December 12 - From the Front Lines of Workplace Sexual Harassment; The Alabama Race Observed by a Former College Student Who Marched in Selma 52 Years Ago; The Fastest Decline in Arctic Sea Ice in 1500 Years

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the issue of sexual harassment that is now migrating from Roy Moore’s past in Alabama back to the occupant in the Oval Office’s past with 56 female members of Congress asking the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s chairman to investigate charges by at least 17 women who claim they were sexually assaulted or harassed by Donald Trump. Christina Giorgio, an attorney in Manhattan who represents employees in workplace discrimination and sexual harassment disputes joins us to discuss Trump’s response to a call for his resignation from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand who he then smeared, implying that she was willing to trade sex for a campaign contribution from him. Since Christina represents a wide range of clients, we explore the broader landscape of what women have to deal with in the workplace in corporate America, government jobs and small businesses, not to mention waitresses and barmaids, and assess what kinds of changes in the law and in our culture are necessary to achieve dignity, safety and equality in the workplace.

Part 2

Then with the polls just having closed in Alabama in what is expected to be a close race, we speak with Mark Denbeaux a Professor of Law at Seton Hall’s School of Law who as a young college student 52 years ago joined the march for civil rights in Selma, Alabama and in 2015 returned to Selma for the commemoration of the 1965 “Bloody Sunday”. We discuss how much Roy Moore is a throwback to the days of George Wallace but, given the terror and brutality that Mark and the other marchers endured back then, even Moore’s election will not turn back the clock to when African Americans had no rights and were lynched with impunity.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the latest annual Arctic Report Card for 2017 with its author Jeremy Mathis, the Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA’s Arctic Research Program. He joins us to discuss the unprecedented record rate at which the Arctic ice cap is melting, the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in at least 1500 years, thus reducing the amount of light reflected back into space trapping heat which adds to global warming as the melting ice causes sea levels to rise.