Jane Fonda to the youth: “Don’t sit this election out”

Young people’s understandable dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s record on oil and gas drilling and the war in Gaza should not dissuade them from voting for Donald Trump to prevent him from becoming president of the United States again, warned Hollywood actress and activist Jane Fonda.

“I understand why young people are really angry and hurt,” Fonda said. “I want to tell them, ‘Don’t sit out the election, no matter how angry you are. Don’t vote for a third party, no matter how angry you are. Because it elects someone who denies any voice in the future of the United States… If you really care about Gaza, vote to speak out so that something can be done. And then be ready to go out into the streets, by the millions, and fight for it.”

Fonda’s remarks came in a wide-ranging interview organized by the global media confederation Climate protection now and led The GuardianCBS News and Rolling Stone magazine.

Significant social change requires massive, nonviolent street protests, as well as shrewd election organization, Fonda argued. Drawing on more than 50 years of activism, from the Vietnam War and anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s to later economic democracy, women’s rights and today for climate actionFonda said that “History shows that…you need millions of people in the streets, but you [also] they need people in the halls of power who have ears and hearts to hear the protests, to hear the demands.”

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed to help the masses of the unemployed. However, FDR said that the public must “make him do it” or he could not overcome the opposition of the status quo. “We have a chance to get them when it comes to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz [in the White House]he said. “You have no chance if Trump and Vance win this election.”

Scientists have repeatedly warned that the emission of greenhouse gases should be halved for the next decadenoted Fonda, so President Harris must be pressured “to stop drilling, fracking and mining. No new fossil fuel development.” Trump, on the other hand, promised to “drill, baby, drill.” Let’s believe him for once. The choice is very clear: do we vote for the future or to set the planet on fire?

Fonda launched the Jane Fonda Climate Policy Action Committee three years ago to elect “climate champions” at all levels of government – ​​national, state and local. “The PAC is focused on getting out the vote — mayors, state legislators, county councils,” he said. “It’s incredible how much influence people in these positions can have on climate issues.”

Forty-two of the 60 candidates supported by the PAC in 2022 won their races. In 2024, the PAC will provide money, voter support and publicity to more than 100 candidates in key battleground states and Fonda’s home state of California. California is “the fifth largest economy in the world and an oil producing state,” he explained, “so what happens here has a much wider impact than in California.”

For the first time in her life, Fonda is “very involved” in a presidential campaign this year, “because of the climate emergency.” He visits every battleground state. “And when I’m there, we’ll turn over our schedule to the Harris campaign. Then they throw in Harris’s campaign [get-out-the-vote]volunteer recruiting, things like that, which I do for the Harris campaign and then for our PAC candidates,” as well.

His PAC has a strict rule: It only supports candidates who don’t accept money from the fossil fuel industry. The industry’s “stranglehold on our government” explains the crucial disconnect, Fonda said: Polls show that most Americans want climate actionbut their elected officials often fail to deliver. In California, he said, “there have been so many moderate Democrats who have blocked the necessary climate solutions because they take money away from the fossil fuel industry. … It’s very difficult to go against the people who support your nomination.”

Fonda also blamed the mainstream news media for not doing a better job of informing the public climate emergency and the abundance of solutions. Watching the Harris-Trump debate, he reflected that “Kamala did very well.” But “he was very disturbed that the number one crisis facing humanity right now took an hour and a half to come up and wasn’t really addressed. People don’t understand what we’re up against! The media must pay more attention to the connection between extreme weather events and climate change. It’s starting to happen, but not enough.”

Given his years of anti-nuclear activism, including producing and starring in a blockbuster Hollywood film, The Chinese Syndromeappeared days before Three Mile Island reactor accident In 1979 – perhaps unsurprisingly, Fonda rejects the increasingly fashionable idea that nuclear power is a climate solution.

“Every time I speak [in public]someone asks what these are small modular reactors they are a solution,” he said. “So I’ve spent a lot of time researching, and there’s an inevitable problem.” There are no nuclear reactors of any kind – the conventional ones either the smaller or the modularnone – built in less than 10-20 years. We don’t have that kind of time. We have to deal with the climate crisis by the 2030s. So only on the timeline, nuclear energy is not a solution.” In contrast, “day it will take about four years to develop and will soon be 30 percent of the world’s electricity.”