<figure><figcaption> Kirsten Gillibrand( gillibrand.senate.gov)</figcaption></figure>

Program transcript:

Grant Reeher: Welcome to the Campbell Conversations, I'm Grant Reeher. My guest today is United States Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. She's been representing New York in the Senate since 2009. Senator Gillibrand, welcome to the program.

Kirsten Gillibrand: Thank you so much.

GR: We appreciate having you. Let me just start, I know that for a long time now you've been out in front on issues of sexual assault and gender and women in the military and also the military justice system. Tell our listeners what's been the nature of your recent work in that area and have there been any significant accomplishments that you'd want to share?

KG: Well, yes, last year, we finally, after about ten years of work, passed a fundamental change to how we address sexual violence in the military. We are now taking those crimes, along with murder or other harassment related crimes, other violent related crimes out of the chain of command and giving the review of that crime to a trained, independent military prosecutor. And they will review the claims and decide whether it's a prosecutable offense. That was passed into law last year as part of our defense bill and now my job is to make sure we actually implement it. We are training the lawyers, we are - I think their requirement is to have everything up and ready by January. And starting January, all new cases will go through this independent legal system. So I am hopeful that this independence and professionalism gives more hope to survivors that they can report these crimes and that justice is possible, that the rigor and professionalism of this new system will allow for more investigations and hopefully more convictions.

GR:  And you've also done work on sexual assault in the civilian workplace, I believe. So, tell us what you've been able to change there in that regard.

KG: So, in the civilian world we realized, because we heard a lot of stories about workplace violence and workplace harassment, and I had a meeting with a woman who worked at Fox News, and she, Gretchen Carlson, she said, I can't tell you the details because I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement and I'm forced into this nondisclosure agreement by the employment contract that I signed on my first day. I'm also forced into mandatory arbitration by an employment contract I signed my first day. And so we looked into it and everybody signs an employment contract that basically says if you have any lawsuits or litigation with the company you're working for, you have to go to mandatory arbitration. You have to sign a nondisclosure agreement if that's settled. Well, in the issues of sexual violence and harassment, you might have a serial harasser like they did at Fox News, a serial assaulter at Fox News. And she couldn't even tell her colleagues, beware of this guy, he's going to lock you in his room and he's going to take advantage of you or he's going to, she couldn't warrant anyone and she certainly couldn't call out what happened publicly. So I worked with Lindsey Graham across the aisle on writing laws to say you don't have to go to mandatory arbitration. You can sue in a court of law and if you want to name your harasser in that trial, you can. And so now if you're harassed or assaulted on the job anywhere in America, you can go to a jury trial and you could name out your harasser and are not confined. That changed 60 million employment contracts overnight. And now, because Lindsey and I had such a big success, I said, how about we do this for all types of litigation, for gender discrimination, race, religion, LGBTQ status, disability, age. And Lindsey, while wanting to be bipartisan, agreed to just do protections for older people and so we are now doing age discrimination. And so the nature of bipartisanship is you have to take your partner and where he can meet you and you pass common sense good laws in that common ground area. And so while we would love to apply to everyone, we will now apply it to age discrimination, hopefully, and get a vote on it this Congress.

GR: Well, it sounds like a significant change and it's also a good story about working across the aisle, which is tough to do these days. So, I also want to come back to the military, and I understand that you've also been active in trying to bolster benefits for the veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq and also going back to Vietnam. So tell us a little bit about those efforts.

KG: So, as you know, I worked for the past decade, a decade and a half on the 9/11 Health Bill to get health care for first responders. And what we found is that the diseases that these first responders have been getting are horrible lung cancers, stomach cancers, throat cancers, brain cancers, because the toxins that were released when the towers fell that were lit on fire by jet fuel, were just this horrific mass of toxins. And we started learning from veterans that they were getting the same diseases. And we realized that a lot of our veterans were exposed to burn pits, which were just like the 9/11 towers falling. It was all things being burnt and set on fire by jet fuel, from human waste to medical waste, to electronics to wood to building materials, all the kinds of things that happened on 9/11. And as a result, the coalition that we put together for 9/11 came back together. Jon Stewart, John Feal, a lot of our first responders, we all work to getting these protections and health care for veterans exposed to burn pits. And we did, we did it in like two years. It was just unbelievably in its speed but it was such a bipartisan issue when it was voted on the Senate it got 88 votes. So it was very bipartisan. I teamed up with a number of different Republicans. Marco Rubio was my lead in my first bill on this. And so, common sense, thoughtful, important and any now and my bill was burn pits. We added it to a larger bill that was any environmental exposure in your service, including nuclear sites, including Vietnam era, anybody who wasn't covered in the Agent Orange. I also covered the Blue Water Navy vets a few years ago. But it's for all exposures. And so we passed the bill and it's magnificent for the for the burn pit survivors. It's going to affect 3.5 million veterans. And we have to get the word out. So far, only, I think only 500,000, yeah, I think only 500,000 of the 3.5 have signed up for health care and to get those benefits. So please, anyone who's listening to this radio show, if you know a veteran who served anywhere in the last 20 years, any part of the war on terror, they were likely exposed to burn pits. They are now covered. And any veteran, you know who is denied coverage, they can now resubmit and they will be covered. So it's really important that New Yorkers know that this benefit is now there for them.

GR: I have a friend who just relatively recently started getting the Agent Orange benefits and the person that the VA had to encourage him to do it…

KG: Yes, because they’ve denied for so long.

GR: …but he wasn't he wasn't aware of it.

KG: Yeah.

GR: You're listening to the Campbell Conversations on WRVO Public Media, I'm Grant Reeher, and I'm speaking with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York. So I want to ask you a question about something that is currently occupying most of the headlines, and that's the Israel-Hamas war. And your public statements on that I think I've been very direct and very clear regarding your support of Israel and its right to protect itself, but not all members of your party have been equally clear on that. And I wanted to ask you first, do you think that being a representative of the state, you already mentioned 9/11, but being a representative of the state that suffered the most during 9/11, and also in this instance, a state that has such a large Jewish population, do you think that gives you a particular perspective on this issue?

KG: Well, it does. And I also sit on the Armed Services Committee and the Intel Committee, and I've been focused very intently on issues of anti-terrorism and counterterrorism. And so there's multiple reasons why I am standing with Israel. The attack on October 7 was heinous, it was brutal, it was barbaric, it was a level of terror that Hamas has never been able to conduct. And it is absolutely necessary that Israel stop the terrorist attacks on Israel. They have to as a nation, you have to defend your borders, you have to root out terrorism as best you can, you have to keep your people safe. So I think we must stand with Israel and the fact that they took 240 hostages, I mean, it's incalculable the pain, the terror, the unbelievable suffering that so many Israeli citizens and U.S. citizens and Jewish Americans are feeling and facing. And then the exponential rise of anti-Semitism has been truly horrific. So yes, we must stand with Israel. It doesn't mean we cannot also stand to protect innocent Palestinians and communities that are in the crossfire. Hamas uses innocent Palestinians as human shields, that is why they are a terrorist organization and they locate their bombs and their rockets and their munitions in civilian neighborhoods, in hospitals and schools. And so this is a very difficult anti-terrorism effort by Israel to conduct effectively and safely for innocent people. It's very hard. And the United States is going to stand with I