Jane Fonda will host a star-studded concert called the "Rise Up, Sing Out" concert at Town Hall in New York City on June 14 at 7:30 p.m., scheduled to run at the same time as the UFC Freedom 250 match on the White House Lawn and the former president’s 80th birthday celebrations.
The event’s lineup includes Rufus Wainwright, Bette Midler, Julia Roberts, Patti Smith, Sasha Allen and Joy Reid, and Fonda herself is expected to appear. Fonda said, "Not only is it going on in the theater, but we have thousands—I think over 5,000 registered viewing parties around the country in red states and purple states and blue states." A livestream will carry the performance beyond the hall, and event organizers say all proceeds will go back to the Committee for the First Amendment.
The concert is organized by the Committee for the First Amendment in collaboration with Indivisible and No Kings and is being positioned as a free-speech and democracy-focused counter-event. Its promotional language leans into that frame: "In a moment when our fundamental freedoms are under threat, music has always led the way," and "From the civil rights movement to today, artists have been at the forefront of the fight for justice and free expression." Town Hall itself, opened by suffragists in 1921, provides an explicit historical backdrop for that framing.
Fonda has linked the show to broader movements and to the long role of music in protest. She said, "Music has always been part of movements" and added, "Of resistance movements, the civil rights movement." Calling the evening "This is our documentary moment," she made clear she is treating June 14 as an act of public demonstration as much as a performance. "History is going to write about this, and I don’t want to be on the side of people who said, ‘Oh my God, things are so bad, what am I going to do?’ No. I want to be out in the front." The host is 88.
That dual identity — free-speech celebration and explicit rival to the former president’s festivities — is the event’s friction. Organizers present music and speech as the rationale, while timing and messaging also cast the concert as counterprogramming to a White House Lawn UFC match tied to the president’s milestone birthday. The same logistics that make the concert an artistic program also make it a political moment aimed, in part, at undercutting the rival spectacle.
Practical details for audiences are straightforward: the show begins at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall and will be available via livestream for registered groups and individuals. Organizers highlight the network of viewing parties as the instrument for national reach: more than 5,000 registered watching sites, they say, stretch across states of different political leaning. All proceeds will be returned to the Committee for the First Amendment, reinforcing the organizers’ claim that the effort is both cultural and civic.
What to watch on the night: the celebrity appearances inside Town Hall, the size and visibility of the registered viewing parties, and the livestream’s distribution and social visibility. Those are the measurable signals that the event’s backers point to when they claim a nationwide moment rather than a single-venue gathering.
If the question is how large and visible the pushback will be, the clearest answer is where the organizers already placed the bet: on broadcast and distributed viewing parties. The Town Hall performance will be the anchor, but the event’s reach will be determined by the livestream metrics and the activity around the more than 5,000 registered viewing parties — the concrete measures that can turn a one-night concert into a nationwide counterprogram.
