Behind Gentili stood more than 30 supporters of sex workers’ rights, holding protest signs bearing slogans like “Sex work is work” and “Arrests only save police budgets.” The rally and press conference marked the launch of the DecrimNY campaign that has a coalition of over 20 organizations pushing for the full decriminalization of sex work, the decarceration of sex workers, and the destigmatization of that most censured industry. The launch also celebrated the coming introduction in the New York State House and Senate of what DecrimNY described as “the most comprehensive state-level decriminalization bill in the country.”

Tears welled up in the eyes of many of the 150-plus people gathered in New York City’s Foley Square on Monday afternoon. Not all the tears came because of the frigid winds of the “bomb cyclone” blowing through the region. Instead, standing before the crowd, Cecilia Gentili almost began to cry because of the strides taken for the cause she was there to promote. “It feels surreal to be here, talking about this. It’s very emotional for me as a former sex worker,” said Gentili, an advocate for sex workers’ and transgender rights. “We will decriminalize sex work. We’re doing it.”

“This is one of the most taboo conversations for us to be having as a society. And we are not going to stop.”

“This is one of the most taboo conversations for us to be having as a society,” New York state Sen. Jessica Ramos told the Foley Square rally. “And we are not going to stop.” Ramos will be introducing the decriminalization bill this spring alongside newly elected democratic socialist Sen. Julia Salazar, Sen. Brad Hoylman, and Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, all Democrats.

The mere introduction of decriminalization legislation marks a major and hard-won point of progress in the public discussion around sex workers’ rights. It is a welcome statement for those who have been long disappointed in politicians with allegedly progressive agendas standing on the wrong side of history when it comes to sex workers’ rights. (Think of when Sen. Bernie Sanders voted to support the misleadingly titled Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, known as SESTA-FOSTA, which cripples sex workers’ ability to work safely online.)

Rejecting longstanding criminal justice frameworks, which insist that sex workers are always both criminal and victim, full decriminalization would recognize that sex work is work — and not the business of the police and courts. For many, sex work may not be good work, or always free of exploitation, and it may be resorted to as a means of survival. But the very same is true of many jobs in which workers are nonetheless deemed worthy of rights and legal protections as workers.

The history of labor struggle is not the history of workers fighting for the love of their work; as authors and sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith remind us in their new book, “Revolting Prostitutes,” when British coal miners in the 1980s went on strike, it was not because they loved mining. And, as the advocates and elected officials pushing for sex work decriminalization make clear, any feminist and workers’ rights movement worthy of the description would be a failure if sex workers are excluded.

To fight for the decriminalization of sex work is to fight for and with society’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities, in particular women of color and of immigration backgrounds, especially transgender women who often rely on sex work when discriminated against in other industries. Black women account for 94 percent of people arrested for the absurd and capacious charge of “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. Thus, to ignore the struggle for sex workers’ rights is de facto to allow their lives not to matter.

“I ran away from an abusive foster home and traded sex to access housing when I was 15,” said Jessica Raven, executive director of the Audre Lorde Project and a member of the DecrimNY steering committee, in a statement. “Whether we are trading sex by choice, by circumstance, or by coercion, we all need the same things: We need safety from violence, freedom from criminalization, and access to basic needs like housing and healthcare.”