Pat Mitchell: It's so great to see you, my friend.
Jane Fonda: Hi Pat. It's great to be with you.
PM: Jane, for the ones who may not have seen the extraordinary coverage
around the world of Fire Drill Fridays
and the impact that they have already had,
talk to us about the origin of this idea,
this particular response to the climate crisis.
JF: I was very inspired by Greta Thunberg,
the Swedish student,
and by the young school climate strikers.
Greta says, we've got to get out of our comfort zone.
We have to behave like our house is burning, because it is.
And so she really struck a chord in me,
and then, learning that just about
a hundred percent of climate scientists agree,
they agree that a drastic emergency is upon us,
that it is human-caused.
But they said,
we can do something about it.
We have the time, the technology,
the tools.
We have everything we need except political will
to meet the challenge, and it's an enormous challenge.
We have 11 years, many say, a decade,
and I thought,
Oh I'm so lucky
that I am healthy and living
in a decade where we who are alive
can actually make the difference.
We can make the difference
as to whether there's going to be a livable future or not.
What a glorious responsibility we have.
We have to step up to the plate,
and when you're famous,
there's a lot of things that you can do.
You have a bigger platform.
So I decided that, like Greta,
I was going to put my body on the line
and move to the center of American power, Washington, DC,
and have a rally every Friday like the students do,
and we work with the students.
They speak at my rallies and I speak at their rallies,
and that after we speak,
we engage in civil disobedience
and risk getting arrested.
Civil disobedience is a powerful tool
that has changed history many times,
both in the United States
in the '60s during the Civil Rights Movement,
of course in India with Mahatma Gandhi,
and I didn't know in the beginning if it was going to work or not,
but it's made me very happy to see what's happening.
PM: It's also led to your being arrested
multiple times, actually,
spending at least a night or two in Washington, DC jails,
and while all of us I think recognize the emergency and the actions
that you so kindly mentioned others have taken,
I'm not sure that we would put our bodies at risk,
our lives, our careers,
and our lives on hold
as you have done.
Do you have any concerns about that at this point?