CCP-Linked Protest Group Behind Anti-ICE and Campus Demonstrations Has a New Manhattan HQ – RedState
The Popular Forum calls itself a resistance movement. It is funded by a Shanghai-based Marxist millionaire who has invested nearly $23 million in the group. And he just spent about $5 million on a Manhattan building with blacked-out windows, papered doors and $20,000 in municipal violations. This is a suitable headquarters.
The group purchased the three-story building at 137 W. 14th Street in Chelsea in December 2024, according to property records obtained by Fox News Digital. And when their reporters showed up in person Tuesday, they found a dark tarp on the storefront, and the elevator and boiler were already racking up violations. The group’s own fundraising pitch describes the interior as “just a shell”: the exposed wires, the structural damage, the work. So far, they have raised about $570,000 toward the $5 million renovation goal.
Executive director Manolo De Los Santos had prepared the appropriate revolutionary framework.
“Your contribution is not just a donation, it is an investment in our collective future of freedom,” he said in a fundraising video. “It’s a direct act of resistance.”
A direct act of resistance. Financed by foreign money. Housed in a condemned hull. But of course, resistance.
The real story isn’t the building. That’s who wrote the checks.
Neville Roy Singham withdrew capital from his American technology company, moved to Shanghai and has since invested $285 million in a network of far-left nonprofits promoting speech aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. The Popular Forum received at least $22.5 million. Justice, State and Treasury officials are all currently investigating.
In December 2021, the People’s Forum posted on social media an open acknowledgment of Singham’s support. Public reports put the total from Singham and his wife, CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans, at more than $20 million between 2017 and 2022, funneled through shell companies and donor-advised funds. Money has never been a secret. The magnitude of the situation was.
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The FBI was already investigating Singham’s ties to anti-American organizations in 1974. He then spent seven years as a consultant for Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that told Congress in 2012 that yes, the Communist Party maintained an internal Party committee within the company.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) sent the group’s executive director a formal letter demanding full documentation of its foreign funding, donor records dating back to 2017, foreign grants, and every communication with Singham. Deadline: September 18, 2025.
Smith’s letter was not subtle.
“The evidence presented in this letter clearly shows that the People’s Forum was directly funded, as you admit, and influenced by Mr. Singham’s CCP affiliations,” he wrote.
The letter also signaled something more serious: The group could be acting as an unregistered foreign agent, a federal crime, while collecting tax-exempt donations. The DOJ indicted Russian-linked agents in 2022 for doing just that with a non-profit front.
On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas massacred more than 1,200 people in Israel, the People’s Forum published that the attackers “have the right to resist” and that it was already organizing a rally in Times Square for the next day. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul (N.Y.) called it “abhorrent and morally repugnant.” Since then, the group has been linked to anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, occupations of the Columbia University campus in New York, and protests against U.S. strikes against Iran’s nuclear program.
According to the Fox News Digital report linked above, the group claims to serve as a hub for more than 200 organizations, have hosted more than 6,000 events, and have led more than 40,000 people through its political education programs.
All protected by a tax exemption that American taxpayers are legally required to subsidize.
Smith’s committee wants to know why. This is the case for many people.
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