This month, we partnered with the Social Impact Entertainment (SIE) Society to honor the Committee for the First Amendment — recently relaunched by actor and activist Jane Fonda on behalf of hundreds of founding members —with the inaugural Impact Entertainment Visionaries Award. ACLU SoCal Executive Director Chandra Bhatnagar and SIE Society CEO William Nix presented the award to Fonda during the Impact+ Profit 25 Conference at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
In response to the Trump administration’s attacks on the entertainment industry and free and independent expression, the newly reimagined Committee for the First Amendment has moved swiftly to bring together a growing coalition of artists and storytellers committed to safeguarding creative freedom and resisting censorship. Founding members include Aaron Sorkin, Anne Hathaway, Ashley Nicole Black, Ayo Edebiri, Barbara Streisand, Barry Jenkins, Florence Pugh, Issa Rae, Judd Apatow, Julie Plec, Kerry Washington, Lee Daniels, Natalie Morales, Nikki Glaser, Pedro Pascal, Rosario Dawson, Sean Penn, Spike Lee, Viola Davis, and the late Rob Reiner.
From her early involvement with the ACLU to her decades of advocacy for social justice issues across the globe, Jane Fonda has used her public voice to stand firmly for constitutional freedoms—even when doing so required extraordinary courage. Her decision to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment represents a profound continuation of that work and a tribute to the artists who first united to defend freedom of expression in Hollywood more than 75 years ago.
Originally founded in 1947 by artists including Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye, the Committee for the First Amendment emerged as a courageous stand against censorship and fear during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings. By reviving this coalition today in response to renewed pressures on free speech and artistic dissent, Fonda and the committee reaffirm the enduring role of artists as guardians of truth and democratic discourse.