Author: Jane

Friday we held a very successful and large Fire Drill Friday in San Pedro, an hour south of Los Angeles and one of the nation’s largest ports and oil refinery complex, where oil is exported to other parts of the world. We wanted to confront the immense, destructive power of the fossil fuel industry. Here in California, oil companies have been allowed to drill at will for nearly 150 years, fueling the climate crisis, and also a health and an environmental justice crisis from the production of their dirty product. Many celebrity friends joined the rally and there was a lot of press covering it. It was especially gratifying to have labor represented. That morning, Communities for a Better Environment and the Stand LA Coalition delivered a letter from them and me to City Councilman Buscaino from me letting him know that we hold him accountable for the devastating health impact on the city of Wilmington due to the fact that oil wells are drilling in people’s back yards, next to schools, playgrounds and health clinics. For generations, residents have suffered headaches, nosebleeds, and nausea in the short-term. In the longer term, exposure to many of the chemicals like benzene causes cancer, birth defects, and other devastating harm. Councilman Buscaino receives 100s of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuel industry and we demanded during the rally right next to his office building that he pay more attention to his constituents and less to the industry. For the first time ever, he sent a message saying he would meet with representatives from the organizations. He will be up for re-election next year and, if he doesn’t act to stop the drilling in Wilmington, we will make sure he is ousted. After the rally, the biggest in memory we were told, we toured neighborhoods in Wilmington. We saw pumps and transfer facilities literally feet from bedroom windows. Then we walked around one of the facilities – again right in a neighborhood – and our throats burned and the air smelled of something metallic. And families are unable to sell their homes and buy anything comparable in CA. After that march, we gathered outside the entrance to a large transfer facility and a group of people engaged in civil disobedience by sitting down and blocking the gate. There were police all around plus a drone and a police helicopter but there were no arrests. We’re going to be holding a Fire Drill Friday every month, demanding that Governor Gavin Newson and City Councils and mayors in California stop any new fossil fuel drilling, begin to plan a phase out that includes a Just Transition for fossil fuel workers and communities hit the hardest and institutes a 2,500 ft Health and Safety buffer zone between oil wells, fracking pits and refineries and where people live, work, play and worship. And we’ll keep it up till they do.

It’s New Year’s eve and I’ve been writing almost without cease for 4 days and will continue until I have to stop for the Thursday Fire Drill teach-in. I’m writing a book about the Fire Drill Fridays and I’m very excited. Pouring over the transcripts of everyone’s speeches, I’ve really been able to internalize so many things I didn’t get when I first heard them. I’m learning so much. I think people will be interested in this book and moved to take action. It will be quite unique and I have to turn it in by March which is why i’m so obsessed. As anyone who’s ever written a book knows, that is a VERY short time to get one done. But I’m already on my 7th chapter out of about 15. There are only 2 Fire Drills Fridays left. Sam Waterston is coming back as is Ian Armitage and the 10th, the brilliant Bill McKibben, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Saffron Burrows will join us. It will be a bittersweet thing to return home. But I ache to see my 6 month old grandson and my dog, Tulea. I have made so many good friends these last 4 months and learned so much on many different levels. And I’m energized to a level I haven’t felt maybe ever. I don’t have to think hard about what my New Year’s resolution is: To grow the Fire Drill Friday’s movement with Greenpeace’s exquisite help and, in collaboration with the young climate strikers, so that by next fall there is a growing army of people willing to go into the streets and halls of Congress and state legislatures and make their voices heard for the sake of the planet and of the millions of people who are already being devastated by extreme weather events and pollution. This is our year to take back Democracy. A large majority of Americans want to see their elected officials confront the climate crisis in a bold, urgent way but their desires are being blocked by the stranglehold that corporations have on the political process, especially the fossil fuel industry and the Pentagon. We outnumber them and we must win. The future depends on it. We have ten years. Let’s do this!

