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After finishing an interview with NPR, Fonda, wearing her red coat and a tilted olive fedora, flitted among them like a mother bird, delivering greetings and long hugs. Then they marched toward the Capitol, Fonda leading the way, camera crews and other journalists hustling to keep up.

A stage with a Fire Drill Fridays backdrop was set up on the lawn, and among the hundreds gathered were alumni from Fonda’s high school, the Emma Willard School in Troy, N.Y.; members of Elders Climate Action, and someone dressed in a plush polar bear costume. Fonda greeted them all, and invited up speakers; among them Keener, Arquette (“Every human life depends on honoring our planet”) and Ensler, who recited a poem about the Earth that left listeners misty-eyed. Then it was off to the Senate building, where, shortly before her arrest, Fonda was asked if her civil disobedience was having its intended effect.

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The only way I can think of to meet this challenge is with more mass organizing. Young people are now fully engaged and leading the way; we’re seeing remarkable activism in frontline and indigenous communities. But there’s a group that, I think, is not pulling its weight, and it’s a group I’m now a part of. Call us “experienced Americans”—the baby boomers and silent generations that make up a huge percentage of the population, own a remarkable share of its financial assets, and vote in large numbers. As a rule, people do become more conservative as they age, but it’s not an inviolable maxim—many of the people in these generations witnessed broad cultural and political change in their early years, and now, conscious of their kids and their grandkids, they may be emerging from the primes of their lives with the skills and the resources to help make big change again. And so some of us are planning an organization called Third Act, an effort to mobilize older Americans in defense of environmental sanity and economic and racial fairness. We need a working, equitable society, both because it will do less damage and because it will be better able to cope with the damage that’s no longer preventable. If you’re part of this demographic, I hope you’ll figure out a way to help with this new venture—or that you’ll join with existing efforts such as Elders Climate Action and Great Old Broads for Wilderness. In any event, much of my writing going forward will be more closely tied to that activism. Not that I’ll give up writing for The New Yorker—I’ve been proud to be in its pages since I started as a staff writer, at the age of twenty-one. It’s the best magazine there ever was (and my colleague Elizabeth Kolbert may be the single most elegant chronicler of our climate peril); to be numbered among its contributors is an enormous honor. Because you’ve subscribed to this newsletter, the magazine will kindly e-mail you commentaries that I write for the publication in the future. (To hear from The New Yorker more often, you can also sign up for The Daily newsletter.)

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