Jane Fonda will host a June 14 concert in New York City that is being staged as a counterprogrammed event to President Donald Trump’s UFC match on the White House lawn. The 88-year-old actor and activist is set to front “Rise Up, Sing Out” at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall, with a livestream also planned.
The timing is the point. Fonda said there were “over 5,000 registered viewing parties around the country in red states and purple states and blue states,” a sign that the event is being built to travel well beyond Manhattan on the same night Trump hosts UFC Freedom 250. For organizers, the concert is being framed as a free-speech and First Amendment gathering, but it is also clearly designed as a rival to a celebration tied to Trump’s birthday.
Town Hall gives the event a historical backdrop that fits that pitch. The venue is a New York landmark founded by suffragists in 1921, and the concert is being presented by the Committee for the First Amendment in collaboration with Indivisible and No Kings. All proceeds will go back to the committee, tying the fundraiser directly to the cause being promoted on stage.
The guest list also underscores how aggressively the event is being positioned. Rufus Wainwright, Bette Midler, Julia Roberts, Patti Smith, Sasha Allen and Joy Reid are among the public figures and performers expected to appear, alongside Fonda. She has spent five decades as a vocal advocate for democracy and social issues, and she cast the moment in unusually blunt terms, saying music has always been part of resistance movements and that this is a documentary moment.
That is what makes the June 14 lineup more than a one-night concert. Fonda is betting that a show built around speech, song and a large online audience can stand in the shadow of Trump’s spectacle and still feel like the bigger civic statement. What remains unknown is how many will fill Town Hall in person, but the number of registered viewing parties suggests the audience may be measured well beyond the theater doors.
