Jane Fonda brought New York‘s Town Hall to its feet on Sunday night with a fiery, defiant speech defending the First Amendment and she had a small army of Hollywood’s biggest stars standing right behind her.
The 88-year-old screen legend headlined “Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment,” and the turnout read like an awards-show seating chart. Julia Roberts, Robert De Niro, Bette Midler, Tessa Thompson, Ayo Edebiri, Lily Gladstone, Patti Smith, Joy Reid and Ms. Rachel were all on the bill, packing the historic venue for a night that fused performance with pointed political speech.
It was no ordinary concert, either. The event was deliberately staged on the same night as “UFC Freedom 250” at the White House, a Flag Day spectacle marking President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday, and was organized in concert with the “No Kings” movement as a direct counter-celebration. Fonda, a longtime and vocal Trump critic, told the crowd the country had “come under attack.”
What Jane Fonda Said
Fonda didn’t hold back. She told the audience that “the government and its cronies” are “routinely violating” the First Amendment “to silence artists,” pointing to the shuttering of the Kennedy Center, the defunding of museums and the National Endowment for the Arts, book bans, and the cancellation of TV hosts who speak out. “It’s really bad,” she said. “And it’s being allowed by cowardly corporations. I’m not gonna name names right now.“
The line that brought the house down was her call for solidarity. “They come for one of us,” Fonda declared, “by God, they come for all of us.” She urged Hollywood to stay “unified, activated and unwilling to engage in anticipatory obedience.“
She also reached for common ground, insisting the fight wasn’t partisan. “It’s not about Democrat or Republican, or left or right,” she said. “It’s about right or wrong.” Free-expression rights, she added, “are for everyone” and must be defended “even if we don’t agree with them.“
The Reaction Was Split Right Down The Middle
Not everyone was cheering. The pushback reached the White House itself, where press spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed Fonda’s advocacy and pointedly called her “Hanoi Jane” in a statement to NBC News reviving the half-century-old nickname tied to her 1972 trip to North Vietnam. Critics on the right hammered the messenger, with one mocking the actress for “cosplaying” a free-speech warrior and reviving a “decades-old group” mainly “to smite President Donald Trump.” Others seized on the optics, noting that orchestra seats to the “people’s” free-speech concert reportedly went for around $330 apiece.
Fonda’s defenders saw it differently to them, she’s a lifelong activist putting her name on the line at 88. As she’d written in an earlier plea to fellow artists: “I’ve been celebrated, and I’ve been branded an enemy of the state. But I can tell you this: this is the most frightening moment of my life.” Supporters argued the very fact that one speech drew a White House rebuttal proved exactly the point she was making.
Whatever side of the aisle you land on, one thing was undeniable on Sunday night when Jane Fonda called, Hollywood still showed up, and the country still argued about it.
