Book

AudioPort.Org - Program Information
... This weeks show features Anthony Papa, author of 15 Years to Life and Sanho Tree
of the Institute for Policy Studies. author Anthony Papa, Sanho Tree. ...
www.audioport.org/ index.php?op=program-info&program_id=711&nav=& - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

SOTHERN SPAIN and to the world on the Internet...WED NOVEMBER 17TH 2004 1:20 PM

" The Bradley Quick Experience"….
radio talk show Live every Saturday Night 11pm till 1am on KRLA 870AM in Los Angeles or Listen worldwide on the Internet at

The Blackwash Televised Art Gallery Channel 70 Sat. 8:00pmDecember 11, 2004

Click on the above for time and dates of the taped interview with Anthony Papa

DESCRIPTION: RadioNation has established itself as one of the most provocative and informative shows on the air. A project of the non-profit Nation Institute, RadioNation is hosted by Nation contributing editor and longtime radio personality Marc Cooper. A weekly feast of news and opinion from some of America's brightest writers, thinkers and activists. RadioNation can be heard on public stations across the country and over the Internet via Real Audio technology.

Feb. 10 at 6pm, Hue-Man Bookstore and Café, 2319 Frederick Douglass Blvd.

NYC D.A. Bob Morganthau Involved in Heated Race for District Attorney of NY County Joins Artist/Activist Anthony Papa at Harlem Book Store for his Book Signing of Rockefeller Drug Laws Memoir

D.A. Bob Morgenthau Involved in Heated Race for District Attorney of NY County Joins Artist/Activist Anthony Papa at Harlem Book Store for his Book Signing of Rockefeller Drug Laws Memoir

On February 10, 2005 at 6pm Anthony Papa author of 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way To Freedom is scheduled to do a book/talk at Hue-Man Book Store. He is joined by D.A. Bob Morganthau who is involved in a heated race against former NY judge Leslie Crocker Synder. The subject matter of the book is the Rockefeller Drug Laws which will be a central issue in the race for NY County D.A. Morganthau has stood firm in his position on the laws seeking fair and equitable reform in the laws. Synder on the other had has flip flopped on the issue. Now, as a candidate she suddenly supports reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Anthony Papa who has debated her on two television shows states “Synder is a hypocrite. In the past, she has gleefully boasted about supporting 98% of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. The same laws that incarcerate 94% black and Latinos. If elected Synder would be a disaster for inner city communities like Harlem N.Y. The last D.A that heavily supported these laws is now unemployed. “

Papa a first time non-violent offender who served 12 years of a 15 to life sentence was granted clemency by Governor Pataki . Since his release he has been fighting to repeal the Rockefeller Drug Laws. “The recent watered down reform is not acceptable and my new book is a clarion call for meaningful reform” says Papa . Also present will be Senator David Patterson , Senator Eric Schneiderman , Assemblyman Jeff Aubry, Judge Jerome Marks and Justice Works, a advocacy group, to address the issue to the Harlem community. Special entertainment by political comedian Randy Credico reading as George Bush .

LOCATION: Hue Man Books at 2319 Federick Douglas Blvd between 124th & 125th Street in NYC . For bookstore info: 212 – 665-7400

Lecture / book talk multimedia presentation The Schomburg Center Junior Scholars Program in Harlem NY

Herald.com | 02/20/2005 | Festival opens Keys Chamber Orchestra season
... 15 to Life: Art Behind Bars announces an event to celebrate the publication
of Anthony Papa's memoir, 15 To Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom. ...
www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ news/columnists/nancy_butler_ross/10948001.htm - 36k - Cached - Similar pages

vassar student association
... ANTHONY PAPA. Thu, April 7 -- 7 PM -- Villard Room. Formerly incarcerated
artist and current drug war reform activist, Anthony Papa will be visiting ...
vsa.vassar.edu/ - 9k - 23 Apr 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

15 Years to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom

15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom
Anthony Papa, 2004
Feral House
Hardcover, 215 pages
ISBN: 1-932595-06-6
$22.95

