Jane Fonda | Activism Through The Years | Who What Wear - video Dailymotion

Who What Wear

Interview with Jane Seymour Fonda; actress and activist.  Jane Fonda's work spans several genres and over six decades of film and television.   Produced by Who What Wear

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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.

00:21Right, this is kind of funny.

00:27I had just finished making Clute, and I was traveling around the country speaking on campuses

00:34where I would be paid $2,000 a speech, and all the money was going to fund the Winter

00:39Soldier Investigation, which was members of the American Armed Forces, all branches, came

00:45together in Detroit, Michigan to discuss what they had seen and done in Vietnam, and a documentary

00:52was made.

00:53Before I started making Clute, I became friends with a fashion designer who had a factory

01:00of knitwear in San Francisco named Alvin Duskin, and he gave me a lot of free clothes, and

01:05this coat, even though it's not knit, it was leather, but this was one of them, and so

01:11that's what I had on.

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.

01:29I had flown in from my first speech in Windsor, Canada, into Cleveland, where I was stopped

01:35at customs, and all of my notes, my address books, everything were taken.

01:40I had a lot of vitamins in little plastic bags, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and they

01:47accused me of smuggling drugs.

01:50Right after this picture was taken, see, I have double-jointed hands, I slipped my

01:54hands out of the handcuffs and threw a fist.

01:58This 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.

02:18That meant a political rally on behalf of women's rights in Italy.

02:22And 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.

02:49I was in the middle of making a film that I produced called 9 to 5.

02:54I'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, and so

03:11the bosses know everything of how long they take toilet breaks.

03:16They experience wage theft.

03:19It's really, really bad.

03:21In other words, the fight continues.

03:24That's Marlo Thomas.

03:25That's Whoopi Goldberg, Bella Abzug, me, Morgan Fairchild, Ellie Smeal, Glenn Close.

03:33This was a national march for freedom of choice for women.

03:40It was a huge march in Washington, D.C.

03:43It 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.

03:54This was around 1989.

03:58White clothing, we associate with the suffragette movement, and so we all wore white.

04:04Again, this is a movement that continues today, the right of women to control their bodies,

04:10because if women control their bodies, they control their lives, and we still live in

04:15a 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

04:30about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish student who began the Friday student school strike

04:37that became a global movement.

04:38Inspired by Greta, I decided to move to Washington, D.C. and hold what we're calling Fire Drill

04:44Fridays.

04:45You see, Greta said, we have to behave like we're in a crisis.

04:50We have to behave like our house is on fire, because it is.

04:54So Fire Drill Friday.

04:56And every Friday, we have a rally that focuses on a specific topic.

05:01Oceans, women, war and military, forests, human rights, migration, and how they are

05:09affected by climate change.

05:11We have expert scientists, people who are the most affected from frontline communities,

05:17and celebrity friends come and join me.

05:20And after the rally, we engage in civil disobedience, which means risking getting arrested.

05:26So I'm being arrested, note the white plastic handcuffs, whereas the arrest photo back in

05:321970 were metal handcuffs.

05:35These are white plastic and they hurt more.

05:38These rallies aren't in order to get arrested.

05:42They are to try to raise the sense of urgency around this looming disaster of climate crisis.

05:51For 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

06:01with this like the crisis it is.

06:03And so we have increased our activism to include civil disobedience, which is an extremely

06:10honorable thing to do, to commit nonviolent civil disobedience for an important cause

06:18like the potential destruction of human civilization.

06:22No kidding.

06:23So when we started meeting about these fire drill Fridays, we decided that we should try

06:28to wear something red every Friday, and I didn't have anything red.

06:32So I found this coat, I don't even know who designed it, on sale.

06:37This 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

06:52focused on shopping.

06:55Consumerism wasn't a big thing.

06:57Plastics didn't exist, nor did television, by the way.

07:02And I'm grateful that I lived at a time when we did just fine, thank you, without television,

07:07without consumerism, and without plastic.

07:10Trying to minimize consumerism, I have to walk the talk.

07:16It's not easy.

07:17I had to do an interview in the upstairs floor of Saks the other day, and as I'm walking

07:22through Saks, you know, I'm going, oh, look at the, oh, no, I can't.

07:26You know, oh, what, no, well, no, I can't.

07:28It's hard.

07:29So I can't shop anymore, but that's okay, because I have other things to do.

Jane Fonda | Activism Through The Years | Who What Wear

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