Academy Award-winning actress Jane Fonda was arrested on Friday, among others, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building during an action against climate change she attended.
Fonda was reportedly taking part in a demonstration with the Oil Change International, a group working “to expose the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitate the ongoing transition to clean energy,” while the arrest took place.
@Janefonda is getting arrested because of the #ClimateEmergency. What are you doing to combat this crisis? #FireDrillFriday pic.twitter.com/fDpao1kb6K
— Fire Drill Fridays (@FireDrillFriday) October 11, 2019
Shortly before the incident, the 81-year-old had announced that she took time off from her highly-acclaimed Netflix series Grace and Frankie to move to Washington, D.C. and participate in climate change protests on the U.S. Capitol every Friday.
“I’ve been a climate activist for a long time, but it’s different now. It’s far more urgent,” Fonda said in a video she posted on her official website.
Explaining that she was inspired by Naomi Klein’s book On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal and Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, along with other student climate strikers, Fonda said:
“I’ve decided to upend my life, leave my comfort zone and move to D.C. for four months to focus on climate change. As Greta said: ‘This is a crisis. We have to act like our house is on fire, because it is’.”
She announced in her video that she was planning to host an action called “Fire Drill Friday,” vowing that she would hold it every Friday at 11:00 a.m. in front of the nation’s capitol for the next four months.