“15 years to Life” is a phrase tremoring with emotion. Unfortunately it was a phrase passed too often and too easily through the lips of many courtroom prosecutors and judges as the minimum mandatory sentence mandated by New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws. Though these laws faced very minor reforms last year (reducing some sentences to 8 to 20 years), they remained for 31 years as the unforgiving and unforgivable standard rule of sentencing for nonviolent offenders of the politically ballyhooed “war on drugs.” Of course the Rockefeller laws have not offered New York any definite expedience in confronting “drug problems”. Drug kingpins are still able to take advantage of the plights of the destitute, letting them risk the jail time for passing envelopes of narcotics while staying far from the action of the street. As a result, despite the fact that most hard-drug users are white, the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and the American Civil Liberties Union conclude that over 94% of the 17,000 Rockefeller-incarcerated individuals are Latino or Black. It is a cruel, racist strategy for enslaving people in the prison industrial complex while ensuring a citizenry that the drug trade stems from a criminal element and not from a more sophisticated sociological despair.

Anthony Papa only took one risk to find the $500 he needed to pay rent so his family could live. Like being asked to do some landscaping for a friend, Papa was to deliver four and one half ounces of coke for some quick money and quick resolution to his financial crisis. The deal was a setup to break the fall of a dealer higher up in the hierarchy of the drug market and Papa endured the mandatory 15 year minimum in court. Thereafter Papa lived an ordinary story of acclimation to prison life as a first-time offender, as well as an extraordinary story of discovery of latent talent, and a strategic engagement of that talent to pursue his freedom. Through the pages we see the scant resources prisoners have for advocating for their freedom. We see those scant resources exhausted as Papa becomes a jailhouse lawyer creating appeals that are manhandled to his misfortune by outsider law firms. In the end, as the title suggests, it is the resource of art that prevails. Both as an occupation that allowed Papa to transcend his despair in the cell and the afflictions of civil bureaucracy. Papa wins his freedom through playing the ooh’s and ah’s of the art world and its media following. His builds his campaign for clemency from governor George Pataki on the moral/aesthetic arguments that only his art is allowed to communicate. And ‘moral argument’ ought not be confused with plastic sympathy. It is no puppy dog stare from a pet store window. Papa’s story is a milieu of competitiveness and resigned cooperation with an inhuman system of power. Papa is forced to wile and trick a system to gain an advantage that should be afforded to him on the basis of human rights. Papa competes against many characters: lawyers, judges, dealers, other inmates, COs, high society artists and critics. And the prize of this competition is not the fame associated with hanging portraits in galleries. That is just the means to the real finish line: the freedom those on the outside all readily take for granted. Papa literally paints for his life; it may well be the reason he paints (”I knew that participating in the show [at New York’s Whitney Art Museum] was the break I had been waiting for. As I re-read the lines, they blurred into a single word: FREEDOM.”).

So art, the aesthetic realm all too often valued as transcendent of the hard truths of life, finds a very practical cause. Art’s power is used for a very focused and determinate end: to sow a campaign for public opinion. Papa’s sentence at Sing Sing faces the opposite direction Oscar Wilde experienced during his stay at Reading Gaol. Whereas Wilde was an aesthete whose genius was eroded by the toil of his imprisonment, Papa finds his genius because of the toil, because the normal argumentative paths to pursuing freedom (court appeals) in maximum security prisons ultimately don’t exist in his favor. While Wilde may view art as those things that are unnecessary, Papa makes art (and maybe more precisely the outside world’s mass-mediated appreciation of art) the absolutely necessary path to his campaign for clemency and his freedom.

15 to Life reveals the conflicts and cooperation between the artist’s brush, jailhouse-law study, and numerous letters from legal bureaucracy. Papa struggles through them all, playing them with and against each other in hopes that he can freely reclaim his humanity. It leaves a lot of questions for the reader such as “What happens to the inmates who don’t have talent or technique to entice the sympathy of the free world, what about the rest of them?” Fortunately, Papa doesn’t take his freedom and run. As co-founder of the Mothers of the New York Disappeared he uses his clout as a cultural and moral sensation to campaign for the rights of those he left behind the gates of Sing Sing. Papa leaves the story of 15 to Life with a strong and quickening gaze toward liberation for the Rockefeller incarcerated.

