Nearly 80 years after McCarthyism, Jane Fonda relaunches Committee for the First Amendment: ‘The stakes are too high’
By Elizabeth Wagmeister, CNN
(CNN) — Eight decades after Hollywood legends like Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland launched the Committee for the First Amendment to stand up to McCarthyism, Jane Fonda is bringing back the organization at a time she calls “the most frightening moment of my life.”
The younger Fonda issued a plea to her Hollywood community in a letter shared with CNN, asking her peers to join the relaunched committee, writing, “I’m 87 years old. I’ve seen war, repression, protest, and backlash. 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.”
“When I feel scared, I look to history,” Fonda wrote. “I wish there were a secret playbook with all the answers – but there never has been.” She went on to underscore the value of solidarity and “binding together, finding bravery in numbers too big to ignore, and standing up for one another.”
“That’s why I believe the time is now to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment – the same Committee my father, Henry Fonda, joined with other artists during the McCarthy era, when so many were silenced or even imprisoned simply for their words and their craft.”
More than 550 Hollywood figures have joined Fonda’s fight, adding their names as supporters of her newly relaunched committee, with signatories include including Aaron Sorkin, Barbra Streisand, Glenn Close, Gracie Abrams, JJ Abrams, John Legend, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julianne Moore, Kerry Washington, Larry David, Lily Tomlin, Natalie Portman, Nikki Glaser, Patti LuPone, Pedro Pascal, Quinta Brunson, Rob Reiner, Rosie O’Donnell, Sean Penn, Spike Lee, Viola Davis, Wanda Sykes, Winona Ryder, Whoopi Goldberg and more.
The Committee for the First Amendment was first created in 1947 during the McCarthy Era in an effort to defend free speech and oppose government activity. At the time, the committee was met with backlash for its suspected ties to the Communist Party, which many of its famous Hollywood members balked at.
Fonda’s relaunch of the committee comes after Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air earlier this month following public pressure from President Donald Trump’s chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, in response to comments Kimmel made in a monologue about Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer. Kimmel’s show has since returned to the airwaves, but the situation triggered a multi-day news cycle about free speech and corporate capitulation to political pressure.
“The stakes are too high, and silence is too costly,” Fonda wrote in her letter this week.
“They’re betting on our fear and our silence,” she added. “But our industry – and artists around the world – have a long history of refusing to be silenced, even in the darkest times.”
Fonda did not specify any government leaders by name in her letter, but a spokesperson for the Committee for the First Amendment told CNN that Fonda was inspired to reconvene the committee in response to “the onslaught of attacks on free speech from the current administration” and hopes to put on a “united front against government censorship, intimidation, and fear.”
“Free speech and free expression are the inalienable rights of every American of all backgrounds and political beliefs – no matter how liberal or conservative you may be,” the committee said in their statement. “The ability to criticize, question, protest, and even mock those in power is foundational to what America has always aspired to be.”
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