JanePAC founder, Jane Fonda, was honored with the Life Achievement Award at the annual SAG Awards in Los Angeles last night.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who's done great work to stop Big Oil in California, by the way) presented the honor, describing Jane as a woman whose “life on and off the screen has simply been epic,” and praising her endless energy, "for the love of God! Slow down, Jane. You’re making us all look like shit.” Julia also celebrated one of our favorite Jane-accolades: being included on Richard Nixon's "enemies list."
There were too many joyful, powerful, funny moments to summarize, so we recommend taking it all in at the full recording above, but here are our toplines:
Reflecting on her 65-year career, she said, "I love acting. We get to open people’s mind to new ideas, take them beyond what they understand of the world and help them laugh when things are tough, like now. For a woman like me who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s when women weren’t supposed to have opinions and get angry, acting gave me a chance to play angry women with opinions, which as you know is a bit of a stretch for me.”
Celebrating community, labor and the role unions play in resistance, she said, "I'm a big believer in unions. They have our backs. They bring us into community and they give us power. Community means power. And this is really important right now when workers power is being attacked and community is being weakened."
Calling others to action in this critical moment in American history, she said, “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like Apartheid, or our Civil Rights Movement, or Stonewall — and asked yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses, and the batons, and the dogs? We don't have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it. And it's not a rehearsal. This is it. And we mustn't for a moment kid ourselves about what's happening. This is big time serious folks. So let's be brave."
Offering clear calls to action for her peers and the country, she said, "We must not isolate. We must stay in community. We must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future."
Setting the record straight, she said, "Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people."
We're so proud of you, Jane.
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