Albany

A massive social movement modeled after those that opposed slavery and won blacks the right to vote is required to tear down a judicial system in America that is disproportionately jailing blacks, an Albany activist told a crowd in Arbor Hill on Friday.

Alice Green, founder and executive director of The Center for Law and Justice, gave Underground Railroad History Project's July 4th Oration in the backyard of the Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence on Livingston Avenue. She led a one-hour discussion in which she indicted the American justice system, saying it had become a revolving door that criminalizes blacks.

"For me, there's no question," Green said, "mass incarceration is a form of enslavement."

About 60 people sat in lawn chairs under leafy trees and listened to Green lecture on a cool, breezy morning. Mary Liz and Paul Stewart, co-founders of the history project, welcomed Green and others to the Myers Residence, a historic Underground Railroad site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In framing her discussion, Green cited a speech given by leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July in 1852 in which he asked, "What to the slave is the 4th of July?"

More than a century and a half later, Green asked what the holiday means to black, brown and poor prisoners who have been arrested and held under the nation's war on drugs. She said blacks were jailed at far higher rates than whites under the drug laws. The Center for Law and Justice is collecting signatures to encourage state leaders to review incarceration rates and laws.

"If you believe mass incarceration is a form of enslavement, you can't reform it," Green said. "You don't reform slavery. You abolish it."