In May of 1973, New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller pushed through the state legislature a set of stringent anti-drug laws. Among the most severe in the nation, the purpose of these laws was and is to deter citizens from using or selling drugs and to punish and isolate from society those who were not deterred. It was thought that rehabilitative efforts had failed; that the epidemic of drug abuse could be quelled only by the threat of inflexible, and therefore certain, exceptionally severe punishment.
It’s winter, we’re gathered on the corner, it’s eight o’clock in the morning & the sun is giving the creature its breath, it looks so pretty at the tops of the buildings, as if everything’s new and still asleep. Oh Lord we’re sick. The air in our mouths is almost surprising, as we don’t seem to breathe.
The groups of us gather like pigeons in hassled knots. A boy from high school, a corpse with no teeth. The man erupts from the pavement, emerges, we jostle into place by his side, insistent as saliva. We don’t hate each other, we just must have it. Too late, sold out. Meet again, they have made this a place for animals.
The new drug laws, which have since become known as the “Rockefeller Drug Laws” established mandatory prison sentences for the unlawful possession and sale of controlled substances keyed to the weight of the drug involved. Generally, the statutes require judges to impose a sentence of 15-years to life for anyone convicted of selling two ounces, or possessing four ounces of “narcotic drug” (typically cocaine or heroin).
A dealer once walked half a mile with me just to know I was real. He called himself Chicago. A kind boy. Perhaps he just wanted to come in. I don’t know. These machinations never occurred to me.
The steerers, the kind girls. They always seem little, they always seem brown. They have beautiful smiles. They are out in the cold with the rest of us, the world glowing with sun.
What a beautiful place they could make for us if they just let us be.
In 1977 The Committee on New York Drug Law Evaluations, a partnership between the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and The Drug Abuse Council, Inc., issued a report that was highly critical of the Rockefeller laws. The Committee found that heroin use and heroin-related crime (the major drug concerns at the time) was as widespread in the middle of 1976 as prior to the enactment of the Rockefeller laws in 1973.
In daylight we gather outside. ..
I’m driving with L in a car, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge for some money.
I’m shooting up in J’s rented room, and her roommate’s an invisible creep with sore habits.
I’m shooting up in M’s rented room. He tells me the people he shared needles with are dead; I put my needle into his cotton to soak up a little coke. He makes me a little trinket, wagging his hips, that soon falls apart. Who remembers what it is?
I’m handing ten dollars and a bag of works to T, who cries with gratitude. He has nowhere to sleep & needs the ten for a room.
I’m sharing some coke with T while K rests on the bed. It’s odd, K. won’t have any. Then T & I go down the street to the bank & score from someone sitting there in a blanket.
Despite the expenditure of $76 million and the appointment of 49 additional judges to handle cases under the new law, it was described as a dismal failure.
I’m walking with T on Spring Street. We’re looking to score. He’s not feeling well. We go down to Pell Street.
I’m walking with a guy from a band down to Pell St. He’s just left his family’s home in Long Island. We score & we get in a cab up to Twelfth. It’s summertime. He gives me a shot in the ankle.
I’m in C & L’s bathroom, shooting up with a crack pipe in my mouth. I have it perfectly timed.
I’m going downtown in a cab with D & some British guy who’s in a band. We all have a bundle. I’m getting out at the Houston St station for the F train out to L’s.
I turned her on that spring, then she was strung out, then she was murdered.
By 1979, in response to extensive criticism, the legislature had amended the laws to increase the amount of drugs needed to trigger the 15-year to life sentence for both sale and possession.
I am walking in snow east on Houston to Second. I’m living on Eastern Parkway with a friend who wants me to get well. I’m going to score, then I’ll sit in a bar on Avenue A & enjoy myself. I have a key to her house.
I’m going down Second Street past the lookouts. They’re open.
I am not afraid of the dark.
I am standing with the dealer on Ludlow Street as his cover. Later when he robs his source he hands me four because I’ve been robbed. Then he disappears.
I remember that life and time are enclosed in tiny bags that are the focus of all. There is nothing else but these bags. There is nothing else. Nothing.
In 1988, concern over “crack” cocaine led to a lowering of the weight threshold for cocaine possession to enable the arrest and prosecution of people possessing small amounts of the drug. The Rockefeller Drug Laws have remained essentially unchanged since then.
I am walking east before heading to work on the renovation looking for a man who is standing there in the bitter cold, at the end of the street by the projects, in the morning sun, wearing a cashmere coat.
I remember sharing your blood because you don’t know how to shoot up. So when there’s only one bag & you don’t share with me I hold back a bit of your blood in the needle & shoot myself up with it.
I remember a bag I found in the middle of the sidewalk on Sixth Avenue. I took it home but you didn’t get any. It was very good.
