New York to Drop the Rock

Photos by Danny Danko

In 2002, current New York Governor David Paterson—then a state senator—was arrested during a protest of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws, lending his name to a decades-long struggle against a disastrous and draconian set of policies enacted in the 1970’s with the goal of stemming the tide of drug abuse in the state. By implementing lengthy mandatory minimums and taking sentencing authority away from judges and giving it to District Attorneys, however, the laws had the effect of crowding the state’s prison system with non-violent, low-level offenders, at taxpayer expense, without any disruption of the drug trade.

Thirty-five years later, the New York state government has finally reached an agreement to roll-back these laws, repealing many of the mandatory minimum sentences and returning authority for sentencing to judges, including the option of treatment over incarceration. The agreement will also support increased use of drug courts and expand drug treatment by at least $50 million. It will also allow some current prisoners to appeal their sentences.

Since Governor Nelson Rockefeller first championed their passage in the 1970’s, the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws have met with increasingly well-organized opposition from drug law reformers and the poor and minority communities most deeply affected by these harsh sentences. The agreement to repeal the laws follows decades of activism, and arrives one day after a rally in New York City by Drop the Rock and other concerned groups that drew speeches from Hip Hop entrepreneur Russell Simmons, Meile Rockefeller (Granddaughter of Nelson Rockefeller), Anthony Papa, author of 15 To Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom, Reverend Calvin Butts, and Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Rally against the Rockefeller drug laws outside Gov. Paterson's NYC office, March 25, 2009:

Russell Simmons

Reverend Calvin Butts

Executive Director of the NYCLU, Donna Lieberman