Los Angeles: Two days ahead of the Academy Awards, two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda brought her Fire Drill Friday campaign against global warming to Los Angeles on Friday, demanding a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions over the next 10 years.
She was joined by celebrities including veteran TV producer Norman Lear and Joaquin Phoenix, who is expected to win a best actor trophy on Sunday for his lead role in "Joker."
The rally, which drew a crowd of a few hundred to the steps of City Hall, was the 15th that Fonda has held since last fall. The first 14 were in Washington, D.C., where she and others were arrested multiple times.
"We marched together and we protested together and chanted and sang together and we got arrested together," the 82-year-old actress, dressed in a bright red jacket and red hat, told the crowd. "The purpose was to raise awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis."
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Friday's rally took place just as pre-Oscar events were kicking off all over town. Fonda, a best actress winner for the films "Klute" and "Coming Home," only mentioned the ceremony in passing, saying of Phoenix, "we'll see him on television on Sunday."
Fonda said she was excited to be home in Los Angeles because California, plagued by wildfires and drought in recent years, "is the front line of the crisis."
Her audience, largely quiet until she took the microphone, ranged in age from young to old, with many carrying signs supporting the cause.
Fonda, a prominent activist since her early 1970s opposition to the Vietnam War, asked the crowd to demand among other things a 50% reduction in fossil fuel emissions over the next 10 years. She wants that followed by a phaseout of the fossil fuel infrastructure over the rest of the century.
With inputs from APTN