Papa’s memoir will be easy and important reading for those who want to figure art as a politicizing and strategic resource for creating real change for social justice. It will inform the reader not only about Papa’s artistic process but also the political process he must engage to make his art work for social change and his freedom. This process includes mobilizing audiences, critics, press, and other locations of power toward an ethic or political good. Papa’s art is great and can stand alone as a form of beauty. However, “How I Painted My Way to Freedom” is a complex subtitle and ought not conjure an image of the paintbrush as a mystical key to the cellblock latch. Papa’s story does not let one underestimate the amount of work and struggle Papa needed to endure to direct his art toward political resolution.

-------------------------------

"15 to Life" by Anthony Papa

15 to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom
Anthony Papa, 2004
Feral House
Hardcover, 215 pages
ISBN: 1-932595-06-6
$22.95

“15 years to Life” is a phrase tremoring with emotion. Unfortunately it was a
phrase passed too often and too easily through the lips of many courtroom
prosecutors and judges as the minimum mandatory sentence mandated by New York’s
Rockefeller Drug Laws. Though these laws faced very minor reforms last year
(reducing some sentences to 8 to 20 years), they remained for 31 years as the
unforgiving and unforgivable standard rule of sentencing for nonviolent
offenders of the politically ballyhooed “war on drugs.”

Of course the Rockefeller laws have not offered New York any definite expedience
in confronting “drug problems”. Drug kingpins are still able to take advantage
of the plights of the destitute, letting them risk the jail time for passing
envelopes of narcotics while staying far from the action of the street. As a
result, despite the fact that most hard-drug users are white, the Hip-Hop
Summit Action Network and the American Civil Liberties Union conclude that over
94% of the 17,000 Rockefeller-incarcerated individuals are Latino or Black. It
is a cruel, racist strategy for enslaving people in the prison industrial
complex while ensuring a citizenry that the drug trade stems from a criminal
element and not from a more sophisticated sociological despair.

Anthony Papa only took one risk to find the $500 he needed to pay rent so his
family could live. Like being asked to do some landscaping for a friend, Papa
was to deliver four and one half ounces of coke for some quick money and quick
resolution to his financial crisis. The deal was a setup to break the fall of
a dealer higher up in the hierarchy of the drug market and Papa endured the
mandatory 15 year minimum in court. Thereafter Papa lived an ordinary story of
acclimation to prison life as a first-time offender, as well as an extraordinary
story of discovery of latent talent, and a strategic engagement of that talent
to pursue his freedom. Through the pages we see the scant resources prisoners
have for advocating for their freedom. We see those scant resources exhausted
as Papa becomes a jailhouse lawyer creating appeals that are manhandled to his
misfortune by outsider law firms. In the end, as the title suggests, it is the
resource of art that prevails. Both as an occupation that allowed Papa to
transcend his despair in the cell and the afflictions of civil bureaucracy.
Papa wins his freedom through playing the ooh’s and ah’s of the art world and
its media following. His builds his campaign for clemency from then governor
George Pataki on the moral/aesthetic arguments that only his art is allowed to
communicate. And ‘moral argument’ ought not be confused with plastic sympathy.
It is no puppy dog stare from a pet store window.

Papa’s story is a milieu of competitiveness and resigned cooperation with an
inhuman system of power. Papa is forced to wile and trick a system to gain an
advantage that should be afforded to him on the basis of human rights. Papa
competes against many characters: lawyers, judges, dealers, other inmates,
CO’s, high society artists and critics. And the prize of this competition is
not the fame associated with hanging portraits in galleries. That is just the
means to the real finish line: the freedom those on the outside all readily
take for granted. Papa literally paints for his life; it may well be the
reason he paints (“I knew that participating in the show [at New York’s Whitney
Art Museum] was the break I had been waiting for. As I re-read the lines, they
blurred into a single word: FREEDOM.”).

So art, the aesthetic realm all too often valued as transcendent of the hard
truths of life, finds a very practical cause. Art’s power is used for a very
focused and determinate end: to sow a campaign for public opinion. Papa’s
sentence at Sing Sing faces the opposite direction Oscar Wilde experienced
during his stay at Reading Gaol. Whereas Wilde was an aesthete whose genius
was eroded by the toil of his imprisonment, Papa finds his genius because of
the toil, because the normal argumentative paths to pursuing freedom (court
appeals) in maximum security prisons ultimately don’t exist in his favor.
While Wilde may view art as those things that are unnecessary, Papa makes art
(and maybe more precisely the outside world’s mass-mediated appreciation of
art) the absolutely necessary path to his campaign for clemency and his
freedom.

