
Jane Fonda Receives the Voices for Social Justice Award
Season 2023 Episode 17 | 3m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Actress & activist Jane Fonda receives the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award
Jane Fonda is honored with the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award at the Tribeca Festival. The 85-year-old Academy Award winner says she is taking a break from acting so she can focus on activism efforts during the presidential election.
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ALL ARTS Dispatch is a local public television program presented by WLIW PBS

Jane Fonda Receives the Voices for Social Justice Award
Season 2023 Episode 17 | 3m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Jane Fonda is honored with the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award at the Tribeca Festival. The 85-year-old Academy Award winner says she is taking a break from acting so she can focus on activism efforts during the presidential election.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipMan: May I have the envelope, please?
The winner is Jane Fonda.
-The winner is Jane Fonda!
[ Cheering and applause ] ♪♪ So, now, let's welcome to the stage the goddess herself, Jane Fonda.
[ Cheering and applause ] Fonda: Well, Harry meant a lot to me and his particular activism, a celebrity -- in fact, he was probably one of the most famous men in the world, for those who were too young to remember.
He was gorgeous, but he put himself on the line.
He really did.
And he devoted himself to the Civil Rights Movement.
And he made a huge difference.
So to receive this award in his name, it means a great deal to me.
I love the world, I love people, I love animals, I love nature.
I can't sit by when there's a risk of destroying it all.
And so I am a full-time climate activist.
In the words of Alicia Keys, this girl is on fire.
[ Cheering and applause ] Yes!
Yes!
It's wonderful being at Tribeca receiving an award that's bearing Harry Belafonte's name.
And I'm going to ask her why the crisis, the climate crisis and knowing that others will look to her, will listen to her, and hopefully, as she put it, action that leads to hope.
Fonda: Fossil fuels are the cause of this crisis and we have to face out while protecting the people that work in the industry and make sure that they're not left without jobs.
They have to have good jobs, union jobs, if possible, or union equivalents.
Nine million people every year die from fossil fuel related air pollution -- and that's just air pollution, not to mention all the other ways that fossil fuels are really harming nature, harming humans, harming animals.
And we we pay fossil fuel companies, us taxpayers, $20 billion a year.
We're paying $20 billion to companies that are killing us.
It's got to stop.
And we have to force our politicians to come up with policies that will save the planet.
The climate crisis isn't something way off in the future.
It's right now.
It's happening and it's getting worse.
And the skies that we saw in New York, that's going to become the normal.
We have to fight against it and we have to do it quickly because there's a lot of urgency here.
If the earth warms beyond a certain point, ecosystems begin to collapse.
And there we go.
We depend on these ecosystems -- us human beings.
Roberts: And I was really taken aback, because I think like others, like, she's always been an activist.
No, she hasn't.
And so for her to share her story and how that happened -- she was good friends with Harry, knew him well, respected him.
And he really helped find -- helped her find her path by sharing his path.
A hashtag does not a movement make.
So it's about taking action, and that can lead to hope.
And and that's what she told me.
Of course I'm going.
to be an activist.
I just, I don't want to see it all go down.
We've done too much as -- as a species.
We can't allow our intelligence and our brilliance to destroy us.
♪♪
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