Opinion: Jeffrion Aubry, a champion for justice in New York, leaves a remarkable legacy

Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry. FIle photo via NYS Assembly

By gabriel sayegh

When a young Black man in Queens named Jeffrion Aubry was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1992, the incarcerated population in the state was exploding.

More prisons were being built in New York, all upstate. Then, as now, the people sent there were disproportionately Black and Latino – and most were coming from New York City neighborhoods like the ones Aubry, a Democrat, represented in Elmhurst and Corona.

Driving this astronomical growth was the mandatory minimum sentencing scheme the state had passed two decades earlier.

In 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” New York held about 12,500 people in state prisons. Governor Nelson Rockefeller was eyeing yet another run at the White House and turned toward severe criminalization of drug use to burnish his “tough on crime” persona. In 1973, he pushed through a legislative package that came to bear his name: the Rockefeller Drug Laws. This landmark legislation mandated long prison terms for possession of even small amounts of controlled substances. It was the drug war as state policy. More than 90 percent of those incarcerated under the Rockefeller Drug Laws were Black and Latino, even though rates of drug use nationwide were and remain similar among Black, white, and Latino people.

By 1992, when Jeffrion Aubry entered the legislature, he’d already spent more than two decades serving his community, including as a teacher, a substance use counselor, and the executive director of Elmcor Youth and Adult Activity, “the oldest Black-led human services nonprofit in Queens.” He wanted people to learn, grow, and have a fair shot to get ahead.

Many elected officials are accountable first to their party; Aubry typically answered first to the movements working for a better world.

He had seen firsthand how the drug war was a disaster and he knew change was necessary. In 1997, contrary to the bipartisan ethos of the time, he introduced legislation to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws – and became champion of the cause.

The country was still in the grip of a drug war fever. In New York City, communities of color were subjected to the cruelty of the Giuliani era. Rikers Island and other city jails were bursting at the seams, with nearly 20,000 people behind bars. Over 70,000 people were in state prisons, and more than 30 percent of them were incarcerated under the drug laws. Given the politics of the time nationally and in New York, as well as the dynamics in the legislature, real criminal justice and drug policy reform seemed unfeasible.

However, in the late ’90s, a movement against the prison industrial complex prison reform was growing nationwide. Across New York, formerly incarcerated folks, impacted families, college students, and activists were coalescing around a demand to repeal the draconian drug laws. The movement, which students dubbed Drop the Rock, was gaining momentum, and the demands were percolating into state politics.

As the movement grew stronger, its reach also grew – dramatically. Hopes rose that repeal was imminent. Soon after a 2003 rally in support of the movement featuring a number of prominent musicians, a music industry mogul met with the governor and the state’s two top legislative bosses to negotiate a deal – Aubry was literally shut out of the room. When those negotiations fell apart, advocates’ hopes crashed against the seemingly intractable drug war and the state’s shady backroom politics. Many groups and movement leaders grew dispirited, and some withdrew from the fight. But not Aubry.

In late 2004 and mid-2005, two major bills passed, both of which Aubry helped usher through. One reduced the harshest of the drug laws’ penalties and the other made about 1,000 people eligible for possible resentencing and release. Finally, there were fractures in the Rock.

Some advocates thought an incremental approach would deflate the movement for repeal. Some political leaders certainly hoped that would happen. But Aubry believed, as some advocacy groups did, that reform could progress as long as the movement stayed focused.

As one of the organizers working closely with him then, I learned how critical it is to have a legislative champion who sticks with the fight and answers to the movement.

Groups on the ground kept going strong, working with Aubry and others to prioritize reform at the capitol. In 2008, the Democrats won a majority in the State Senate and essentially controlled government in Albany. Many believed that repeal of the Rockefeller Drug Laws was within reach. But support for the drug war had long been bipartisan, and some Democrats doubled down on their opposition to reform. A fierce battle ensued, with the assemblyman leading the legislative charge while the movement rallied in streets across the state and in the halls of the capitol.

Finally, in April of 2009, we won a major victory: The legislature passed real reforms that ended mandatory prison terms for nearly all drug offenses; expanded alternatives to incarceration; increased investment in substance use treatment; and more. And though on-the-ground organizing was indispensable, we wouldn’t have won without Aubry’s tenacity, commitment and principled leadership. Governor David Paterson signed the reforms at a ceremonial event at Elmcor.

New York had helped launch the war on drugs. Now the state was a leader in reform.

Since 2009, the movement has won an array of reforms throughout the criminal legal system: ending the practice of treating most juveniles as adults; providing more resources for public defense; expanding alternatives to incarceration and developing a stronger network of reentry programs to support people after incarceration; bolstering due process protections; enacting bail reform to promote fairness and limit detention based on someone’s ability to pay; restricting the use of solitary confinement in state prisons; ending the practice of automatic incarceration for noncriminal technical violations of parole; and much more.

Aubry sponsored many of these bills that were enacted into law, partnering with community and advocacy groups to advance each proposal. He wasn’t the author of every reform in the past 15 years, but his work helped us get here.And he has mentored other lawmakers, many of whom are still working with grassroots groups and advocacy organizations to carry forth the work for justice in Albany.

Last year, the legislature passed his bill to create new pathways for those wrongfully convicted in New York to formally clear their names, but Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed it. On the last day of the legislative session this year, the State Senate and Assembly passed Aubry’s bill to remove a lifetime ban on jury service for New Yorkers convicted of felonies, a bill that had languished for years.

Aubry’s retirement marks the end of an era in our state. He emerged from and remained rooted in the community and stayed in the fight for justice for the long haul, even against daunting odds and even when his party wasn’t with him. New York is better – and the national movement to end mass incarceration is stronger – because of his work. He deserves all the accolades he received from his colleagues on the last day of session. He has also earned the deep gratitude and lasting respect of an entire movement, one he played an important role in.

But Aubry isn’t much for fanfare, especially for himself, and he’d take a victory for justice – even a small one – over a plaque or flowers any day. The best way to express our gratitude for his decades of leadership is to redouble our efforts to make New York a fairer, more just, more equitable, safer and kinder place for all who live here.

gabriel sayegh is the cofounder of the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice, a grassroots group with members in Queens and throughout New York City and State. A longer version of this article, with citations, can be found on Katal’s website, katalcenter.org.