Stevens is one of more than 150,000 people in New York State who have been sent to prison under the Rockefeller drug laws since 1980. During those same years, the prison population in New York State has tripled, and the percentage of the prison population serving time for drug offenses has gone from 9 percent to 32 percent.

Convicted of possession of 5 ounces of cocaine in 1993, Stevens got the minimum of 15 years to life. In 1994, he spent 40 days in solitary confinement for "interfering with a routine strip-search" because he was physically incapable of pulling down his pants.

The New York laws are named after Nelson Rockefeller, the governor who signed them into law in 1973. They place mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life in prison for the sale of two ounces or possession of four ounces of a narcotic drug.

The racist nature of these laws and their enforcement, and of the capitalist "justice" system in general, is borne out by the statistics. A study released earlier this year revealed that Blacks account for 15.9 percent of the population of New York but 54.3 percent of the prison population. Latinos account for 15.1 percent of the state’s population and 26.7 percent of its prisoners.

For drug offenses the figures go up. Blacks and Latinos account for 94 percent of all drug felons sent to prison, and 60 percent of those convicted in the three lowest classes of drug felonies involving only minute amounts of drugs.

Similar minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses are on state law books around the nation, as well as at the federal level. As a result the mean prison sentence nationwide for a crack cocaine offense is 10 years, two more than the average for violent crimes.

While Blacks and Latinos constitute one-quarter of the total population, they account for more than 1.2 million of the 2 million people locked up in U.S. prisons--a total of 63 percent. In 12 states between 10 and 15 percent of the population of adult Black men is incarcerated.

The U.S. prison population more than doubled in the past decade. Today, with 5 percent of the world’s people, the U.S. has 25 percent of its prisoners.  
 
Resistance grows
A group of women whose loved ones are imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws began organizing weekly protest vigils in 1998 outside Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center. They took the name "New York’s Mothers of the Disappeared" after a group in Argentina of mothers of victims of state terror.

Terrence Steven’s mother, Regina, a school cafeteria worker, is a member. It was through the group’s efforts that Stevens was granted clemency in 2001. Both mother and son continue to be active in the fight.

Last year the Mothers of the Disappeared set up an office in Tulia, Texas, the site of a 1999 drug sweep in which 12 percent of the town’s Black population was arrested. Of the 46 people put in handcuffs on the testimony of one white undercover cop, 40 were Black. Thirteen of the Tulia defendants are still locked up in Texas prisons.

The Mothers of the Disappeared are not alone in organizing protests. Among other actions, vigils and demonstrations are held regularly in New York, including a sit-in outside New York Governor George Pataki’s office on October 30 in which 11 people were arrested, including Mayla Rockefeller, the granddaughter of the governor who signed the laws. This ongoing fight made the laws a focus of debate during the New York governor’s race, with all of the candidates pledging to reform them if elected. Following his reelection, Governor George Pataki reversed his campaign promise. "I’m not about to turn violent criminals out on the streets in the name of drug law reform," he declared December 18, as he announced that his administration had refused to negotiate a bill to reform the laws.  
 
 
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