‘Break your silence’: Jane Fonda leads rally against Trump crackdown on arts and media | Donald Trump

Actor Jane Fonda joined journalists, musicians and writers outside the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington to urge US citizens to “break their silence” and “stand tall against authoritarianism”.

One damp but defiant rally At the event hosted by Fonda’s First Amendment Committee on Friday, about a hundred guests gathered to hear speakers and singers critique book bans, political censorship and other threats to free speech under Donald Trump.

“Today, books are being banned, plaques and monuments commemorating historical events that this administration wants to forget are being removed,” Fonda said, speaking on stage under a gray, rainy sky. “Museums, the National Endowment for the Arts, state arts councils, public broadcasting—they are all being defunded.”

The choice of the Kennedy Center as a backdrop drew attention: the US president took control of the national arts complex, targeted its so-called “woke” program, added his name to its marble facade, and announced that it would be closed for two years of renovations. Dozens of layoffs began this week.

Fonda observed: “This beloved bastion of art became a symbol of what was happening. The center was effectively silenced after the artists refused to bow to ideological demands and racist erasure of history.”

“For indication, Trump is supposedly shutting it down for at least two years to do repairs, and has even suggested that it might have to be stripped down to the smallest detail. What will he do? Will he build another ballroom where he can dance and play the violin like Nero while his country burns?”

The 88-year-old has an illustrious career as an artist — she won two best actress Oscars — and an activist whose history dates back to the Vietnam war. Last year, he re-established the Committee on the First Amendment, a McCarthy-era initiative that his father, Henry Fonda, also founded to combat Hollywood blacklists.

He said that “the committee felt it was time to expose the scope and depth of the attacks on the bedrock of our democracy (the first amendment) and to encourage you, the press, and American citizens in general to understand that it is time to break your silence and stand tall against rapidly spreading and consolidating authoritarianism. We know that silence spreads when fear prevails. We must not allow it.”

Friday’s event, called “Artists United for Our Freedoms”, included harsh criticism of the administration’s crackdown on the press. senior publishers Joy Reid and Jim Acosta painted a bleak portrait of a media landscape cowed by political pressure and corporate consolidation. They called on the press not to exaggerate.

Reid said: “We live in an autocracy and you know the media is at least tainted or at least reluctant to give you the facts, even though not every news anchor and journalist calls it an autocracy, they don’t call it fascism and they don’t describe it as a regime.

“If it acts like a regime, if it arrests like a regime, if it prints money with the president’s face on it like a regime, if it steals the Kennedy Center like a regime to glorify the president of the United States, if the Supreme Court kneels to it like a regime, if the speaker of the House of Representatives gives the president a fake, made-up new bounty that he’s the only one taking as if it were a regime, if it smells like a regime, if it smells like a diaper, then it’s a regime, baby, it’s a regime.”

Jessica GonzálezThe co-chairman of media policy watchdog Free Press has detailed the dangers of billionaires buying up media empires to curry favor with the White House. He condemned the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Brothers, arguing that oligarchs were systematically dismantling diversity efforts and installing “bias watchdogs” to appease management.

The attack on the written word was another focus. Novelist Ann Patchett has argued that although more than 300 book titles have been deleted from school libraries, the truly dangerous items remain completely unregulated. “Which book do you think is as dangerous as an iPhone?” he asked the crowd, noting how mobile devices can fill a child’s life with anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

“No one bans anything they love. So we are a nation in love with phones and guns, no matter how dangerous, and so conversations about keeping our children safe are relegated to books by default.”

comedy writer Five Hearts He described how a picture book tour was derailed in Montana by a movement claiming to oppose cancel culture, and showed how local school boards are increasingly succumbing to intimidation. Kalb also detailed the administration’s campaign against late-night comedians. “These permanent and temporary cancellations aren’t just about controlling jokes. This is about controlling criticism of this administration.”

To illustrate the historical gravity of the moment, actors Billy Porter, Griffin Dunne, and Sam Waterston dramatically recited the House Un-American Activities Committee testimony of Paul Robeson, the pioneering Black singer and activist whose career was destroyed by McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Waterston, who starred in the movie The Killing Fields and the TV series The Newsroom, told the meeting: “What’s happening here at the Kennedy Center is not a culture war sideshow. As the anti-authoritarian playbook says, before the camps, before the purges, before the marches, there is a theater blackout. The gallery closed, the comedian silenced, the musician banned. This is no coincidence. The attack on artistic expression in America is at the heart of the authoritarian project.””

folk singer Joan BaezThe veteran of countless civil rights struggles announced that he considered returning the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor but ultimately decided against it. “This would be admitting defeat,” he said. “This means that we surrender to a tyrant and a tyrant who does his best to deprive us of our freedoms, our joy.

“I will hold on to that glorious rainbow ribbon trophy and continue to fight like hell alongside all of you until we reclaim our right to speak freely, tell our history, speak the truth, and speak our freedom.”

Baez joined the singer Maggie Rogers He performed a moving rendition of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, followed by an a cappella performance of the civil rights-era anthem Ain’t Gonna Let Everyone Turn Me ‘Round.

Other performers included country-folk singer Kristy Lee, who recently withdrew from performing at the Kennedy Center due to political censorship concerns. Baez and Fonda will also attend the No Kings rally in St. Paul, Minnesota on Saturday.

Fonda warned: “The public may think all this doesn’t affect them, but it does. If we don’t fight back, the news we receive will become increasingly fake. We won’t be allowed to know what really happened. Our children’s academic curricula will essentially be censored. Ticket prices for cultural events will rise while quality declines. Books and movies will become more superficial, lacking nuance and complexity.”

He recalled being in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and witnessing the bulldozing of an exhibition of so-called “degenerate art”. “This is the direction we’re going if we don’t wake up and stop what’s happening,” he said.