PROUD OF THE NAME, NOT THE LAWS

When your name is Rockefeller, it is probably a safe bet that people will
notice if you are arrested. When you are a Rockefeller who is arrested
while protesting a law bearing the family name, you can waltz that bet all
the way to the bank.

So Meile Rockefeller was in no way surprised that cameras were on hand the
other day as she was handcuffed and led away in a police wagon outside Gov.
George E. Pataki's office on Third Avenue. Indeed, she had counted on their
being there, to record an act of civil disobedience that led to her being
arrested with two New York state senators and eight other people.

"I've always cared about this issue," said Ms. Rockefeller, who was
released with a summons for disorderly conduct. "After the election it will
be an important issue. I thought, `All right, if I'm going to get involved,
let's see if I can't lend whatever amplification to the issue that my name
will give it.' "

The issue is undoing the 1973 drug laws named for her grandfather, the New
York governor who championed them, Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Prosecutors strongly support them, but a broad political consensus has
formed that they have failed to work as intended - that they are too
inflexible, too costly and too harsh when applied to low-level offenders
who might do better with treatment and counseling than with long prison
sentences. In Albany, political leaders have talked for years about change.
But that's where it always ends, with talk.

Time and again, the order of the day seems to be, "Don't just do something,
stand there!"

That's why it seemed a big deal, to some anyway, when the State Senate's
Republican leader said two weeks ago that lawmakers would regroup in
December to consider bills that have been on the back burner for so long
they've practically fallen off the stove. Among the issues are gay rights,
the environment and the drug laws. There is no evidence, though, to predict
with confidence that this time things will be different in Albany.

In part, the perennial inaction was what prompted the protest at the
governor's offices. It was sponsored by the Correctional Association of New
York, a group that is critical of state prison policies and wants the drug
laws repealed, under the slogan "Drop the Rock." To that end, it recruited
a Rock - or a couple of Rocks, actually.

Ms. Rockefeller, 46, the daughter of Nelson's eldest son, Rodman, was
joined on Third Avenue by a brother, Stuart, who chose not to be arrested
himself. Not there, but nonetheless eager for reform, was Laurance S.
Rockefeller, one of Nelson's brothers. "Overly harsh laws and punishments
have reduced faith in government, which is essential to the functioning of
a democracy," he wrote to this newspaper in June.

His grandniece Meile (pronounced MAY-luh) says the family members are not
acting in concert. But she shares Laurance Rockefeller's belief that her
grandfather Nelson, who died in 1979 and to whom she felt close, was a
practical man. "He wouldn't want to see a law that doesn't work stay on the
books," she said.

PEOPLE have asked her if the protest amounted to "some form of
condemnation" of her grandfather.

"It has nothing to do with repudiating what he did," Ms. Rockefeller said.
"I think he probably would be aware that the people he wanted to put in
jail are avoiding it. The people who are being put in jail are - often, not
in every case by any means - people for whom there are more effective ways
of solving the problem."

A lawyer who has also been a real-estate developer, Ms. Rockefeller is on
the board of the Counseling Service of the Eastern District of New York, a
Brooklyn organization that helps people with drug and alcohol problems.

With the Rockefeller laws, her druthers are that they be repealed, not
merely tinkered with. She wants judges to regain the power to decide
whether a prison term or a treatment program works better for an offender
and for society, because they "are the ones right there on the front lines."

O.K., big issues aside, how weird was it to be arrested for the first time,
even if the scene was well scripted and the police were, as she said,
"terrific"?

Pretty strange, Ms. Rockefeller said.

It was so orchestrated that one of those arrested, State Senator David A.
Paterson of Manhattan, leaned toward her at the police station and said,
"Are we in central booking or central casting?"

But make no mistake. "It's a more powerful experience than I expected," she
said. "It's a tool to be used very, very judiciously."