I remember two bags I found in a book on our bookcase that made it possible for me to get up off the floor & go to meet my dealer.
I remember shooting up every quarter hour for two or three weeks or a month or two months.
We have A meet us at the apartment with the coke. Then we drive him to his next appointment.
I open up a piece of mail from J at an apartment in South Florida. There are six bags in it. I take a shot & go to the beach. It’s a windy day. I talk to the homeless there; they are tanned.
I am standing at our bookcase on Twelfth Street after taking a shot. I start to pass out. Then I come back.
I take a shot in our bathroom on Twelfth Street and go blind. You drag me into the hallway by my hair and throw me out.
I have four hundred dollars stashed in a friends’ bookcase on Seventh Street. I score & the dealer walks me back with his bike.
I score from G’s house connection & we go to the park & cruise the girls.
I’m waiting with K on Ludlow for the spot to open. G’s girlfriend comes down & says, you look just like a couple of junkies.
I am still walking the streets in wind, cold and sun. While the snow drifts heavily down into the dark gutters to vanish. When there’s music on the stoops & pouring from the windows and men wear no shirts. They stand on the corners and sweat.
Between 1980 and 1992, New York’s prison population has tripled from about 20,000 to almost 62,000 (in 1973 the state’s prison population was approximately 10,000). The State Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee projects that the State prison population will grow to 71,300 by the end of the 1998-99 fiscal year, and to 73,100 by the end of 2001-02. Together with the Second Felony Offender Law, also passed in 1973, the Rockefeller Drug Laws have contributed significantly to the overall growth of the NYS prison population.
There is music and I am walking. There is a smell, part flowers, part cologne, part unknown chemical: it wafts from the windows. It’s here I park my car & the dealers look after it.
The percentage of the prison population incarcerated for drug offenses has been increasing since 1973, the year the Rockefeller Drug Laws were enacted, with particularly sharp increases during the 1980’s. These mandatory minimum sentences for drug felonies have increased the percentage of convicted drug offenders who receive prison sentences. As a consequence, the NYS prison population has changed from one in which 9% were serving time for drug felonies (1980) to 32.2% (1997)
I’m going to the park because they’re not open yet.
Since 1981, the State has added about 40,000 beds to its prison system, at an average construction cost of $100,000 each, for a total capital expense, not counting debt service, of approximately $4 billion. Despite these increases, the NYS prison system remains severely overcrowded, forcing prison officials to double bunk or double cell approximately 9,000 inmates.
Put it in my hand; feel my hand.
I can smell what you’re wearing. It’s dark, there’s a whistle that pierces the night. You talk to me. We turn to air. When the whistle sounds again we can move.
Since the 1982-83 State fiscal year, the share of State General Fund spending going towards the funding of the NYS prison system more than doubled, from approximately 10% to fully 25% of the state’s General Fund State Operations Budget.
Some measure of spirit still climbs strange stairways littered with bags, or passes through hallways smashed out of brick between one building and the next, to meet a man dressed in a hoodie inside. We used to cross between buildings on catwalks .. that way they knew their true customers. Who cares where we’re walking now?
Since 1989 the yearly budget for the State University of New York (SUNY) has dropped from a little more than $1.3 billion to around $800 million. In the same period, annual spending on prisons in New York has increased from a little less than $1 billion to $1 billion.
Beneath the bridges swim photographs of us.
Wait, and watch the train cross the river. It’s escaped the underground tunnel.
In 1997, whites constituted 5.3 percent of the total population of drug felons currently in prison in New York; blacks and Latinos constituted 94.2 percent. Among whites committed to prison in 1994, 16% were convicted of a drug offense, among blacks 45% were committed for a drug offense, and among Latinos 59% were committed for a drug offense. As of 1996, Blacks and Latinos made up 23% of the state’s general population, but constituted over 85% of the people indicted for drug felonies, and 85% of its overall prison population.
I have brought you with me into half-life, into a twilight with its own ways, and I refuse to lose you. I have brought your life and mine into half-life, the life I have. I refuse to forget our living together; it remains in my mirror, sunlight over my shoulder.
The rate of growth in new court commitments between January, 1987 and December, 1989 was approximately three times greater for women than for men, 98.9% for females versus 33.5% for men.
I open a piece of mail from L at a house in North Carolina. The bags are half empty; the shit feels like Fentanyl. I take the last bag out to the second floor balcony & empty it into the wind.
I drop a paper bag filled with works & a crack pipe into a public trash can.
In the same time period drug commitments for females rose 211%, and rose 82% for males. Over the same three year period, African-American women on average accounted for 46.1% of the new court commitment population, Latina women 36.3%, and whites 17.5%.
Our holy places are now condominiums. Will they feel us open their wallets while they sleep?