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 13: (L_R) Sally Field and Jane Fonda demonstrate on Capitol Hill during “Fire Drill Friday” climate change protest on December 13, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images) I’ve been blogging now for almost 12 years, if I’m not mistaken. I started doing it when I was 70 and performing “33 Variations” on Broadway. Everyday I would blog about what happened that day. It had been 60 years since my last Broadway play, and I wanted to see if, all these years later, I could have a joyous experience being in front of a live audience every night in a good play as my father had. It turned out to be quite joyous and I’m glad I chronicled it daily. That was all I was doing then, and it was easy. I never would have expected my life to get so much fuller and, in some ways, more meaningful as I moved into my 8th decade. It’s harder now to find the time to blog regularly. Please forgive me. But I’ve heeded the call of Greta Thunberg, who was just named Time’s person of the year, left my comfort zone, and moved to DC to carry out weekly climate actions called Fire Drill Fridays. When I started, I didn’t know if the actions and the teach-ins that precede them would gain traction. It’s clear to me now that they have. They’ve tapped into a need that many people besides me appear to feel: take the next step beyond individual actions to reduce our carbon footprint (important as those are), not wait for the next climate march or protest and step out of our comfort zone as Greta as called upon us to do. My team here in DC who make the actions happen have been receiving questions from people all over the country about starting Fire Drill Fridays in their town or city and elsewhere. Greenpeace and I are going to help make this happen! Senators on the Senate Climate Change Task Force told me when we met that they like Fire Drill Fridays. “You’re building an army,” Senator Ed Markey said, “We need it to be big.” People inside the halls of Congress have to feel pressure from outside. Nothing important has ever happened without it. Not everyone who has come to join me over the last months has been prepared to engage in non-violent civil disobedience and risk arrest. That isn’t a requirement. They are here to learn from the speakers and support those who do choose to get arrested. I’ve been arrested 4 times and 6 times I’ve been waiting, instead, for the arrestees when they are released to hug them and ask how it felt. Not everyone can risk being held for longer. Not everyone has a boss who would give them the day off or be sympathetic if they found out. I understand and totally support people of color who choose to not risk arrest. For many, being arrested both poses immediate risk and carries the historical reality of racial violence that I who benefit from white privilege have not experienced. Fire Drill Fridays, with its weekly civil disobedience and arrests does not want to glamorize arrests. We are fully aware of the racial and class disparities inherent in our criminal justice system—as well as in broader society. We recognize the yawning gap between our fairly routine arrests here in DC (which wasn’t always the case and mistreatment still happens, but fortunately local public interest lawyers have forced improvements in how peaceful protestors are treated in our nation’s Capitol) and what happened to the young African Americans in Mississippi who engaged in lunch counter sit-ins in the 60’s; of the violence attending the acts of non-violence civil disobedience that M.L. King engaged in. But it was those brave actions that increased awareness of the cruelty of the Southern Jim Crow system and the federal government being compelled to pass the Civil Rights Act. For 40 years, climate activists have used every lever of Democracy available to us. We’ve shared the science, written letters, petitioned, marched and protested and we weren’t heard. That is why we now have to step it up. Non-violent civil disobedience has a long and noble history as a tool to advance good – in the U.S and around the world. Given the crisis we face with the climate emergency (that 97% of climate scientists are in agreement about), it’s going to take civil disobedience and risking arrest becoming the new norm. In stepping up this way, we need to understand and respect why some of us will hesitate. Many of us, especially older women, feel more able to take the risk. It has not escaped notice that at least 3/4th of Fire Drill Friday arrestees are older women. I have studied why women tend to get braver with age and men don’t, but that’s for another time. On January 11th I will return home to California – a state in the throes of climate change impacts. It will be bittersweet because I’ve grown close to the community we’ve built in DC and my Fire Drill Friday team: Ira, Samantha, Carla, Firas, Maddy, Felicia, Jack, Peter, Greg, Vy, Mara and Annie. I’ll be getting ready for the 7th and final season of “Grace & Frankie”. I can’t promise I’ll have more time to blog cause I’ll also be helping to build out a national Fire Drill Friday army. But my younger digital friends tell me I need to do more Instagram so that’s what I’ll do…and last Thursday I actually went on Tik Tok!!! Please stay in touch with me and Fire Drill Fridays over social media, and I will see you in the streets as we – together with the youth climate leaders showing us adults the way – build a climate movement too powerful for the next president to ignore.