MANHATTAN—The sky was as gray and drab as the walls of a prison as several thousand protestors gathered at City Hall Park South to call for repeal of New York State's Rockefeller drug laws (RDL). Thousands of non-violent offenders are locked away for long sentences under the much-debated, much-hated laws, created with the best of intentions by then-Governor Nelson D. Rockefeller in 1973. Now the rumblings for repeal are growing to a clamor.

Dubbed the Countdown to Fairness, the protest ratcheted up the already mounting pressure on Governor George Pataki and other lawmakers. Led by The Hip Hop Summit Action Network, former U.S. Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Mothers of the New York Disappeared, the array of musical and political talent at the rally included Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, eight members of Congress, four borough presidents, most of the City Council, the Congressional Black Caucus, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Bono, Carly Simon and some hip-hop heavy hitters like P. Diddy, Doug E. Fresh, 50 Cent, Missy Elliot and Jay-Z. The breadth of support is a mark of how public opinion is shifting away from "zero tolerance"-style policies—in a New York Times poll, 79 percent of New Yorkers supported drug law reform.

But politicians are not so easily convinced. There's a matter of keeping one's tough-on-crime stance. Also, the state's prosecutors and district attorneys favor the laws, which give them enormous power. And there's the additional matter of upstate prison economies, not terribly healthy economies, to be sure, but for many voters better a bad job than no job at all.

"There's an outside chance for a deal on the issue, but at this point we're pretty much waiting for next year," says Julie Ebenstein of the New York Civil Liberties Union, noting that few political proposals have satisfied activists. "There hasn't been sincere effort at compromise on either side."

One lawmaker who has turned against it is former Republican State Senator John Dunn, one of the law's original sponsors. Joining forces with Mary Mortimore, grandmother of an RDL incarceree doing 15-30 years and member of the Mothers of the New York Disappeared (MNYD), an activist group, Dunn appears in a 60-second television ad (one of many being made these days featuring families of the incarcerated, celebrities and/or political figures) to plead for serious reform. "In 1973, I sponsored the Rockefeller drug laws, which have been a well documented failure" he says. "The governor's reform proposal will also fail if it does not effectively redirect people and resources away from prison to treatment and rehabilitation. That's the only way to help families and communities."

An early sally in what would later become known as the war on drugs, the Rockefeller drug laws' "get-tough" penalties eliminate judicial discretion, forcing mandatory sentences based on the quantity of drugs. First-time offenders get 15 years to life if convicted of selling two ounces of a narcotic substance or possessing four. It gives district attorneys enormous power, as their charges mandate the sentences. Most drug offenders plea bargain, because a guilty verdict gets you the mandatory 15-to-life sentence. Many say the laws actually make it easier for kingpins to avoid jail time; as bosses, they never have to actually carry drugs. Instead, their couriers, often addicts but sometimes merely poor or hapless victims, take the rap. Some of the law's victims include women whose sole crime was having an unscrupulous beau.

Furthermore, the laws appear to be racist, at least in implementation: Although their rates of drug use are similar to those of whites, African Americans and Latinos comprise over 94 percent of the drug offenders in New York State prisons, according to the Campaign for Effective Criminal Justice.

"They were an overreaction at the time, 30 years ago, and they have never worked," says Andrew Cuomo. "They have put a lot of non-violent people in prison who didn't need to be there." There are over 19,000 drug offenders incarcerated in New York State prisons, and of all drug offenders sent to NYS prisons in 2000, nearly 80 percent were never convicted of a violent felony, according to Drop the Rock, an organization at the forefront of the repeal movement. Yet they do time with violent criminals—hardly a path to rehabilitation and respect for law.

What's more, locking people up is ex-pensive. Reports from the Correction Association, the RAND Institute's Drug Policy Research Center and the National Institute on Drug Abuse confirm that treatment is more successful than imprisonment when it comes to treating drug abuse. It costs approximately $32,000 a year to confine an inmate, according to the Department of Corrections. Residential drug treatment costs $17,000-$21,000 a year.

The economic toll doesn't stop there, however. Over the course of the last 30 years, the Rockefeller drug laws have kept countless men and women away from their children and families. A half million children are separated from their mothers by jail and prison bars, according to Amnesty International, and 78 percent of the women in state prisons are mothers. Elaine Bartlett, one of the founding members of MNYD, spent 16 years in jail at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. "I wasn't a drug kingpin, I carried once," she says. "It was a one-shot deal and I got busted." Her four children were ages 9, 6, 2, and 1 when she was incarcerated. Bartlett's mother raised them for the 16 years she was behind bars.

But the legacy may not end there. Bartlett's husband is still behind bars on a drug law conviction, and children of incarcerated parents are more likely to be incarcerated themselves. Nationwide, half of the children in the juvenile justice system have a parent in prison. The United States Congress has authorized the National Institute of Corrections to allocate $8 million a year to fund residential mother/children care facilities.

Sister Tesa Fitzgerald has been running a home for children of incarcerated mothers in the convent of Saint Rita's in Queens for nearly 20 years. "My Mother's House"—named so the children can comfortably respond to "where do you live?"—has been home to dozens of children over the years. Fitzgerald works round the clock for these broken families, schlepping children upstate by the van load for weekly visits. "I have met some of the finest mothers in prison," she says. "[They] realize they've done wrong, and they are paying their debt to society. Yet we must question why future generations must also pay."

To date, reform has been elusive. Democrat Sheldon Silver has a bill on the table, while Republicans Pataki and Joe Bruno have offered a competing bill. Repeal activists generally favor a third proposal, put forth by Assembly member Jeffrion L. Aubry (D-Queens). "With regards to the Democratic and Republican bill, neither one of them are any good," says Nicolas Eyle, executive director of ReconsiDer, a national drug reform organization based in Syracuse. "The Aubry bill is a pretty good bill. It's retroactive, it's across the board." But the current legislative session is almost over, with no deal likely.

If repeal efforts fizzle again, Sister Tesa will be kept busy, much to her dismay. "Alternatives are needed for non-violent drug-related criminals," she says. "Shipping women off to prison is not the answer. The prison system has become a warehouse for the poor. It is very sad."