The city is a center for international finance, fashion, entertainment and culture, and is widely considered to be one of the world's major global cities with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations and financial markets. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations.

The New York metropolitan area has a population of about 22 million, which makes it one of the largest urban areas in the world. The city proper consists of five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each of these boroughs, except for Staten Island, is home to at least a million people and would each be among the nation's largest cities if considered independently.

Nicknamed "the Big Apple", the city attracts large numbers of immigrants, with over a third of its population foreign born. Moreover, it attracts people from all over the United States, who come for its culture, energy, cosmopolitanism, and economic opportunity. At present, the city has the lowest crime rate among the 25 largest American cities.

As he spoke inside the state capitol, more than a hundred people demonstrated outside to demand an end to the Rockefeller laws. Friends and relatives of New York drug prisoners were joined by prominent critics of the drug war, including Frank Serpico, Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis, Margie Ratner Kunstler, and Ron Daniels of the Center for Constitutional Rights, for a morning vigil and afternoon press conference.

According to Randy Credico of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice (http://www.kunstler.org), one of the event's organizers, the Albany demo was "one of our finest hours."

"We've done hundreds of these vigils, but this was the best. We had mothers who lost kids, kids who lost their mothers, it was like the Nuremburg Tribunal, with the witnesses putting the government on trial," Credico told DRCNet. "To hear these families come up and courageously tell their stories was extremely powerful, and the legislators saw it and the media saw it. We're in every paper in the state today," he crowed.

The Rockefeller laws, among the nation's harshest, were enacted in the 1970s. They were a model for the punitive approach to drug policy that swept the nation in the 1980s, but which is fraying around the edges today. Under the Rockefeller laws, someone convicted of a single sale of as little as two ounces of an illicit drug can face 15 years to life. So can anyone convicted of possessing as little as four ounces. According to the New York Division of Criminal Justice Services, more than 21,000 people are doing time on drug charges, out of a total of 70,000 state prisoners. Some 600 of them are serving those 15-years-to-life sentences.

Pataki has supported only limited reform efforts in the past -- he got behind a measure to allow a small group of nonviolent offenders to ask for 10 years instead of 15 -- but has signaled his discomfort with the laws' inequities by giving Christmas commutations to 23 people since he took office in 1995, including five last month.

Pressure to lessen the Rockefeller sentences has been mounting for years. Critics include even the nation's drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who has called them too harsh. In an August, 1999 speech in Albany, McCaffrey said, "Even those who helped pass the Rockefeller-era laws now have serious concerns that these laws have caused thousands of low-level and first-time offenders to be incarcerated at high cost for long sentences that are disproportionate to their crimes."

But moves in the legislature to ameliorate the Rockefeller laws have failed in recent sessions, the victim of partisan bickering and fear of appearing "soft on crime." In recent months, however, key legislators have indicated they were ready to support reform. After long opposing such a move, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last fall said he was prepared to look at easing sentencing laws. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno supported some reform measures last session.

Their support may be guided as much by budgetary concerns as by altruism. In a May report, the Citizens Budget Commission, a well-respected, nonpartisan watchdog group, said New York could save nearly $100 million annually from its prison budget and improve public safety if it eliminated "unnecessary and sometimes counterproductive imprisonment" (http://www.cbcny.org/DOCS52000.htm).

Advocates of Rockefeller law reform are pleased, but cautious.

The Kunstler Fund's Credico told DRCNet he was only somewhat encouraged. "I'm cautiously optimistic," he said. "Pataki is doing smart politics. He's running for reelection and he knows this is blossoming into a huge issue across the country. If he follows through, he'll be untouchable as a governor."

But both Credico and Nicholas Eyle of ReconsiDer (http://www.reconsider.org), a New York-based grassroots drug policy reform group, caution that much remains to be clarified.

"The problem is that there are several bills floating around," Eyle told DRCNet. "One would basically get rid of the Rockefeller laws, but I'm afraid it will be portrayed as the extreme position and we'll end up with some halfway measures."