Alice Green runs for mayor

Activist takes aim at city's top job
Alice Green expected to announce her candidacy on Green Party line Monday

By BRIAN NEARING, Staff writer
First published: Saturday, July 9, 2005

ALBANY -- A longtime civil rights activist who ran for lieutenant governor in 1998 will launch a challenge against Mayor Jerry Jennings on the Green Party line this fall.

Alice Green, director of the Center for Law and Justice, is expected to announce her campaign on Monday, according to a news release issued Friday afternoon after the Times Union learned of her plans from another source.

Green declined comment Friday, saying she will issue a statement at the news conference, planned for 11 a.m. at her home at 509 W. Lawrence St. Also in the race for mayor are Archie Goodbee and Benzie Johnson, who have announced they will try to defeat the three-term incumbent in the Democratic primary. Green and Goodbee are black.

When Green ran for lieutenant governor, the Green Party garnered more than the minimum 50,000 votes needed to give the party official ballot status in New York.

Green, 65, heads the Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit community organization that monitors criminal justice activities and provides legal assistance and criminal justice advocacy to poor people and people of color.

Prior to the creation of the center, she was legislative director for the New York Civil Liberties Union. In 1986, Gov. Mario Cuomo appointed her to the position of deputy commissioner for the New York State Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives.

From 1975 through 1979, Green served as the executive director of Trinity Institution, a youth and family services center in Albany's South End neighborhood. During her time as director, she founded the South End Scene in 1977, one of the longest-running newspapers for the black community in Albany. The paper folded in the early 1990s.

She holds a bachelor's degree from the University at Albany, where she also earned two master's degrees, in education and social work, and a doctorate from the School of Criminal Justice.