All of us who want to stay relevant as we get older could learn a thing or two from Jane Fonda. She keeps injecting herself into important conversations, using her years of know-how to make points and make a difference. We can do the same in our own realms. Her current effort? An environmental voter project that targets more than 2 million people who didn’t vote in 2016 but have indicated they’re concerned about the planet.
Climate change is Fonda’s main issue at the moment, and she’s demonstrated her commitment by…uh, demonstrating. Every Friday last fall she and other volunteers led civil disobedience protests in Washington D.C. to call attention to the need for action to save the environment. Her activism led to multiple arrests, but she kept on, until coronavirus pushed her “Fire Drill Friday” events into virtual affairs. (And she’s taken her message to the page, publishing a book, What Can I Do?: My Path from Climate Despair to Action.)
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Jane’s Environmental Voter Project
Fonda reports that in the 2016 election 10 million people who said they cared about the environment didn’t vote. “If we can ensure everyone who cares about the climate shows up at the polls/mailbox/dropbox this election season,” Jane Fonda said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “We could change the outcome of our future.”
In the run up to the 2020 election, 4,000 volunteers have contacted more than 2 million people across seven states who didn’t vote in the 2016 election but self-identify as caring about the environment.
According to a 2020 Knight Foundation survey, “chronic” non-voters are predominantly female (53 percent), white (65 percent) and between 56 and 73 (26 percent, larger than any other age group).
That’s our age group, ladies. Let’s do something about that. As Fonda says, “It’s not too late to join us as we head into these final critical days of the election.” If you want to help, contact the Vote for Climate campaign here.
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