Janye is an outspoken young Black revolutionary from the San Francisco Bay Area. Janye was arrested in 2015 in an obvious case of racial profiling, in which the cops said he “fit the description” of a crime he did not commit. A witness to the “crime” immediately confirmed that Janye had nothing to do with it, but Janye was still taken into custody where he was questioned and then leveled with serious charges related to last year’s protests in Oakland against the non-indictments for the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.  On May 12, 2016, he was sentenced to 2 years for incidents related to the Mike Brown and Eric Garner protests in 2014.  He will receive credit for time served pre-trial, until approximately May 2017.

After several high profile police killings of young black men, the Bay Area, like much of the rest of the country, surged into a wave of protest and resistance. The state responded by using the legal system as a tool of repression, threatening incarceration and steep fines for some of those involved in these actions. It is sad but obvious that the one person getting targeted for that beautiful moment of protest is a strong and politicized young black man.