Sally Field Arrested In Latest Jane Fonda-Led Climate Protest In D.C.

Ted Johnson

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Less than an hour after the House Judiciary Committee approved impeachment articles against President Donald Trump, Jane Fonda and other activists were just across the street on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol for the latest in their Friday protests on climate.

Oscar winner Sally Field was among those arrested, and she and more than a dozen other demonstrators occupied the steps of the Capitol. As Capitol Police put her in plastic shackles, she raised her hands in the air and some of those in the crowd cheered.

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Asked by Deadline about the morning’s impeachment vote, Fonda said, “I’m thinking about Madrid, actually.” That was a reference to the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Spain.

Fonda herself has been arrested four times, and spent one night in jail for the acts of civil disobedience that have been staged as part of the demonstrations. Organizers do not her to be arrested again because of the possibility that she will receive a much longer sentence and unable to lead the Friday events.

The theme of Friday’s protest was on the transition for workers and communities who would be most affected by the transition to a green energy economy.

Field, who was in Washington last weekend as one of the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, told a rally crowd before her arrest, “We cannot sit back in our comfort zones and on our couches and wonder, ‘What can we do?’ We can get out. We can do something, in the rain, whatever it takes.”

She talked of starring in Norma Rae, the 1979 movie based on a true story of a North Carolina woman, Crystal Lee Sutton, who spearheads a union organizing effort at the textile factory where she works.

She noted that many companies in the textile industry, forced to pay slightly higher living wages to unionized workers ended up leaving to other countries.

“They decimated Norma Rae’s, Crystal Lee Sutton’s, communities. They were decimated. And that is because they had no transition,” she said. Field added that with the move to a sustainable economy workers can transition to “a better job, a greener job, and a workplace that will support them and their families.”

 

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