FREEDOM FIGHTERS

An Unlikely Group of Prisoners' Relatives Battles the Rockefeller Drug Laws

One is a Wall Street stockbroker. Another attends fourth grade. A third
serves lunch in a high school cafeteria. And a fourth was once a street cop
in queens. What draws these New Yorkers together is that each has a relative
in state prison serving time for a drug crime, and all have recently
transformed their private anger into political activism.

The four joined the daily protests held last week to mark the 26th
anniversary of the so-called Rockefeller drug laws, which were named after
their creator, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. For years, the war over these
laws belonged to politicians and drug-policy activists. But now those most
directly affected by the laws8B drug prisoners and their families8B have
added their voices to the debate.

Over the past year, drug prisoners' relatives have been a fixture in front
of the city's courthouses, on the sidewalk next to Rockefeller Center, and
outside Governor George Pataki's fundraisers. Sometimes only a handful of
demonstrators show up at these protests, which are organized by the William
Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice. But the numbers can swell to many
hundred, as they did for a March rally in Albany.

Thousands of New Yorkers have relatives in state prison for drug crimes.
About one-third of the state's inmates8B 22,386 at the end of 19988B are
drug prisoners. "I thought I was the only person suffering, but there's a
lot of people suffering from this law," says James Gantt, a 79-year-old
rally regular whose son is serving 20 years to life.

This year, some family members finally have a reason to hope. Pataki has
proposed to allow inmates doing time for drug possession under the laws'
strictest provisions to file appeals that could shrink their sentences to 10
years. State legislators may actually pass such a reform bill this session,
but the family members who flock to drug-law protests say they will not be
content until the laws are repealed.

As visible reminders of the laws' harshest consequences, the relatives of
drug prisoners play an important lobbying role. "Some families are really
ashamed," says Assemblymember Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens Democrat who has
sponsored a bill to repeal the laws. The steadfast demonstrators, Aubry
says, are willing "to expose their pain. It makes a real difference."

Joseph Sorce, 65, often makes the trek from his Nassau County home into New
York City to rally against the Rockefeller drug laws. But he never brings
his wife. "My wife is home crying all the time," says Sorce, who retired in
1980 after 20 years with the New York City Police Department. "When you have
a relative in prison, you know who suffers most? The parents."

Sorce's son, also named Joseph, lived near his parents in Valley Stream in
1991, when the cops arrested him for cocaine sales and possession. At the
time, the 28-year-old was earning more than $40,000 a year driving delivery
trucks for Wise potato chips and a milk company. "My son felt he was set
up," his father says. The son refused to accept a plea bargain for a prison
term of three years to life. Instead, he went to trial, lost, and got the
mandatory sentence of 15 years to life.

Since the younger Joseph went to prison in 1993, his mother has never
visited. "My son doesn't even want my wife to see him," Sorce says. "He'd be
embarrassed because his mother would be hysterical and it might set him off
and he'd start crying." So the father makes regular trips to Green Haven
Correctional Facility, then reports back. He also sends politicians a
handwritten letter or two every week on his son's behalf. And he has had to
put on hold his plans to move to Florida or California. "He's locked up and
the parents have been locked up too," Sorce says.

Last week, Sorce joined about 25 protesters at a lunchtime rally outside
Rockefeller Center. He stood in the rain, clutching a plastic- covered
photograph of his son. "I'm not soft on crime," says the former street cop.
"People who do things wrong should go to jail. He was offered three to life.
Double his time8B give him six years. Isn't that bad enough? Anyone would
say that's not soft on crime."

Regina Stevens, 49, marked the 26th anniversary of the state's drug laws on
a Harlem sidewalk. "Too much time for nonviolent crime!" she shouted at the
May 8 rally, as she waved a poster of her son Terrance. An Erie County jury
convicted him of cocaine possession in 1993, and he got a mandatory prison
sentence of 15 years to life.

