Jane Fonda received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the SAG Awards tonight.

She concluded her speech with a rousing message that speaks to the perilous times we find ourselves today.

I will quote this conclusion in full here:

“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak, or woke.

And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.

Back to empathy,

A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening,

What is coming our way.

And even if they’re of a different political persuasion

We need to call upon our empathy and not judge

But listen from our hearts

And welcome them into our tent.

Because we are going to need a big tent

To resist successfully what is coming at us.

I made my first movie in 1958, it was the tail end of McCarthyism,

When so many careers were destroyed.

Today it’s helpful to remember though that Hollywood resisted.

We did.

Overseas brave American producers like Hannah Weinstein hired blacklisted writers.

Myrna Loy, John Huston and Billy Wilder founded the Committee for the First Amendment.

They had a radio show on ABC Radio called “Hollywood Fights Back”.

Members of the committee included every big name actor in town.

Have any of you ever watched a documentary of any of the great social movements

Like Apartheid or our Civil Rights Movement or Stonewall,

And asked yourselves

Would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge?

Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?

We don’t have to wonder anymore.

Because we are in our documentary moment.

This is it.

And it’s not a rehearsal.

This is it.

And we mustn’t for a moment kid ourselves about what’s happening.

This is big time serious, folks.

So let’s be brave.

This is a good time for a little Norma Rae or Karen Silkwood or Tom Joad.

We must not isolate.

We must stay in community.

We must help the vulnerable.

We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future.

One that is beckoning, welcoming.

One that will help people believe that, to quote the novelist Pearl Cleage,

“On the other side of the conflagration there will still be love,

There will still be beauty,

And there will be an ocean of truth for us to swim in.”

Let’s make it so.”