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Fire Drill Fridays
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janefonda.comAfter leading protests in Wash-
ington, D.C., last fall, Fonda has
taken the fight to California.
Check the web pages above to
see where she’s protesting next,
how you can start your own fire
drill and demand local action.rejoinder. “I realized during these
four months, two-thirds of the peo-
ple were women. And the women
tended to be older women, because
what the fuck do we have to lose?”
She insists that after Grace and
Frankie wraps she is going to
take two years off to just fight the
climate crisis. “I’ll be almost 84. I
don’t know what kind of parts I could get at that
age, so I may never work again. I don’t know.”
I remind Fonda that she has described 1968,
with the Tet Offensive and the assassinations of
Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, as
“apocalyptic.” Does she feel that same way now?
Fonda answers simply, which is not her na-
ture. “Way worse,” she says. “We’re living at a
time that’s never happened before. Humankind
has never been faced with global catastrophe.”A
FEW DAYS LATER, on a sunny L.A. day that
could delude you into thinking all is fine
with the world, Fonda is outside City
Hall in her red coat and red hat. She
gives 97-year-old Norman Lear a hug
and waves to Joaquin Phoenix, who is
here for the first California Fire Drill Friday. She
speaks against a backdrop of anti-fracking and
fossil-fuel posters, and one guy waving a “Hanoi
Jane Lock Her Up” sign. Fonda doesn’t see or
doesn’t care. Her voice quavers with emotion.
“Oh, my God, I keep looking around and see-
ing faces of people I love so much,” she says. She
doesn’t remain sentimental for long. She hits her
point on California being the front line for cli-
mate change. “We can have all the solar panels in
the world, but if we allow fossil-fuel companies
to continue to drill, we’re going to cancel out all
the gains we make with renewable energy.”
She then leads the crowd on a march to Mav-
erick Natural Resources, which operates a large
number of California oil-and-gas wells. They take
over the lobby, and Fonda proclaims, “We are
here at Maverick to send a message to California
leadership that we need to choose our commu-
nities over fossil-fuel companies.”
Between marches and speeches, I ask her
what keeps her protesting in the face of Trump,
advancing years, and the billions that corpora-
tions spend to thwart progress.
“You just have to go on. It’s funny, because
I look back at all the people that wanted to kill
me,” says Fonda with a sly grin. “People who
tried to pass resolutions to keep me from going
into their state, Nixon who wanted to get me on
treason. Where are they now?”
She points straight forward with her hand as if
issuing a command.
“You’ve got to take a leap of faith.”to stop issuing new fossil-fuel exploration
permits, reasoning that if California weans itself
off gasoline, it’s not much of a victory if the state
just starts exporting oil to developing countries
or converting petroleum into more soda bottles.
“Exxon recently said publicly, ‘Our future is
in plastic,’ ” says Fonda. “If you could read what
I’ve been reading about what plastic is doing to
the ocean, you would not sleep anymore.”
Despite her legendary career, Fonda has often
talked about her need for male approval, rang-
ing from her father, Henry Fonda, to her three
husbands, including the tycoon Ted Turner and
the late activist Tom Hayden. “I feel that I’m lib-
erated from the men in my life,” says Fonda,
although she still finds herself wondering,
“What would Tom say?” about Fire Drill Fridays.
Regarding her age and gender, Fonda has a sharp
ROLLING STONE 61Fonda at a protest in
L.A. “I look back at
all the people that
wanted to kill me,”
she says. “Where
are they now?”PHOTOGRAPH BY Yana Yatsuk