Raj Jayadev

De-bug established the Albert Cobarrubias Justice Project (ACJP), which has worked to change local court systems to give a voice to people facing charges, as well as training and supporting their families. De-bug and the ACJP bring community organising to courts, as part of a programme known as participatory defense. In participatory defense, ordinary citizens become change agents, helping to progress case outcomes and even transform the legal institutions themselves. The change agents search through police reports to create mitigation materials, and form an extension of the legal defense teams. In 2018 he delivered a TED talk on how communities can transform the courts. In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, Jayadev argued that racial justice could only truly begin when the police force reflected the communities they served.

In 2001 Jayadev founded Silicon Valley De-bug, a local newspaper and multi-media platform that tells the stories of less visible communities in California. The platform was originally sponsored by the Pacific News Service, with the aim to ‘inspire a rage to take action,’. A collection of the stories were published in 2016 in the award-winning book De-Bug: Voices from the Underside of Silicon Valley. When Colin Kaepernick made his million dollar pledge in 2017, he donated $25,000 to Silicon Valley De-bug. Jayadev spent 2017 as Stanford University SEERS Fellow, where he investigated the structure of courts and examined the right to counsel.

Raj Jayadev (born 1975) is an American community organiser and criminal justice advocate. He is the founder of the Silicon Valley De-bug, a multi-media platform that tells the stories of marginalised communities in California. Through De-bug, Jayadev works to support people facing incarceration and their families. He was selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 2018.