LA mayor once joined pro-Cuba communist group, now it’s part of CCP-linked network behind protests

The far-left "brigade" of pro-Communist Cuba activists which Karen Bass was a key member of years ago is currently embedded in the Chinese Communist Party-linked financial network that is behind the Los Angeles protests — some of which have turned violent — in the city where she is now mayor.

Decades ago, Bass was a member of — and was repeatedly identified as a leader in — the Venceremos Brigade (VB), a far-left activist group sympathetic to the Communist revolution in Cuba and which U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies as well as Cuban defectors have identified as being co-opted by Cuban intelligence services. The VB was also linked to violent groups such as the Weather Underground.

Nowadays, the VB is fiscally sponsored by a Manhattan-based Communist organization known as The People’s Forum, which is part of wealthy Marxist businessman Neville Singham’s broad financial network. The VB is also tied to other Singham-linked endeavors such as the far-left BreakThrough News as well as the radical revolutionary Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

The Marxist PSL has also been a key organizer of the protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere, which have sought to oppose the efforts by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) to crack down on illegal immigration.

The VB’s website says that it “is an entirely volunteer-run grassroots organization and we need the support of our friends, comrades, and supporters to continue this critical anti-imperialist work” and that “the People’s Forum (‘TPF’), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is the Venceremos Brigade’s fiscal sponsor.”

The brigade’s website touts that “in the last 50 years, approximately 10,000 people from the US have traveled to Cuba with the VB, including elected officials, labor leaders, artists and entertainers, academics, activists, and social movement leaders.” In the 1970s, Bass — the activist turned congresswoman turned mayor — was one of them.

David Atlee Phillips, the chief of the Latin America Division of the CIA until 1975, penned an article in 1982 where he assessed that Communist Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate — Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI — had a strong level of control over the VB.

Seeking positions of power in U.S. government

“Psychological warfare experts consider the DGI-sponsored Venceremos ("We Will Win") Brigades one of the most successful covert political operations in modern history,” the retired CIA official wrote. “Some 2,500 Americans, in 10 contingents, visited Cuba between 1969 and 1977. The ostensible purpose was to cut Cuban sugar cane. In fact, the Americans were encouraged to destroy their own society.”

And decades ago, The New York Times obtained a 400-page FBI report from 1976 which described Cuban intelligence’s sway over the VB, and said Cuba’s goal with the VB was to place its assets and allies into positions of power inside the U.S. government.

The FBI assessed that the DGI’s goal “is the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. Government, which would provide the Cuban Government with access to political, economic, and military intelligence.”

Bass, who was reportedly considered to be President Joe Biden’s running mate ahead of the 2020 election, eulogized Communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro when he died in 2016, referring to the revolutionary strongman as “Comandante en Jefe” or Commander-in-Chief.

“As Cuba begins nine days of  mourning, I wish to express my condolences to the Cuban people and the family of Fidel Castro,” Bass wrote. “The passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba. I hope together, our two nations will continue on the new path of support and collaboration with one another, and continue in the new direction of diplomacy.”

Trump has activated elements of the California National Guard while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton are being deployed “to restore order” in Bass's city as well.

“If I didn’t ‘SEND IN THE TROOPS’ to Los Angeles the last three nights, that once beautiful and great City would be burning to the ground right now,” Trump said on his Truth Social account on Tuesday.

The Los Angeles mayor told PBS this week that "the federalization of the National Guard was completely unwarranted" and claimed it would "provoke the population even further."

Bass did not respond to a request for comment sent to her office by Just the News. The VB and the People’s Forum also did not respond to requests for comment. Singham did not respond to a request for comment sent to him through his ThoughtWorks company.

Bass and the Brigade

Bass traveled repeatedly to Fidel Castro’s Cuba as part of the left-wing brigade.

A 1973 FBI intelligence document revealed that Bass “traveled to Cuba with the 6th Contingent of the Venceremos Brigade” and alleged that “the brigade trains revolutionary-prone Americans in terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare while claiming to harvest sugar cane,” according to a 1983 article by the Los Angeles Times.

The FBI document reportedly called Bass a brigade leader and said that she “returned from Cuba to the USA bringing back propaganda literature.”

The outlet reported in 1983 that Bass said she had made eight trips to Cuba, but that the visits were educational and not linked to terrorism. “I’m angry and I’m shocked that they would use (this allegation) to try to attempt to smear me personally and the brigade,” Bass told the outlet decades ago.

Bass reportedly described the VB as “an educational project” that helped provide “closer knowledge of the Cuban people and Cuban society” by carrying out construction projects there.

“No one ever came in contact with the Cuban military or received any type of military training,” Bass told the outlet. She said she learned how to use a gun in the United States from “Los Angeles’ finest.”

The outlet reported that members of the Los Angeles Police Department had “infiltrated a host of left-wing organizations during the 1970s.”

A spokesperson for Bass said in 2020 that “the Chief of Police fancied himself to be the Los Angeles version of J. Edgar Hoover” and dismissed concerns about Bass’s affiliation with the VB.

An article in Tablet magazine in 2020 dug up further details about Bass’s affiliation with — and apparent leadership role in — the VB.

VB a "critical influence" on Bass

The October 1975 issue of the communist Daily World newspaper called Bass a “leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California.”

Bass also provided an interview for a 1996 Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Fielding Institute where the future Los Angeles mayor described her role with the VB.

“Another critical influence for Bass began, at age 19, and spanned the next five years: Cuba,” the dissertation written by Dawn Noggle states. “As a ‘brigadista’ and then organizer for the Venceremos Brigades, Karen visited Cuba every 6 months.”

