[Reporter: Susan Ormiston]
[Reporter] Jane Fonda has always been well Jane.
Talented, passionate, opinionated.
A successful actress and businesswoman for 50 years.
On a Friday in Washington, she joins a jumble of people at a Lutheran Church
to marshal a march against climate change.
[Woman shouting] Five minutes, this is your five-minute warning.
Start making your way to that door.
Jane Fonda's an activist again.
[Reporter] Are you all ready for today?
Yeah, yeah.
[Reporter] Fonda has agreed we follow her on this so-called Fire Drill Friday.
This city is consumed by the prospect of impeachment.
Why are you here now?
Because this is when I could come.
I got the idea the beginning of September
inspired by Greta Thunberg.
I decided I needed to leave my comfort zone
and put my body on the line and engage in civil disobedience
and risk getting arrested.
Because we need to step up with bolder actions now.
It's a real crisis.
Greta is a teenager, you're in another season of your life.
What have you learned through your experience that helps in this type of cause?
I'll tell you what I've learned:
People who are organized can change policy.
People who are together unified and organized around a strategic goal
can change anything.
Where's the front of the line?
[Reporter] The group's not large at first.
Concerned citizens
veteran rabble-rousers
peppered with a few notable faces.
Actresses Kyra Sedgwick and Taylor Schilling.
Andy Leibovitz herself famous is shooting the scene for Vogue magazine.
Biodiversity on land and sea is under severe attack.
Fonda's been out here every Friday since September.
A classic style protest:
March somewhere, target something important to the cause.
She's been arrested four times here for civil disobedience.
And once carted off to jail overnight.
Part of the plot.
It's quite an experience to know that you are powerless.
That you have been handcuffed and that you were completely in the control of the police.
Now because I'm white and famous I'm not going to be treated badly I don't think.
What did your jailers say to you.
They couldn't believe that I was there voluntarily.
It was dramatic because all night long other people in their cells
were banging on the walls and shaking their cell doors and just howls of despair.
Were you in a cell by yourself?
Yes, I was put in a cell by myself.
A guard was put outside my door that freaked me out more than anything.
Who were they guarding me from?
The only people that could get in were guards.
You know, I mean it's you sleep on a metal slab.
It's not pleasant.
I mean there are cynics you've met them all your career in your life
saying oh this is a celebrity stunt with a famous actress.
But really is this the type of pressure that will change anything?
Yeah, well I'm not alone.
This is part of a movement.
So what do you bring Jane Fonda?
I bring celebrity and that's very important.
You wouldn't be here interviewing me if I wasn't a celebrity.
What does that do?
Is it going to change policy no.
But it's going to wake people up.
It inspires them and it gives them a role model for what they can be doing.
Today's target is black rock.
A big global investment company.
A splinter group gets ahead to occupy the front of the DC offices.
They've invested more than 90 billion dollars in fossil fuels.
Divest, divest from the fossil fuel industry.
If we have just ten years to stop the climate crisis
and if we don't we're all going down with them.
We need a planet more than Blackrock needs their profits.
[Reporter] Are you gonna try to go in?
We're not sure yet.
Police know they're coming.
A downtown street is shut down.
Watch out for the sidewalk.
The crowds growing larger now.
Fonda is pushed to the middle and she takes up the coast.
But leaves room in front for the young activists.
She takes her role seriously and with huge energy.
[Jane] The young people who all around the world by the tens of millions
bravely struck from school on Fridays
and they've inspired us all folks to stand up with them.
And I'm so grateful.
Don't stop and we won't stop either, thank you.
We continue to place our health and safety in the hands of utility executives.
[Reporter] Fonda's no stranger to activism woven through her career
with protests from Indigenous and women's rights.
[Jane] Silence is no longer an option.
[Reporter] To the Iraq war and the Alberta oil sands.
[Jane] The eyes of the world are on this area.
[Reporter] Provoking controversy still today.
Accept it Jane, you failed with repeal 77 you're going to fail with the green New Deal.
We don't need you here in D.C
Look at this.
This is Jane Fonda's mug shot from 1970.
[Reporter] Back then Fonda was a famous agitator in the anti-war movement.
Earning the nickname Hanoi Jane after she posed with the North Vietnamese.
She later apologized but in 1970 fresh from an anti-war speech in Canada
U.S. authorities pounced.
You were arrested crossing the Canadian-U.S.
That's right, that was my first arrest.'
-- in 1970?
Yes, that was my first arrest.
And what was that for?
The police told me this.
We are on orders from the White House to arrest me.
Seized all my records and my phone books and everything
and accused me of smuggling drugs which were actually vitamin pills.
But they were pretty rough.
The cops were rough and it was orders from the White House.
They wanted to stop your Vietnam protests.
Yeah.
What did you learn from that experience?
Because you were criticized as Hanoi Jane for some of that
and you apologized later in life?
So you must have learned something from that you took forward?
Don't let the bastards get you down.
Just keep going you know the more they attacked me the more I dug in my heels.
If they thought I was some you know --
Some soft Hollywood starlet daughter of Henry Fonda
and they could bully me, no.
I wasn't going to let 'em get me.
I just kept going.
You still feel that way?
Yeah.
Only see now I'm old.
And so I feel even more capable of standing up.
The afternoons getting long.
Seven protesters have now locked themselves to the doors of Wells Fargo, a U.S. bank.
[Reporter] They're chained to the bank.
[Protester] Yeah, they can't use their hands so we're providing them with water and cough drops.
[Reporter] And are they prepared to be arrested?
[Protester] That's up to them.
[Reporter] D.C. police are patient.
Seems a small dose of civil disobedience will be tolerated
this time.
They know the drill.
Especially with Jane Fonda front and center.
She'll be back the next Friday.
And the next one until mid January when she returns to Los Angeles
to tape the next season of Grace and Franklin with comedian Lily Tomlin.
What would Frankie say about Grace out on the streets?
She'd say 'Go Grace!'
She'd love it.
She may join me.
Grace and Frankie do jail.
[Reporter] She's counting on one more night in jail.
Maybe her birthday present.
She turns 82 this Saturday.
Susan Ormiston, CBC News Washington