Jane Fonda says she was ‘relieved’ and ‘grateful’ after Minnesota jury found Derek Chauvin guilty

Jane Fonda revealed that she was ‘relieved’ and ‘grateful’ Tuesday after learning that Derek Chauvin had been found guilty on all counts in the death of George Floyd.

The 83-year-old actress was asked for her thoughts on the verdict during a remote appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon after a jury in Minnesota returned its verdict after just 10 and a half hours of deliberation.

‘I was so relieved, so grateful to the jury, so grateful to those policemen who testified against one of their own, testified against Chauvin. That’s so important,’ Jane said.

‘Right now, the anvil of justice is hot and we have to seize it and make sure that we use it to bend the arc of history in the direction of Martin Luther King said, in the direction of justice,’ she told Jimmy, 46.

‘But the most important thing for me, as a white person, we white people have to realize this isn’t a zero sum game. You know, they get something, we lose something. No. When black people can access health care, and housing, and decent education, and living wages and so forth, it doesn’t take away from us, from white people. What we don’t realize is that all of us lose, we all suffer because of racism,’ Jane added.

‘Never was this more obvious than during the pandemic you know, when most of the front line workers were people of color and they were denied the personal protective equipment. They were not able to stay at home if they got sick, because they couldn’t afford to. We’re all in this life together, and we have to overcome racism,’ she concluded.

Jimmy then asked the longtime activist what was different about the Black Lives Matter movement that became prominent in the wake of Floyd’s murder.

‘I think for a lot of reasons, most of them having to do with the incident itself. It’s very hard to stay in one place for nine minutes. That guy was committed to killing George Floyd and we all saw it,’ Jane responded.

She said the protests were ‘more diverse than ever before’ and many people during the pandemic for the first time realized that ‘so many people, especially people of color, are barely hanging on’.

Jimmy also asked Jane if she agreed with a quote he just read saying the Chauvin case had made activists out of ordinary citizens.

‘I hope that’s true,’ Jane said noting that people from all walks of life turned out to protest systemic racism and police brutality.

Jane also was asked by Jimmy if she remembered the ‘exact moment’ she became an activist.

‘Yeah. It was 1968 and I was living in Paris because I was married to a Frenchman and American GIs who had fought in Vietnam started to teach me about the war. And they gave me a book to read by Jonathan Schell called The Village of Ben Suc. I read it one sitting and by the time I was through I was a different person,’ Jane said.