There are hundreds of drug prisoners with similar sentences, but Terrance's
case stands out. Terrance has muscular dystrophy and has been confined to a
wheelchair since junior high school. Regina rattles off her son's ailments
to anyone who will listen. Since being imprisoned, she says, "He's fallen
three or four times. He lost partial hearing in one ear. He wears a back
brace. He has two herniated discs. He's a 'total care' prisoner. Before, he
could shake hands and feed himself, but he can't anymore. He can't even wipe
himself."

Regina does what she can. For a month preceding the March 2 rally in Albany,
she spent every weekend evening at Columbus Circle, handing out fliers to
inmates' relatives, who flock there to catch buses headed for upstate
prisons. Before she landed a job in the cafeteria at Norman Thomas High
School, Regina showed up at every drug-law rally, including three in Albany
and one in Buffalo. Now she comes as often as she can, and she always leads
the chants. "She's a loudmouth," says Randy Credico, the rallies' organizer.
"She's great."

Ed Garcia, 38, quickly scanned the crowd as he and about 40 demonstrators
marched through South Street Seaport on their way to a recent $500-a-plate
fundraiser for Pataki. Dressed in a pinstriped suit, Ed had come straight
from his job at a Wall Street brokerage firm and wondered what might happen
if he bumped into any of his clients. "A few of my select friends know my
father is in prison, but the people who work with me don't," he says. "It's
not something I would parade around telling people."

Ed was 28 and had been a stockbroker for only a year when his father was
arrested for selling narcotics. According to Ed, his father was a mule
delivering cocaine for others. Jose rejected an offer of a four-year
sentence because he would have had to snitch on his friends. "I think he was
maybe scared for himself or his family," says Ed. After losing at trial, his
father got the mandatory sentence of 15 years to life.

While on Rikers Island, Jose suffered a heart attack that left him in a
wheelchair. Now 68, Jose is one of the oldest inmates at Green Haven. "Even
though he made a mistake late in his life, that didn't stop my father from
teaching and showing me the right way of doing things," says Ed, who grew up
in Washington Heights. "I don't know where I'd be today if I didn't have my
father being strict with me. I could be in jail, dead, a crackhead8B like a
lot of my friends."

Ed estimates that he has been to a couple dozen drug-law rallies over the
last year. His 72-year-old mother Hilda has been to far more. Both vow to
keep fighting. "Did he deserve to go to jail for what he did?" Ed asks about
his father. "Yeah, he did a crime. But I don't feel he deserved to go for 15
years to life. We're seeing people get six, seven years8B for attempted
murder, rape. Amy Fisher is getting out and she almost killed somebody."

Lisa Oberg, 10, is the unofficial spokeschild for this movement. She gave a
speech to hundreds of demonstrators at the March rally in Albany. And when
protesters spotted State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno leaving a
Pataki fundraiser in April, Lisa ran over to lobby him. "He said, 'Hi.' And
I said, 'Hi,' " Lisa recounts. "And then he said he was interested in my
mommy's case and then he left."

Lisa's mom, Arlene, is in her 10th year of a 20-years-to-life sentence at
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for selling eight ounces of cocaine.
When she was arrested, Arlene was a 22-year-old coke addict whose weight had
plunged to 90 pounds from 130. She gave birth to Lisa in jail. Now the
fourth-grader sees her mother only a few times a year. Lisa's grandmother,
Gerry, is raising her in the same split-level house in Sheepshead Bay,
Brooklyn, where Arlene grew up.

Having a mother who is incarcerated has not been easy. Lisa decorated a
ceramic flowerpot for Mother's Day, but knew she could never deliver the
present to her mother because prison officials would not allow it. When she
rides the school buses, she hears taunts: "At least my mom's not in prison.
At least I have a mom."

Lisa can deliver a critique of the laws as well as any adult activist. "It's
ruining lives, destroying people's families, and it's really, really hard
for the kids because they can't see their parents," she says.

At the May 7 rally at Rockefeller Center, however, Lisa had lost her spunk.
It was raining and chilly and Lisa had a headache. Her grandmother had let
her skip school to attend the protest, but Lisa stood apart from the other
demonstrators, shivering under an umbrella and badgering Gerry about
leaving. She said she was tired of chanting about the drug laws' injustices.
What she wanted was her mom. "I really, really want her home," Lisa says.