The Foreign Communist and Leftist Organizations Behind Pro-Cuba Regime Propaganda in the U.S.

The Nuestra América Convoy, composed of American and international leftists that recently delivered aid to the Cuban regime, was a network of at least 23 Marxist, socialist, and anti-American organizations, many with foreign ties and funding, including connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

Several have a documented history of organizing or participating in anti-American protests in the United States, including pro-Hamas demonstrations in Times Square within hours of the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks, the July 2024 mass-vandalism protest at Washington’s Union Station, “Hands Off Iran” rallies, anti-ICE protests, pro-Maduro demonstrations, and other pro-communist causes.

The convoy’s primary organizing body was Progressive International, a self-described worldwide anti-capitalist organization formally founded in 2020, growing out of a 2018 call by Bernie Sanders’s institute and the Democracy in Europe Movement.

Its manifesto asserts that “capitalism is the virus” that must be eradicated, supports “revolution” to “transform society and reclaim the state,” and warns that “winning elections is not enough.”

The organization dismisses concerns about Chinese military aggression as an “invented narrative” and “anti-China hysteria.”

Its advisory council includes British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn, a self-identified socialist who participated in the convoy, and Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister who describes himself as an “erratic Marxist” or “libertarian Marxist.”

Progressive International co-organized the convoy alongside the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which a 1978 CIA study prepared for the House Intelligence Committee described as “one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party,” noting its consistent alignment with Moscow’s foreign policy.

National Lawyers Guild president Suzanne Adely participated in a joint Progressive International and IADL delegation to the Palestinian Territories in 2024.

A central organizing and fiscal node for the convoy was the People’s Forum, a New York-based 501(c)(3) whose executive director, Manolo de los Santos, spoke at press conferences in Havana.

De los Santos has spent years in Cuba and built a career organizing protests in New York City. In April 2024, hours before anti-Israel protesters occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, he addressed roughly 100 activists at the People’s Forum’s Manhattan offices, urging them to recreate the “summer of 2020,” a reference to the BLM riots that resulted in $400 million in damage across the country, and to “give Joe Biden a hot summer.”

Isra Hirsi, daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar, traveled to Cuba as part of a People’s Forum delegation. She had previously been suspended from Barnard College for participating in a siege of parts of neighboring Columbia University during pro-Hamas protests.

The House Ways and Means Committee stated in a formal letter that the People’s Forum received over $20 million from Neville Roy Singham and his wife, Jodie Evans, between 2017 and 2022 through shell companies and donor-advised funds, and that it has “acted as a foreign agent of the Chinese Communist Party” while maintaining tax-exempt status. Singham, a U.S.-born tech mogul who sold his company for $785 million in 2017, moved to Shanghai and in July 2023 attended a Communist Party workshop on “promoting the party internationally.”

He shares premises with a Chinese propaganda firm whose goal is to “educate foreigners about the miracles that China has created.”

The People’s Forum hosted courses in late 2024 glorifying the Chinese revolution and events with diaspora groups defending the CCP. A George Washington University Program on Extremism report identified the People’s Forum as a key node funding activist groups with anti-U.S. and anti-Israel agendas aligned with China’s global messaging.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley urged an investigation into whether the People’s Forum should register as foreign agents under FARA.

Code Pink, founded in 2002 by Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, is a 501(c)(3) with a 23-year record of opposing U.S. foreign policy, actively opposing sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba, and disrupting congressional hearings including those of Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Code Pink chartered a plane for 100 convoy participants, delivered 6,300 pounds of medical supplies valued at $433,000, and charged each participant $1,600 for the trip.

Since 2017, roughly 25 percent of Code Pink’s funding has come from groups connected to Singham, who married co-founder Evans in 2019.

Since that marriage, Evans and Code Pink have, according to Senate Judiciary Committee documents, “stridently supported China,” with Evans publicly describing the Uyghurs as “terrorists” and defending their mass detention.

Additional funding has come from the Benjamin Fund, a private foundation controlled by Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin and her family, since renamed Arc of Justice, which contributed $952,600 between 2017 and 2020, the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, which contributed $710,000 between 2017 and 2019, the Cultures of Resistance Network, and the Tides Foundation.

Senator Tom Cotton wrote to Attorney General Bondi requesting that the DOJ investigate Code Pink for potential FARA violations and for providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, citing its funding ties to Singham and its past partnerships with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Samidoun, both designated as terrorist-affiliated organizations in multiple countries.

The House Committee on Natural Resources announced a separate investigation into Code Pink in November 2023. Code Pink denies receiving funding from China or any foreign government.

The People’s Forum serves as fiscal sponsor of the Venceremos Brigade, the oldest U.S.-Cuba solidarity organization, founded in 1969 by members of Students for a Democratic Society, the Communist Party USA, and the Black Panther Party.

Its website states that its founders were “on the frontlines of the struggles for socialism and against imperialism.” The FBI investigated the Brigade from its inception, producing at least 23,000 pages of files.

A 1976 FBI report stated that Cuba’s intelligence service sought to recruit individuals who might later obtain positions in the U.S. government.

A 1975 Senate report described the Brigade as “one of the most extensive and dangerous infiltration operations” by a foreign power.

A retired CIA official later wrote that the DGI-sponsored Brigades were among the most successful covert political operations in modern history.

Students for a Democratic Society, the foundational New Left organization of the 1960s, first pitched the Brigade to Cuban authorities in 1969.

After SDS collapsed, its alumni helped form major radical organizations in this network, including the May 19th Communist Organization and the Weather Underground.

The May 19th Communist Organization, named for Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, was the only women-led terrorist group in U.S. history.

It supported the Black Liberation Army, carried out armored truck robberies, and bombed government buildings, including the U.S. Capitol in 1983.

Brigade veterans include former Los Angeles mayors Karen Bass and Antonio Villaraigosa, National Lawyers Guild president Michael Ratner, and labor official Karen Nussbaum.

Susan Rosenberg traveled to Cuba with the Brigade in 1976 before joining the May 19th Communist Organization, which an FBI report said “openly advocate[d] the overthrow of the U.S. Government through armed struggle.”

Arrested in 1984 with 740 pounds of explosives, she was sentenced to 58 years before President Clinton commuted her sentence. She later served as vice chair of Thousand Currents, which managed finances for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation during its peak fundraising.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors has described herself and fellow organizers as “trained Marxists,” and co-founders have cited Assata Shakur, sheltered in Cuba and on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List, as a primary inspiration.

Members including Assata Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard, convicted of the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, fled to Cuba and received asylum.

The Communist Party USA worked closely with the Cuban government, providing infrastructure to solidarity movements that continue under different names.

When Brigade delegations arrive in Cuba, they are hosted by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), which also partnered with the convoy.

ICAP is led by Fernando González Llort, a former member of the Wasp Network, a Cuban spy ring broken up by the FBI in 1998. A former Cuban intelligence officer confirmed that ICAP promotes solidarity while supporting intelligence operations. Declassified CIA documents describe ICAP as an intake mechanism for cultivating long-term intelligence assets.

Upon their return to the United States, 20 of the flotilla participants were detained and questioned by Customs and Border Protection officials. The group and their liberal supporters are outraged, but their anger seems misplaced.

This was a group of Americans, including former elected officials, funded by foreign communist and China-linked entities, who provided aid to Cuba, undermining U.S. foreign-policy objectives.

After being questioned, they were released. Neither China nor Cuba would have released citizens who engaged in similar behavior in contravention of party policy.

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