15 to Life reveals the conflicts and cooperation between the artist’s brush,
jailhouse-law study, and numerous letters from legal bureaucracy. Papa
struggles through them all, playing them with and against each other in hopes
that he can freely reclaim his humanity. It leaves a lot of questions for the
reader such as “What happens to the inmates who don’t have talent or technique
to entice the sympathy of the free world, what about the rest of them?”
Fortunately, Papa doesn’t take his freedom and run. As co-founder of the
Mothers of the New York Disappeared he uses his clout as a cultural and moral
sensation to campaign for the rights of those he left behind the gates of Sing
Sing. Papa leaves the story of 15 to Life with a strong and quickening gaze
toward liberation for the Rockefeller incarcerated.

Papa’s memoir will be easy and important reading for those who want to figure
art as a politicizing and strategic resource for creating real change for
social justice. It will inform the reader not only about Papa’s artistic
process but also the political process he must engage to make his art work for
social change and his freedom. This process includes mobilizing audiences,
critics, press, and other locations of power toward an ethic or political good.
Papa’s art is great and can stand alone as a form of beauty. However, “How I
Painted My Way to Freedom” is a complex subtitle and ought not conjure an image
of the paintbrush as a mystical key to the cellblock latch. Papa’s story does
not let one underestimate the amount of work and struggle Papa needed to endure
to direct his art toward political resolution.

Impact Press Book Reviews:
by Craig Mazer, Kari Lydersen
"15 To Life: How I Painted My Way To Freedom"; "A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth"

High Times Magazine Book Review APRIL 2005 by Valerie Pan Da Pan
Anthony Papa's 15 to Life;

In 1985, Anthony Papa was a 29-year-old small business owner living in the Bronx with his wife and young daughter. Bills were mounting, rent was due and tensions were rising in his marriage when a gambling acquaintance stepped up and offered him a quick $500 to deliver a package. Papa had doubts and misgivings, but he accepted the proposal. The package Papa carried was full of cocaine and he delivered it directly into the hands of undercover cops. To make matters worse, this particular event came with an added twist; namely New York's Rockefeller drug laws, which mandate a 15-year-to-life sentence for the weight of the drugs Anthony had delivered.

15 to Life details how Papa transformed himself while in prison, from a convicted drug courier into an artist and later into an activist. The first 80+ pages cover his dealings with a shady lawyer, codefendants turning on him and his initiation into the jail system. Papa reinforces that what you see in the movies about prison life is not far from reality. Sex, violence, drugs, deals made and deals broken all take place on a regular basis behind the prison walls.

15 to Life takes a turn from prison narrative to survival tale when Papa realizes that he is going to serve a good deal of his sentence. Papa finds his inspiration to not give up when he sees a prisoner painting in his cell and becomes mesmerized by the act. A short while later, emerging from a three-day lockdown Papa has an epiphany as he looks around his cell. He considers the ten paintings he has completed and sees his freedom on the canvas. At this point Papa becomes committed to his art, realizing it is the only way he can survive prison.

While Papa works on his art he starts to realize that his lawyer is not doing much to help him. While in the library studying his case, a prisoner tells him about the law that has sentenced him to 15 years to life. The Rockefeller drug laws state that a judge must impose a minimum sentence of 15 years to life to anyone convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of a controlled substance. Kingpin or first time bust, everyone receives the same minimum sentence. Papa now had another focus besides his art, his case and more specifically, the law that put him behind bars.

Papa gets a break in September of 1993 when the Whitney Museum contacted Sing Sing about a show they would be putting together. The Whitney was looking for art by a murderer for their show. Papa saw an opportunity and pursued it, telling The Whitney that he was a convicted killer. In his mind the lie would expose his are and hopefully get him closer to freedom.

After the Whitney show Papa received his first press exposure, an in depth piece in the Gannett Suburban Newspaper. An article in Prison Life magazine followed, then a NY Times letter to the editor penned by Papa in regard to the Rockefeller drug laws. Later, an Associated Press story that is printed in six New York newspapers follows. Papa welcomes the press; the prison does not and reassigns him to a harsher area of the prison.

