It was five years ago, in October of 2017, that Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker, and New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey aimed a stark spotlight on decades of alleged sexual harassment by former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and his army of enablers.

Their reporting helped amplify Tarana Burke’s #MeToo hashtag, and focus the attention of the world on the ubiquity of sexual harassment.

Here in New York, the #MeToo movement took a different form when a group of former legislative staffers – all of whom had either experienced or witnessed sexual harassment at the hands of powerful lawmakers in Albany – founded the “Sexual Harassment Working Group.”

The group found an ally in Sen. Liz Krueger, powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee. In 2019, the first year the Democrats came to power in that house, Krueger and the Sexual Harassment Working Group together passed important legislation. At the time, Krueger said, “This group of individuals have turned their own traumas, free from partisan or personal bias, into well thought through proposals for better public policy for New York state."

Krueger, one of the longest tenured incumbent senators, came into office one year after Elizabeth Crothers, one of the founders of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, came forward about her rape at the hands of Michael Boxley, an aide to then-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Krueger says the Albany culture was like the “wild, wild west,” and that the Manhattan Democrat would opine that she would “drive three hours north and 30 years back in history when it comes to women’s rights in the workplace.”

Five years on, Krueger says she hopes the changes that have come to Albany will be forever, but people will need to speak up and keep fighting back against a harassment culture.

“We’re being woken up and realizing there are problems because people are willing to come forward,” Krueger added.