“Sex work is work and should not be criminalized by the state,” said New York state senator Julia Salazar at a June press conference introducing a package of legislation decriminalizing sex work, the first bill of its kind to be proposed in New York. We couldn’t have said it better. But one year ago, no one would have expected to hear these words or see such legislation coming out of Albany.

Sex workers have been fighting to decriminalize their work for decades, but over the past year, partly by working with the organized socialist left, they’ve made the issue much more visible. A number of sex workers belong to Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and worked on Salazar’s 2018 campaign, and many are working closely with her as part of Decrim NY, a coalition of sex workers and allies.

Sex workers also campaigned to elect Tiffany Cabán as Queens district attorney. Cabán, like Salazar, was endorsed and robustly supported by DSA. A vocal supporter of sex work decriminalization, Cabán has come so close to winning her primary that the campaign has been mired in a complex and contentious recount and legal contest since late June. (Full disclosure: I volunteered for both Cabán’s and Salazar’s campaigns.)