Papa later learns of an opportunity to join a Master's Degree Program from the New York Theological Seminary. While he is enrolled in the Master's Program Papa starts the ball rolling on his plea for clemency from Governor George Pataki. Papa details his attempts at clemency and his joy at finally receiving the news that it had been granted.

After his release Papa tells of his days outside of prison. His major focus is on the group he co-founds, Mothers of the New York Disappeared, named for the mothers and relatives who have had family members disappear behind prison walls. The group is focused on repealing the Rockefeller Drug Laws. The efforts of the group have helped change public opinion on the law, however the public and the government that represents them are not on the same page and the laws remain unchanged.

15 Years To Life is not the criminal adventure story you may be used to. No high flying lifestyle/self-aggrandizements. Anthony Papa's true story of incarceration, and intellectual and spiritual growth, is about a non-violent criminal jailed for 15 years under New Yorks’ notorious minimum sentencing Rockefeller Laws*. The narrative starts a bit slowly, but by the time fast-talking sham artist lawyers are concocting fake alibis, it's worth the token for the ride. Graphic details of jail life through an artists eyes are stunning, "Times Square was the Sodom and Gomorrah of Sing-Sing," and “The cells around Times Square were like booths in an outdoor market. From behind their curtain draped cells convict craftsmen sold materials such as handbags, leather-work and belts.” The description of the constant struggle of surviving the twin dangers of random violence from the fellow convicts, and psychological harassment from the guards creates a tension in the work that gives you a taste on the toothpick of jail experience. Painting, jail-house lawyering, and appealing his conviction all drive the book’s theme of trying not to be institutionalized by the system. Vivid, yet also politically focused throughout, 15 Years To Life gives an honest representation of the strife of an individual within the tall walls of misfortune. Complemented by a few of the authors paintings in the center of the book, and constant references to the important friendships developed in jail, 15 Years To Life is an effusively effective portrayal of Anthony Papa's path to freedom.

* This novel is even more important now in ‘05 when snakes like Russell Simmons, who yacht with the Rothschild family, accept the Rockefeller Laws' token reformations as a jump-off to a political career.

DRCNet Book Review: "15 To Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom," by Tony Papa with Jennifer Wynn Feral House Press, $22.95 HB) 10/22/04
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/359/15tolife.shtml

Some 17,000 people -- the vast majority black or Latino -- are currently serving decades-long mandatory minimum prison sentences in New York state, the legacy of liberal Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's pioneering effort to suppress drug use by imposing draconian penalties on even low-level drug offenders. When the governor pushed through what are now known as the Rockefeller drug laws -- how's that for a legacy? -- in the early 1970s, he began the push toward mandatory minimum sentencing that swept the country in the years since then. Gov. Rockefeller deserves a large share of the credit, if that is the right word, for beginning the trend that has resulted in the United States -- the land of the free -- becoming the most imprisonment-happy country in the world.

Anthony Papa (http://www.15yearstolife.com) is one of the victims of the Rockefeller drug laws. As a young married working man in New York City, Papa knew nothing of the severe penalties awaiting those who violated the Rockefeller laws. Short on money after a string of losses gambling on bowling, Papa agreed to deliver a package for one of his bowling alley buddies. It was supposed to have been an easy $500; instead, it was the beginning of Papa's extended sojourn in the Dante-esque world of the New York criminal justice and correctional system.

Papa was sentenced to the standard 15-years-to-life and pulled many long years at Sing Sing, one of the most famous, if not the most notorious, of the prisons in the Empire State's ever-growing gulag. But through the development of an artistic talent he never knew he possessed before going in, Papa eventually won a measure of fame, and he was able to parlay that into clemency from Gov. George Pataki. Papa walked out of prison in January 1997, and since then he has been deeply involved in trying to repeal the laws that nearly stole his life and that have kept thousands of others of nonviolent drug offenders locked up for year after year after year.

"15 To Life" is the story of Papa's journey to hell, his desperate fight to regain his freedom, and the continuing effort to repeal the Rockefeller laws and win justice for the thousands of drug offenders still rotting away inside Attica, Clinton, Sing Sing, and all those other places whose names are now synonymous with infamy. With assistance from Jennifer Wynn, Papa treats the reader to a horrible, gripping narrative account of his odyssey in the New York criminal justice system. (After finishing Papa's book, I feel a strong urge to never write that phrase without using quotation marks around the word "justice.")

