{"id":184358,"date":"2025-10-02T06:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T06:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/184358\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T06:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T06:17:10","slug":"they-come-for-one-of-us-they-come-for-all-of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/184358\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They Come for One of Us\u2026 They Come for All of Us\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Share<\/a><\/p>\n

For weeks, I\u2019ve been shouting into the void<\/a>, urging the most influential people in Hollywood to stand up against authoritarianism. Today, Jane Fonda answered the call (or maybe I answered hers). <\/p>\n

The Oscar-winning legend, an actress, producer and longtime activist, has reconstituted<\/a>\u00a0the Committee for the First Amendment<\/a>, a group first formed in the 1940s to fight against the House Un-American Activities Committee, which targeted protesters and questioned the loyalties of American citizens \u2014 eventually resulting in prison terms for the Hollywood Ten<\/a>, a group of producers, writers and directors accused of being Communists. The fervor would soon spiral into McCarthyism, named for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led a Black List that raged through the entertainment industry, destroying countless careers and lives in the process.<\/p>\n

When the Committee for the First Amendment first launched in 1947, Fonda\u2019s father, Henry Fonda, was among the founding members, alongside Golden Age legends like Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and more. (Fonda said she found a recording of one of the group\u2019s meetings when she was preparing for her speech at the Screen Actors Guild Awards<\/a> earlier this year, and she might someday play the audio for new Committee members.) <\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that can defeat authoritarianism is people coming together in large numbers, as solidarity is unity,\u201d Fonda told me on today\u2019s Rushfield Lunch. <\/p>\n

This was Fonda\u2019s first interview about the reformation of the Committee for the First Amendment, which relaunched on Wednesday with signatures from more than 550 of Hollywood\u2019s biggest names (plus yours truly).<\/p>\n

\u201cOur opponents, for decades, have wanted us to praise individuality. It has been raised up on a pedestal. It wasn\u2019t always this way,\u201d Fonda told me. \u201cI was born in 1937, so I know a time in the United States when individualism was not the way to go. People were unified. People were together. There was a sense of common good. We have to get that back.\u201d<\/p>\n

During our insightful conversation, a call-to-action for the industry that\u2019s in dire need of such rabble-rousing<\/a>, Fonda explained how Hollywood is so well-positioned to fight back against Trump and his cronies. In fact, it\u2019s something she sought to do before Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s recent suspension<\/a> following government pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re creatives, we\u2019re storytellers, and we should be able to model creative, nonviolent, non-cooperation methods of resisting authoritarianism,\u201d Fonda said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we do. Freedom is essential to artists. It\u2019s in our blood. We can\u2019t function without the freedom of expression and of speech. So let\u2019s get together in large numbers, and let\u2019s find creative ways to ridicule the awfulness that is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plans for the Committee are still being formed, Fonda said today, and I\u2019ll be on the lookout for concrete initiatives to emerge. However, she emphasized the importance of a unified front, a sentiment that was evident in the industry\u2019s response to Kimmel\u2019s ouster.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur democracy will fail if we continue on the ethos of every person for themselves,\u201d she said bluntly. \u201cStrength in numbers. They come for one, darn it, they\u2019re going to come for all of us. This is not \u2014 I don\u2019t feel \u2014 about building, yet again, another organization. We want to build a movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Please watch our inspiring conversation above and read the full, fiery transcript below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Share For weeks, I\u2019ve been shouting into the void, urging the most influential people in Hollywood to stand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-184358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}