by Katherine Smyrk / The Big Issue Australia / courtesy of INSP.ngo
Jane Fonda has been in jail twice. First in 1970, when she was 32, after being arrested on suspicion of drug possession. The alleged drugs turned out to be vitamins, and the whole arrest turned out to have a lot more to do with her very vocal stance against the Vietnam War. The second time was in November last year, just before her 82nd birthday. After protesting against the US government’s inaction on climate change outside the White House, Fonda was handcuffed and escorted to prison, where she spent the night. She’s pretty blasé about the whole thing – “One night, big deal!” – pointing out that as a rich, famous, white lady she was never really at risk. “The plastic handcuffs hurt more than the metal ones and I discovered that it’s not easy for an 82-year-old to get in and out of a police paddy wagon without the use of her hands,” was all she said about it in a droll summary on her blog, which is a delightful catalog of her recent activist endeavors. You might know Fonda best from her glittering film career, appearing in more than 40 films and winning two Academy Awards for her films Klute in 1972, and Coming Home in 1979. Accustomed to the spotlight as the daughter of revered actor Henry Fonda, she rose to prominence in the 1968 erotic cult sci-fi Barbarella, directed by her first husband, Roger Vadim. You might know Fonda best from those '80s workout videos that brought the world of boisterous exercise in high-cut leotards into people’s living rooms. Her Jane Fonda’s Workout series went on to sell more than 17 million copies around the world. You might even know Fonda best for her starring turn in Grace and Frankie, a current Netflix series about two women in their 70s (long-time collaborator Lily Tomlin is her co-star) who are forced into an uneasy friendship when their husbands leave the women for each other. The show has been a surprise smash-hit and is set to become the longest-running Netflix original series. Scrolling through the pages on janefonda. com, or reading any of her many interviews,
it is evident that it’s activism to which Fonda is most devoted. “I became an actress because I didn’t know what else to do!” she admitted to Harvard Business Review. “I was fired as a secretary, and I had to earn a living. That was the way I thought about it. It was a job.” The activism came into her life in her early 30s: “There was a lot going on in the world and I was pregnant, which makes a woman like a sponge, very open to what’s going on around her. It was around that time that I began to realize that I wanted to change my life and participate in trying to end the war.” She formed the Free the Army Tour with actor Donald Sutherland in 1970, speaking out against the Vietnam War around the US – it was during this tour that she had her first stint behind bars. In 1972 she travelled to North Vietnam to learn more about the local people and to publicly urge troops not to bomb citizen targets. But she was photographed laughing and sitting on top of an anti-aircraft gun, creating a storm of controversy back home and earning herself the nickname Hanoi Jane. She has since apologized numerous times for causing offense to American troops, but amid the controversy continued to campaign furiously against the war. She held fundraisers for the Black Panthers around this time, and was a vocal supporter of Native Americans during the occupation of Alcatraz. Her film choices often had a foundation in activism too: Coming Home was about the Vietnam War; 1979’s China Syndrome was about nuclear disaster; 9 to 5 (with Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin) was about sexual harassment and working women reclaiming their power in 1980. Even those renowned workout videos had a political core – the money she made from Jane Fonda’s Workout went to the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a leftist political organisation founded by her then husband, Tom Hayden. In 2005, along with Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, she founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that aims to ensure women are better represented in the media, and advocates and campaigns for various women’s rights issues.
Jane Fonda is arrested at the Capitol for blocking the street after she and other demonstrators called on Congress for action to address climate change on Oct. 25, 2019 (J. Scott Applewhiite photo).
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