So many African Americans and senior citizens — who disproportionately constituted the ranks of Peoples Temple — might have lived had she used her celebrity on their behalf instead of on behalf of their captor.
"Make no mistake: empathy is not weak or woke,” Jane Fonda explained upon accepting a Lifetime Achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild this weekend. “And, by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
The 87-year-old actress told fellow members of her guild, “Community means power.”
"She learned this, or did not, the hard way half a lifetime ago.
"In 1977, after attending service at Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple in San Francisco, Fonda wrote the cult leader, “How deeply moved I was by the experience that Sunday — the atmosphere, the obvious need you have so remarkably filled in thousands of lives, how humanly, passionately, and articulately you have redefined the role of the Church, Christ, religion — I also recommit myself to your congregation as an active full participant — not only for myself, but because I want my two children to have the experience.”
"She assured Jones that “when we get back we will return to the Temple” after filming wrapped on her next movie.
"Jones cited “an Academy Award-winning actress joining our church” as one of his motivations for continuing his work.
"When reporters exposed misdeeds in the Temple, Fonda ran interference.
" 'We are familiar with the work of Reverend Jones and Peoples Temple,” Fonda, along with husband Tom Hayden, San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, California assemblyman Willie Brown, and other left-wingers, wrote in a public statement in 1977, “and have no hesitancy in commending them for their example in setting a high standard of ethics and morality in the community and also for providing enormous material assistance to poor, minority and disadvantaged people in every area of human need.”
"And those “poor, minority and disadvantaged people” looked at the rich, often white, advantaged people supporting the Temple as a reason to stay in it and as evidence of Jim Jones’s power should they ever think about getting out of it.
"Jones eventually grew frustrated with Fonda and denounced her as a “sellout.” Fonda never, at least in public, returned the favor by expressing frustration with Jones and denouncing him during his life.
"I detailed the Bay Area left’s love affair with this mass murderer in . Fonda’s admirers act — and deserve awards for the acting — as though these inconvenient truths never occurred. But they did. And Fonda refuses to own up to this dark, horrific portion of her past." . . .
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