Prisons have high walls not just to keep the prisoners in but also to keep public knowledge out. As Papa so eloquently reiterates, they are brutal places. They are filled with sadists, thugs, and thieves -- and that's just the guards. The administration of New York's prisons that Papa writes about can only be described as institutional sadism: The guards ominously slapping their batons as new prisoners arrive, the prison goon squads clad in riot gear who so bravely beat the crap out of inmates who dare to protest their mistreatment, and the less violent but equally crazy-making arbitrary infractions handed out by guards on a whim. And we have the nerve to wonder why people come out of prison worse than when they went in?

Sadism and savagery are not, of course, limited to the prison guards. By treating drug offenders as dangerous criminals worthy of decades-long prison sentences, New York in essence throws to the wolves thousands of nonviolent drug offenders. With those long sentences, they are sent to prisons like Attica and Sing Sing that are the home to truly hardened criminals. Clueless dopers become easy prey for the violent men who flourish in prison society. Papa himself relates at least two incidents where he was attacked by other prisoners, one mentally disturbed, the other just plain mean.

Tony Papa was able to paint his way out of prison, and much of "15 To Life" tells the story of how, thanks to inmate mentors, he discovered his talent and was able to produce images so harrowing and horrid that he was able to break through the walls of silence, make allies on the outside, and eventually win his freedom. But Papa was the exception; the governors of New York rarely grant clemency, and thousands upon thousands of other Tony Papas are rotting away behind the walls as you read these words. Since his release, Papa has been very active in the movement to win freedom for the rest.

The final chapters of "15 To Life" are the latest notes on a work in progress: the years-long effort to repeal the Rockefeller drug laws. Papa recounts his frustrations in dealing with politicians who acknowledge the cruelty, inhumanity, and uselessness of the Rockefeller laws, but refuse to change them because of political calculations, and his realization that it would only be with an uprising from the bottom that those laws would be changed. Now, in late 2004, the Rockefeller laws are still in place, but Papa has helped craft a movement that threatens to strike them down. The final chapters of "15 To Life" have yet to be written.

"15 To Life" is a searing indictment of the New York criminal justice system, and by extension the entire law enforcement approach to drug use in this country. But it is an indictment that reads like a page-turner of a novel. This harrowing, first-person account of crime and injustice, imprisonment and redemption, is a guaranteed eye-opener for anyone who wonders about whether our current approach to drugs is the correct one. And more broadly, it is a screaming indictment of a prison culture in this country that threatens to rob the soul of America. Read it. Read it and hope that we can find a better way. But read it and weep for the hundreds of thousands of Americans deprived of their liberty and locked up in brutality factories.

And read it and weep for all us. Thomas Jefferson once famously observed, "When I consider that God is just, I fear for my country." After reading "15 To Life," all I can say is, "Me, too."

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Submarino
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Anthony Papa was a typical individual that sought the American Dream, Instead he found the American tragedy of the drug war. He had a wife and child and worked hard to makes ends meet. Frustrated with his situation he fell prey to a quick scheme to make some fast money. After meeting a drug dealer at the bowling alley he frequented, he was asked to deliver an envelope containing 4 and one half ounces of cocaine. At first he refused, but after a while his desperate state overtook his better senses. He agreed, and walked into an undercover drug sting. His one mistake was compounded into a living nightmare. Everything that could go wrong, did.

In 1985, he was found guilty and sentenced to two 15 year to life sentences under New York State's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. Papa was then sent to Sing Sing prison where the best years of his life would be lost in one of the most dangerous prisons in America. Faced with violence and a self-defeating environment he struggled to survive. Papa did this through his discovery of art. It was through his painting that he transcended the negativity of imprisonment and found meaning in his life. His art would also eventually set him free.

