the ante.”

.@Janefonda shares why the young generations are a “huge inspiration” for her environmental advocacy, and how her climate change demonstrations inspired other actors like Ted Danson to join her. https://t.co/1091s9Fn2d pic.twitter.com/2Eh3xJLVyv

— The View (@TheView) November 5, 2019

Noting the dire predictions by climatologists about the small window to prevent irreversible damage, Fonda added “we have 11 years to avoid catastrophe and we can’t do it unless people mobilize by the millions in the street.”

Fonda spent Friday night in jail after being arrested inside a Senate office building. Since her weekly demonstrations began, she has persuaded other Hollywood stars to join her, including actors Sam Waterston, Ted Danson, Rosanna Arquette and Catherine Keener.

“We’re going to be arrested much more,” Fonda told reporters Friday. “Depending on who we elect, we have to hold their feet to the fire. And that may mean getting arrested over and over and over again and putting our bodies on the line the way the indigenous people in Canada did. They have stopped pipelines just with their bodies.”