Drug laws to get rapped
Security will be so tight during next month's Republican National Convention that protesters will be kept blocks away from Madison Square Garden - out of sight and out of mind for President Bush and his co-partisans. But hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons - with the AIDS activist group Still We Rise, the New York Civil Liberties Union and other like-minded folks - has somehow managed to obtain a permit to march right up Eighth Ave. to the Garden, on the convention's opening day, Aug. 30.
There they'll stage a rally against the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws, Simmons told me, noting that he expects to be joined by Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Jay-Z, the Beastie Boys and Mariah Carey. Their target: Gov. Pataki, who Simmons claims is stopping the Legislature from correcting inequities in the laws that mandate harsh sentencing by judges.
"I'm saddened and I'm disappointed and I'm heartbroken that the governor is now seen as the stumbling block to fixing the situation," Simmons said. "These are the most severe drugs laws in the country - and they're insane and unjust." Simmons continued: "Ninety-four percent of the people who go to jail under the laws are black and brown and poor. There's a lot of prosecutorial discretion, but there's zero judicial discretion."
Simmons, who last year was sued by the state Lobbying Commission for his anti-drug-law advocacy (which the commission said was lobbying that required Simmons to register), defended his efforts as free speech. "I spent $600,000 on lawyers to fight this, so please make it clear that I'm not lobbying anybody, I'm just giving my opinion as an American citizen," Simmons stressed.
Also on hand for the protest will be Russell's older brother, Danny, who helps run the RUSH Philanthropic Arts Foundation. In 1973, when he was a 21-year-old New York University student and the Rockefeller laws were new on the books, Danny Simmons was prosecuted in an FBI sting for conspiracy to possess an ounce of cocaine. Faced with a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life - for letting undercover FBI agents into a dorm to buy drugs from another student - Danny copped a plea and spent 18 months in prison. (New York Daily News)
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