During Papa's time in prison he created a body of art work that captures the prison experience.. He acquired 3 college degrees, including a Masters Degree from New York Theological Seminary. After 10 years, Papa had exhausted all of his legal remedies. His quest for freedom seemed gone. However, by a one in a million chance, his self portrait titled "15 Years to Life" was chosen to be exhibited at the Mike Kelley restrospective at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. This was not without a struggle. After Kelley selected his painting, the curator Elisabeth Sussman, then informed the prison about the jarring stipulation that the artist chosen must be a convicted murderer. This was because of the intellectual context of "Pay for Your Pleasure" the art installation it would be centerpiece for. A confrontation occurred when the prison administration would not allow Papa to participate. The Whitney had given Papa an avenue to regain his only chance left for freedom. He then used the survival skills he had honed in prison to convince the administration to allow him to participate in the show thus generating tremendous publicity to his case.

In 1997, after 12 years Anthony painted his way out of prison when Governor George Pataki granted him executive clemency. When released Papa continued to bring his message of reform to the public by exhibiting his art and appearing on National shows. Tired of politicians afraid of getting involved for fear of losing their jobs, Papa formed the "Mothers of the New York Disappeared", a group of ex-prisoners and family members of those incarcerated under the Rockefeller Drug Laws. In 5 years through street level protests, which generated tremendous publicity, the group managed to change the face of the war on drugs in New York bringing to the public the human element of the drug war.

In many ways Anthony Papa's case is typical of the first time non violent offender being incarcerated for many years because of the war on drugs. Because of New York's obsolete drug laws, its prisons confine over 18,000 drug offenders, the vast majority being low-level criminals. It costs tax payers over $715 million a year to imprison these offenders. Over 94% of them are people of color. Before he died, Cardinal John O'Connor joined New York's Roman Catholic Bishops and the Mothers of the NY Disappeared that called on the governor and state legislature to overhaul mandatory laws, urging for a more humane and effective system. This eventually convinced Governor George Pataki, the Senate and the Assembly to call for change of the Rockefeller Drug Laws in 2001. However, at this time in September of 2004 no reform has taken place because of the shame of politics. The governor, assembly and senate have blamed each other for not cooperating while human beings are rotting away in prison.

These laws have served as a model for other states to follow resulting in federal mandatory minimum laws for drug offenses that have filled prisons with over 1 million non violent offenders costing taxpayers at least 22 billion dollars a year. The war on drugs has generated a grate debate by many, including political leaders, judges, and clergy. The urgent need for change in the way society deals with the drug problem is shown by the words and wisdom of former U.S. National Drug Czar, General Barry McCaffrey, who had been nationally responsible to fix the drug problem in all facets for years until he resigned from his position because of the administrations reliance on a strictly punitive approach. He has stated, in part: "It is clear that we cannot arrest our way out of the problem of chronic drug abuse and drug driven crime. We cannot continue to apply policies and programs that do not deal with the root causes of substance abuse and attendant crime". He has also stated that, Mandatory sentencing ties the hands of judges too tightly and prevents them from exercising discretion and good judgement.

The war on drugs has also fueled the prison industrial complex. Revenue raised from the business of imprisonment. For example, New York State now spends more money locking up criminals than educating students at its public universities. According to a report released by the Correctional Association more than $761 million has been added to New York's prison budget over the last decade, while spending for higher education has been cut by $615 million. Today, New York spends $275 million more to run prisons than state and city colleges.

15 TO LIFE will attempt to break down the barriers that prevent the public from understanding the prison experience by putting a human face on it through one man's struggle for freedom. Anthony Papa might have gone to prison an ordinary man with little insight on the politics involved with his imprisonment. However, he has emerged with a vision born from its deprivation and now has become an icon for sentencing reform against the laws that once held him captive. Sharing his story through all formats of media, lecturing at Universities such as Columbia and Harvard he continues to educate the public about prison and the war on drugs. His is a story of inspiration of the human spirit that creates a common path that anyone could follow in transcending a negative experience.

2004 Northeast Regional Conference SSDP

LOCKED UP: Drugs, Prisons & Privilege

Columbia University, NY 116th Street

11:00AM- 5:00PM 5^th Floor, Lerner Hall

15 Years to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom

"15 to Life" by Anthony Papa

2004 Northeast Regional Conference SSDP

LOCKED UP: Drugs, Prisons & Privilege

Columbia University, NY 116th Street

11:00AM- 5:00PM 5th Floor, Lerner Hall

15 Years to Life: How I Painted My Way to Freedom

"15 to Life" by Anthony Papa

11:00AM- 5:00PM 5^th Floor, Lerner Hall