The octogenarian actress Jane Fonda was arrested this Friday on the steps of the United States Congress along with a group of protesters demanding government decisions to counteract climate change.
"I'm going to use my body, which is now in a way famous and popular for the series I'm going to do in the District of Columbia, and we're going to have a demonstration every Friday," said the 82-year-old actress and activist, The Washington Post newspaper .
A dozen people congregated on the steps of the Congress carrying posters with banners about climate change and challenged the instructions of the Capitol Police to give up.
Fonda, who was the third person handcuffed and detained, promised that he will continue these protests during the next 14 Fridays, which is the time the actress will be in the US capital for the production of Netflix's Grace and Frankie series.
"We will incur civil disobedience and we will be arrested every Friday," Fonda told the "Post."
Congressional police reported that they had arrested 16 people for an "illegal demonstration on the east side of the Capitol." The spokeswoman, Eva Malecki, said those arrested will be accused of "grouping, obstructing and inconvenience" in access to Congress.
In 1972, during the Vietnam War, Fonda paid a visit to Hanoi and posed in some photographs sitting on a piece of Vietnamese anti-aircraft artillery. Years later, the actress described as "a big mistake" that protest, which won the nickname of Hanoi Jane.
In her interview with the Post , Fonda said that for these protests she had been inspired by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl who has prompted student strikes around the world to demand attention to the problem of climate change.
"Greta has said that we have to act as if the house is burning, " Fonda said. "I will call these protests the 'Friday fire drill,'" he added.
"You don't see it, but I have armor that protects me ... I am 82 years old. There is nothing you can do to me. No matter what you do," Fonda said.
The "fire drill on Fridays" campaign announced in a press release that the protests will continue until at least mid-January and they will be joined by "celebrities, scientists, economists and people from the affected communities."
Fonda said that "change comes to us, whether by design or disaster."
"A 'New Green Agreement' that involves a transition and the abandonment of fossil fuels provides the design," he added, in a reference to the New Deal that President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched in the 1930s to deal with the Great Depression.
"They say it's not realistic, they say it's socialism," Fonda continued. "That's what they said about Roosevelt's New Deal , and that's how we got Social Security and a middle class."
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