Imagine hearing a knock on your door and opening it to find actor Jane Fonda campaigning for a local election candidate. 

That’s how the 86-year-old actor and activist is spending her time this election season. She’s campaigning around the country for local candidates who support action on climate change, building on her years of climate-related protests.

Fonda told CBS News that the campaigning work felt so necessary that she told her agent she wouldn’t be taking any acting jobs this year, to make sure she had time to canvass. 

“This year I said to my agent ‘I’m sorry, I can’t work.’ When the election is happening that’s going to determine the future, I couldn’t do it,” Fonda, a two-time Academy Award winner, explained. “I couldn’t do it. Next year I’ll do it.” 

Fonda has hand-picked over 130 lower-level candidates who will stand up to the fossil fuel industry using her political action committee, JanePAC. 

“This is the last election that can have a major effect on climate,” Fonda said. 

Supporting “climate champions” 

Many of the candidates Fonda is supporting are running for under-the-radar offices like Portland City Council or a school board seat in Virginia. She’s already raised $4 million to help those candidates get elected. 

“That low-level candidate could, first of all, could rise up and become governor of the state. You want to groom them to rise into leadership positions as climate champions,” Fonda said. “If we have the right people elected to office, we can do it.” 

It’s far from the first time Fonda has stepped into the world of activism. In 1972, she made a controversial visit to Vietnam opposing the war, and in the 1990s, she marched to support women’s reproductive rights. 

In 2019, she launched her Fire Drill Fridays, a protest series inspired by Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, to draw attention to global warming. She was arrested five times during those protests, even spending her 82nd birthday behind bars.  

“It was aimed not at the government. It was aimed at the great unasked,” Fonda said of that protest series. “There’s like 70% of Americans that are really concerned about the climate crisis, and when they’re asked why they don’t take action, they say, ‘Well, nobody asked.'” 

“You need people in the halls of power” 

Now, Fonda has made the move from protest to politics. 62% of Americans think that politicians should do more to fight climate change, according to the Pew Research Center, many politicians on both sides of the aisle vote against legislative solutions. Her hope is that helping elect people who think differently will make a difference. 

“Nonviolent civil disobedience and protests historically have changed history, but you need people in the halls of power with ears and a heart to hear the protests, to hear the demands,” Fonda said. 

Going door-to-door and working to raise money for the local candidates she supports has been “so fun,” she said. 

“It’s a lot of work. Oh, it’s so much fun. Ever since I’m doing 100% of what I’m capable (of) in confronting the climate crisis, I don’t get depressed anymore,” Fonda said. “I get angry, but I’m not depressed. Hope is a muscle. It’s like the heart. It’s a muscle, and you have to activate it to feel it.” 

Fonda said that the work of campaigning has helped her feel hopeful and fulfilled. 

“I wouldn’t be doing it if I wasn’t hopeful,” Fonda said. “Everybody needs meaning in their life. I’m old, so I think a lot about being on my deathbed and I know that when you’re on your deathbed, you want to feel that it’s been worthwhile.”  

David Schechter

David Schechter is a national environmental correspondent and the host of “On the Dot with David Schechter,” a guided journey to explore how we’re changing the earth and earth is changing us.