This past week at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards, Jane Fonda delivered a powerful and political acceptance speech after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award.
It was an electrifying and refreshingly real moment. Julia Louis-Dreyfus introduced Fonda, stating that it’s impossible to separate Jane Fonda the actress from Jane Fonda the activist.
Fonda has always taken her role in the world seriously, becoming a formidable force for change. Fearlessly, she fought for what she believed in. In 1968, while pregnant with her first child, she educated herself about global injustices and decided she needed to take action against the Vietnam War. She divorced her then-husband and left her home in Paris to return to the U.S., where she joined the civil rights movement. She housed Black Panther Party members, organized fundraisers, visited political prisoners, and helped lead protests for Black liberation, the American Indian Movement, and the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam. Her activism even landed her on Nixon’s enemy list. Since then, she has remained an active participant in social movements, including against climate change. She has stood as a fierce critic of war, racism, and all forms of oppression and exploitation.
In her speech, Fonda called on us to reflect on our experiences; if we’ve ever watched a documentary about a past resistance movement and thought, I would want to be one of the people who took part, then this is that moment. Right now is the time to act. In the montage played before her acceptance there was a quote from one of her films, “There are watchers and there are doers.” Fonda has always been a doer, and she implores us to be the same.
Her speech was both inspiring and grounding, leaving viewers with the feeling that it is our responsibility to join her in the fight—to empathize with those who struggle because of systemic injustice, and to have the strength to organize and fight back. She made it clear: At age 87, she is not done yet. Like her, we too have a choice to make. Will we stand up and fight with her for a better world?
See Fonda’s inspiring speech here.
