Dick Gottfried

While Salazar settled into her new role in Albany, advocates and organizers looked for other decriminalization allies in the state Legislature. During an event celebrating the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which banned conversion therapy and discrimination based on gender identity, transgender community members approached Assemblyman Richard Gottfried. The activists primed Gottfried on the next priority in their agenda: the full decriminalization of sex work. “We think there needs to be a bill,” they told him, and they wanted him to help carry it. Would he do it? A member of the Assembly since 1971, Gottfried said he had “believed for decades” that the harms associated with sex work were “overwhelmingly the result of the illegality of it.” He said he would. Two of his colleagues in the Assembly, Dan Quart and Catalina Cruz, signed on as co-sponsors soon after.

In New York, as in most of America, selling sex is illegal and stories abound of the costs of criminalisation. Sex workers circle in and out of the criminal justice system for years. Their criminal records often prevent them from accessing housing and other kinds of work. Paying bail bonds puts many already impoverished sex workers into debt.

On June 10th, New York introduced the first state-wide package of bills to decriminalise sex work. It would remove criminal penalties related to the buying and selling of sex and regulate workers’ place of
business to make them safer. It would also allow sex workers to apply for criminal records connected to sex work to be expunged.

Back in February, advocates for sex worker rights in New York announced their intention to fully decriminalize prostitution in the state. But no one really suspected then that within two weeks, Democratic candidates for president would be pledging support for competing legislative visions of what they called (at times, incorrectly) sex work decriminalization.

Quite suddenly, the enlightened thing to do—or at least to say you were doing—was to support these measures, a development that came as a shock even to many sex workers who had long campaigned for decriminalization.

On Monday, that same group of advocates, Decrim NY, will see a bill they have helped draft introduced in the state legislature that promises to give practical shape to the goals sex workers have pursued for several decades. The bill is groundbreaking for the United States: If passed, it would make New York the first state to fully decriminalize sex work.

Over a hundred sex workers, activists, and allies converged on Albany yesterday to call for the passage of two bills aimed at protecting sex workers from police harassment and clearing their records of crimes traffickers forced them to commit. The trip, part of a recently-announced push to decriminalize sex work in New York State, highlighted the newfound willingness of a precarious community to publicly campaign for their rights.

More than 20 groups — including several LGBTQ organizations — and a handful of local politicians are joining forces with DecrimNY, a new coalition of sex workers and advocates focused on “decriminal­izing, decarcerating, and destigmati­zing” their lives and livelihoods. The coalition kicked off on Monday during a press conference with advocates and politicians.

Part of the group’s approach involves pushing for legislation in Albany, with allies like State Senators Jessica Ramos, Julia Salazar, Brad Hoylman, and Assembly Member Richard Gottfried. Those lawmakers plan to introduce a comprehensive decriminalization bill to remove criminal penalties for “consensual sexual exchange between adults.” The coalition also urges quick passage of two bills already introduced in the state legislature that are getting newfound support.