Diane DeFries comes from a family with a long tradition of activism. Her immigrant Russian-Jewish grandmother was a union organizer in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side of New York and stressed to her children and grandchildren the need to act for the social good.
While Diane was growing up in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., the responsibility to “heal the world,” the Jewish principle of Tikkun Olam, was emphasized in her home. As teenagers in the late 1960s and early 70s, Diane and her friends took public transportation or hitchhiked from the suburbs into the capital to participate in protests against the Vietnam war, in civil rights campaigns, in environmental activism, and in women’s and gay liberation demonstrations. With youthful exuberance, they took to the streets in the nation’s capital, investing endless energy to discuss politics and philosophy, and they embraced the mantra of not trusting anyone over 30.
The arts were also emphasized in Diane’s upbringing, and she enjoyed a 40-year professional career in dance and higher education in roles ranging from chair of a university dance department to executive director of a national nonprofit organization supporting dance in colleges and universities. “Dance is an intensely personal process of attaining technical skill and expressive nuance; it can also be deeply collaborative, where trust, vulnerability, and generosity are essential,” she says. She continues to value active collaboration and thinking outside the box that are part of dance, as well as the tradition of political resistance in modern dance.
Though she never wavered from her political convictions, Diane’s focus on her career, raising a child, and caring for her aging parents left little time for activism in the political arena. As she says, “I expressed political outrage to anyone who would listen and showed up for my share of marches and demonstrations—but only if they were on the rare free weekend.” At some point, however, that was not enough for Diane. Given the urgency of climate change and the effect on future generations, she concluded, it was time to retire and to act.
In the Fall of 2023, Diane discovered Third Act. Her first Third Act experience was at the February 2024 nonviolent direct action (NVDA) in-person training in Washington, D.C., where she found others deeply committed and already doing the work.
And then she was off and running. She took part in a get-out-the-vote postcard writing party in Baltimore in March; a Washington-area Rocking Chair Rebellion demonstration at a CitiBank office in April, and Third Act DMV’s Mobilization for Climate and Democracy event with Rebecca Solnit and Jamie Raskin in June. (Third Act DMV is a coalition of Third Act working groups from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.)
Diane was first arrested, along with other demonstrators, in March 2020 while marching on the Capitol grounds for reproductive freedom while the Supreme Court heard arguments in the mifepristone case. Her arrest was captured by a New York Times photographer and included in its live updates of the protests. She happily exclaimed, “This brought me hero status in my extended family.”
More recently, Diane was a pallbearer for a makeshift coffin as part of the stagecraft for a July 8 Third Act demonstration called Elders Rise Up, at Citibank headquarters in New York. Part of the Summer of Heat campaign, the event memorialized people and animals that have perished because of climate change.
Diane is a member of Third Act Maryland’s Safeguarding Democracy committee and participated in multiple canvassing, letter/postcard writing events (including hosting two), phone banking, and ballot curing sessions for the November elections. She is currently serving on the Nonviolent Direct Action Toolkit and Resources committee as part of the Third Act NVDA Network. Most recently, Diane felt honored to be a “lamentor” in an action in the Senate Hart Building, a role that meaningfully combines her passion for the environment and her experience as a performer.
Being part of the Third Act community of like-minded, experienced elders is a great place to be an activist again. While her lefty grandmother could never have imagined the climate emergency, her spirit lives on in her descendants. As expressed by Diane’s uncle in his eulogy for his mother:
“She unflinchingly believed that people—each person—could make a difference. She discussed each political event and disaster on the basis of ‘why aren’t you doing something about it now, to put it right?’”
Third Actors are doing something now to put it right.