A little-known “socialist” activist hub in New York City pushing pro-China talking points is helping to organize protests against Israel in the United States alongside shadowy dark money groups sympathetic to Hamas and other Palestinian terror factions, records show.
The People’s Forum, which dubs itself “a movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad,” is co-leading a “Shut it down for Palestine” event Thursday in Manhattan and marched in Washington, D.C., last Saturday with tens of thousands of protesters boosting Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attacks against the Jewish state have since killed more than 1,400 Israelis. That same charity hosts events with entities downplaying China‘s genocide against ethnic Uyghurs and has pocketed millions of dollars combined from groups tied to a reported “Chinese propaganda” influence operation, according to tax forms reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
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The People’s Forum’s leading involvement in the pro-Palestinian movement amid the bloody Middle East conflict further underscores how China-allied organizations are sowing discord in the U.S. while officials in China, Russia, and Iran leverage social media to proliferate disinformation in connection to the war.
In interviews, members of Congress and foreign policy experts raised national security concerns over the apparent influence on the Israel issue of the People’s Forum, a nonprofit group that, on its latest publicly available financial disclosures, lists an address for a New York City space featuring a cafe, theater, library, and “media laboratory.”
“Their funding train depends in part on American progressives entrenched in the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus,” said Michael Sobolik, senior fellow for Indo-Pacific studies at the American Foreign Policy Council think tank. “That this organization is now organizing anti-Israel political demonstrations in America shouldn’t surprise anyone. It should, however, be a wake-up call to Americans, many of whom are unwittingly parroting Beijing’s talking points about Israel and Gaza.”
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) told the Washington Examiner she supports “immediately investigating the People’s Forum and organizations like it to determine what level of funding and coordination these pro-Hamas rallies have received from America’s adversaries.”
The People’s Forum was granted tax-exempt status in October 2017, an IRS determination letter shows. Since that time, the charity has been intent on “bringing socialist ideas to the new generations of organizers and activists,” according to its website’s donation page.
This has meant the People’s Forum hailing China’s “new era led by Xi Jinping,” the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian general secretary, as well as hosting events to support China’s “revolutionary struggle” and push back against America’s “political persecution of overseas Chinese people, and economic and trade aggression against China.” It’s also meant hosting events with Code Pink, a left-wing antiwar group that has sought to justify CCP genocide against Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, and Qiao Collective, which “aims to challenge rising U.S. aggression towards the People’s Republic of China” and promotes CCP narratives on social media, according to the New York Times and New Lines Magazine.
Lately, it’s meant the People’s Forum protesting “in solidarity” for Palestinians on the heels of Hamas launching the deadliest terror attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. And the People’s Forum’s efforts to prop up terror is a window into how the “radical pro-Hamas left and Communist China” share the same goal of desiring “to wipe America and Israel off the map,” according to Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), who sits on the House Select CCP Committee.
‘Wipe America and Israel off the map’
The People’s Forum is listed on a flyer posted on social media for last Saturday’s national pro-Palestinian march, and it assisted ANSWER, a left-wing coalition that justified Oct. 7, in fundraising and providing transportation details to the public, a Google form shows. The event saw statues defaced and other acts of vandalism, including red paint smeared on the White House gates as protesters chanted “F*** Joe Biden” and tried to climb the fence, according to social media posts.
The New York group also coordinated with pro-Palestinian partners for an October rally in Newark, New Jersey, among other locations, and on Thursday is demanding a ceasefire and end to U.S. aid to Israel at New York City’s Bryant Park, flyers show.
In late October, the People’s Forum even reposted a video on social media of Leila Khaled, a convicted Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist, talking about “the unbreakable resistance of the Palestinian people to the Zionist project.”
The New York nonprofit group came under the spotlight this year when the New York Times reported its address was used by China’s Dongsheng News, which appears to try to counter U.S. criticism of the authoritarian country.
The People’s Forum was cut a more than $3 million check in 2019 from United Community Fund, an obscure nonprofit group that lists its address on tax forms as a UPS store mailbox in New York City. United Community Fund is one of a handful of entities that the New York Times reported is part of a CCP propaganda operation funded by socialist businessman Neville Roy Singham, an American.
Moreover, the People’s Forum, which disclosed $12.6 million in assets on its latest tax forms, has received thousands of dollars from Code Pink. In June, Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, a longtime Democratic activist, said, “I can’t, for the life of me, think of anything,” when asked by a YouTube commentator if “there was something negative you could tell us about China.”
Evans later came up with one complaint in that video, noting how it’s a shame the Chinese “don’t take American credit cards,” the footage shows. She is married to Singham, who’s reportedly “long admired Maoism” and in May attended an event for the opening of a Shanghai media institute where organizers handed out “communications as solidarity” tote bags.
In July, Singham was present at a CCP propaganda forum, according to the New York Times.
‘Greatest threat’
One month later, in August, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting the Justice Department investigate Singham and determine if he and other “left wing pro-CCP organizations” affiliated with the businessman are in compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The 1938 law requires persons to disclose to the Justice Department if they are acting on behalf of overseas interests, including governments or political parties.
The People’s Forum was one of those groups cited by the senator in his letter, along with Code Pink, Dongsheng News, and Tricontinental, which is headed by Vijay Prashad, a Marxist writer who often appears at events with the New York charity.
Prashad was listed as a speaker for a People’s Forum’s “China and the Left” conference in September 2021 on “Chinese socialist development,” records show.
So was Tricontinental’s Tings Chak, an artist in Beijing who says on social media she helps edit Dongsheng News and is a member of the International Peoples Assembly, whose coordinating committee includes Code Pink, the Communist Parties of Nepal and Spain, as well as the Palestinian People’s Party, according to its website.
The Palestinian People’s Party was a member until recently of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a West Bank-based coalition including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Liberation Front, two U.S.-designated terror groups.
“The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat to our country, and it’s working tirelessly to get its hooks into every aspect of American life,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told the Washington Examiner.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee member added that “our authorities absolutely need to look into” any evidence of China-allied groups planning protests in the U.S. in support of Hamas.
As far as the Thursday “Shut it down for Palestine” event, the People’s Forum is putting it on with at least seven other anti-Israel organizations, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, which helped plan the recent Washington, D.C., protest and has expressed support for PFLP terrorists. Another Thursday organizer also happens to be Al-Awda, a project of a San Francisco charity called Progress Unity Fund, tax forms show.
Al-Awda has long been led by Amani al Hindi Barakat, an activist who has praised anti-Israel terrorists and called Hamas leader Khaled Mashal “excellent,” the Washington Examiner reported.
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The People’s Forum did not reply to requests for comment.
“Unfortunately, it is not surprising that a group linked to Communist China is promoting abhorrent pro-Hamas and antisemitic propaganda in a desperate attempt to damage our most precious ally Israel and sow discord here at home,” Stefanik, the New York congresswoman, added.
