On Friday a Fire Drill Friday rally was held in front of Councilmember Joe Buscaino’s office in San Pedro, California. The protesters delivered a letter to the councilman demanding that oil wells be restricted to at least 2500 feet from residential areas. After that, a march was held in Wilmington at local oil refinery Warren E&P. Jane Fonda, the founder, and leader of Fire Drill Friday protests took the opportunity to endorse Bernie Sanders as her choice for president.
The two cities south of Los Angeles were chosen because they have the biggest urban oil fields in the country and with extremely close proximity to homes and schools. In past months Fonda has expressed approval of the environmental platforms of Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Tom Steyer but of those three, Bernie is the last to remain in the race. Fonda likes to have her celebrity friends join in – this week Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterson, Diane Lane, and Rosanna Arquette answered the call. Tomlin and Waterson are co-stars with Fonda in Grace and Frankie, a Netflix series currently filming.
As usual, Fonda avoided any action that might find her under arrest. She isn’t quite woke enough to do any more jail time after she spent a night in jail in Washington, D.C. Her friends now volunteer to be arrested in her place. This week, though, Sam Waterson took a page from Fonda’s playbook and also bowed out of anything that might lead to his arrest as he had an interview to get to after the rally. In other words, Fonda and Waterson didn’t participate in the march. The stars did mingle with the little people, though, even with the looming threat of the coronavirus. No hugs, just elbow bumps.
To kick off the day, dozens of supporters and “Fire Drill Friday” staffers gathered in a San Pedro ballroom —most wearing red to mirror Fonda’s now-iconic coat — to lay out the day’s schedule, take a pledge for nonviolence and discuss what would happen at the oil refinery march, where Fonda was not allowed to physically take part in the protest following her number of arrests last year: “The judge in DC said I had to have three months with no arrests, so I can risk arrest again in May,” she said.
Fonda, Tomlin, Waterston and Lane mingled with many of the activists ahead of the 11 a.m. rally — opting for elbow bumps instead of hugs and handshakes amid coronavirus concerns — as Fonda celebrated how though her A-list friends came to support, the stars are not the centerpiece of the event: “One of the things that I really like is that the celebrities aren’t making speeches themselves, they’re introducing the people whose voices aren’t usually heard,” as Tomlin chimed in, “Jane is a premiere friend and I like to be on her side of any issue, but when you see all these people come out, especially during the corona, and just here because they have the spirit to be here, that’s sort of moving and terrific. I want to be here to put in my two cents.”
Jane Fonda chose Sanders because he is the “climate candidate” in the race. Sam Waterson endorsed Joe Biden after Mike Bloomberg dropped out. Waterson calls himself a moderate who hopes Biden will make climate change his top priority. In their endorsements, Fonda sounds dazed and confused as to what exactly Bernie’s plan is and Waterson sounds naive about Joe Biden. Doesn’t he remember that Joe and his grifter son Hunter were thick as thieves with Burisma, an energy company in Ukraine?
“Bernie is the climate candidate, he has a good plan, and because climate to me is the most important thing I’m urging people to support the climate candidate,” she told THR ahead of the rally. Tomlin, meanwhile, said, “Bernie hasn’t really put out a specific plan but I know he’s very much on the right side of that issue — I don’t know about Biden, I’m not sure that he is. I feel like Elizabeth was and she probably had a real plan, and Elizabeth is the person I was pulling for, of course now we’ve lost her for the moment,” adding with the remaining two candidate’s climate change policies, “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I hope they do enough.”
Waterston, the self-declared “moderate” in comparison to his Grace and Frankie co-stars, said that he was a supporter of Michael Bloomberg, who has now endorsed Biden since dropping out of the race.
“I hope, expect, and for whatever small impact I can have, will advocate for [climate change] being at the absolute top of Joe Biden’s agenda,” he told THR. “I think it’s actually a winning strategy, I think people are very ready to hear, this is the one great issue of our time and we’re going to go at it. I think all of the other issues of our time, and there’s lots of them and they are terribly important — it’s not that they pale by comparison, it’s that they all get impact and importance from their connection to climate change.”
Protest organizers said about 500 people gathered for the rally and about 100 participated in the march. The message is the same each time – fossil fuels must be eliminated within the next 30 years, and begin by cutting fossil fuel emissions by 50% in the next decade. What is never acknowledged during her rallies is that emissions in the United States already are dropping. No matter the progress, the only satisfactory response for the climate change alarmists is the total elimination of the fossil fuels energy sector. Meanwhile, they all live quite comfortably thanks to fossil fuels.
Hanoi Jane was honored Thursday by Visionary Women in Beverly Hills during an International Women’s Day event. She told the crowd that she’s “building an army” for climate change, with the approval of some U.S. senators with whom she recently met. “I said, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ And they said, ‘Yes. You’re building an army. … Make it big.’” The use of the word army is rich, given her infamous trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam war where she accused the American military of war crimes as she aided and abetted the enemy.
It’s good to be a tone-deaf hypocrite in Hollywood. Instead of being regarded as a hero, she should have been shunned and run out of the spotlight years ago.
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