A spokesperson for Bass claimed to the outlet in 2020 that Bass “wasn’t a leader” in the VB but that “she went with other volunteers to build houses.”

NBC News also reported in 2020 that Bass had met her husband, who passed away in 2018, during her first trip to Cuba as part of the VB.

The VB’s links to the People’s Forum

The VB’s ties to the Singham-funded People’s Forum include recent formal financial ties as well as years of help from the forum in promoting the VB’s efforts.

The Capital Research Center (CRC), a conservative investigative think tank, reported on the Communist forum’s fiscal sponsorship of the VB.

“The Venceremos Brigade was fiscally sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice until 2024, when it switched its sponsorship to the People’s Forum,” the center wrote. “It is worth asking: Should a group that has existed for more than half a century and that is active on an extremely controversial political issue involving support for an adversary of the United States be able to continue avoiding standard nonprofit transparency requirements while simultaneously accepting tax-deductible contributions via its fiscal sponsor?”

Outside of the forum’s fiscal sponsorship of the VB, the Marxist group has assisted the pro-Cuba group in other ways.

The People’s Forum promoted the VB in a 2019 video titled “Venceremos Brigade: Why We Continue to Visit Cuba.” The VB alumni in the video lauded Communist Cuba and often criticized the United States. The forum’s YouTube description of the video encouraged people to join the VB.

The forum also hosted a 2019 film screening with the VB which aimed to raise funds and recruit for the Communist brigade.

“Join the Venceremos Brigade in the screening of Black and Cuba, followed by a brief information session on the upcoming 50th contingent of the Venceremos Brigade this summer!” the People’s Forum said when promoting the event in 2019. “The documentary ‘Black and Cuba’ tells the story of Black resistance reading group, comprised of Black Yale graduate students who were inspired to take a trip to Cuba in 2002 and witness firsthand ‘how revolution lives.’ All proceeds will go to support scholarships for folks who will be participating in the upcoming 50th-anniversary brigade to Cuba.”

The People’s Forum also organized a “Holiday People’s Market” in December 2021 in New York City which included the VB as one of the vendors.

The Marxist forum also hosted a public event for the VB at their Manhattan office in 2023, again promoting the VB and encouraging people to join the group.

“Join Pastors for Peace and The Venceremos Brigade as they share their experiences from their most recent travels to Cuba. Cuba has been blockaded by the U.S. for 63 years, and yet Cuba still an [sic] example to the world of solidarity and resistance,” the People’s Forum wrote. “They will report on the recent passing of the Families Code and the models of housing, healthcare, education that Cuba uses to provide human rights for all people, despite the blockade! We challenge you to join the next brigade, and see Cuba for yourself!”

The People’s World, a Communist Party outlet, wrote in 2021 that “the Young Communist League of New York took the initiative to organize a rally in support of ending the blockade on Cuba after a series of protests mounted in Miami and Cuba this past weekend.” The outlet noted a few organizations which had endorsed the protest, including the People’s Forum and the VB.

The People’s Forum, CODEPINK, ANSWER Coalition, and the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research — all linked by funding, personnel, or collaboration to Singham’s financial network — led a 2023 open letter which argued that “we stand together against the rise of a new McCarthyism that is targeting peace activists, critics of U.S. foreign policy, and Chinese Americans.” The VB was among the dozens of signatories.

The People’s Dispatch — affiliated with the forum — reported on a 2024 letter which included a “demand that President Biden take Cuba off of the U.S.’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.” The outlet highlighted that the VB had signed onto the letter.

Mike Chrisemer, who is listed in tax records as a director at BreakThrough News — which has extensive links to the People’s Forum and is part of Singham’s broader financial network — wrote an article in 2011 revealing that he had just gone on a trip to Cuba with the VB.

Brigade lauded by the Party for Socialism and Liberation

The Marxist PSL’s party propaganda arm — Liberation News — has published roughly a dozen articles promoting the activities of the VB.

“I was one of the 37 members of the Venceremos Brigade who returned on Aug. 1 from a trip to Cuba in defiance of the U.S. blockade and travel ban,” Mike Chrisemer, now of BreakThrough News, wrote in 2011. “For decades, the brigade has undertaken a travel challenge to openly defy and challenge the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba. The brigade engages in civil disobedience by announcing it plans to not ask for a license to visit the island country. The brigade has been traveling to Cuba in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution for almost as long as the U.S. blockade has been in place.”

PSL’s Liberation News published another article in 2008 by a 1990 participant in a VB trip to Cuba, writing that “the process of challenging homophobic attitudes inherited from capitalism and slavery is not new in Socialist Cuba.”

The PSL website wrote in 2021 that “supporters of Cuba’s independence mobilized in approximately 20 cities in the United States to show their opposition to plots by the U.S. government to destabilize the country” and that “the protests, which also took place internationally, demanded an end to the cruel U.S. blockade of Cuba.” Liberation News said the protests were organized in part by PSL and were attended by VB.

PSL’s Liberation News wrote in 2022 that “solidarity organizations across the country organized actions in coordination with that vote with one message: We stand with the world as the world stands with Cuba and condemn the equally unjust and unjustified designation by the U.S. of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.” The group said that a rally outside the San Francisco office of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was organized by PSL, the VB, and others.

The leftwing OccupySF website promoted an “End the Blockade of Cuba + the Siege on Gaza!” rally in early November 2023, less than a month after the deadly Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023. The endorsers of the rally reportedly included PSL and the VB.

The Communist Worker’s World website said in 2024 that “activists held a spirited rally at Grand Central Station in New York City on October 27 to demand an end to the illegal U.S. blockade of Cuba imposed in 1960.” The outlet said the activists in attendance included PSL and the VB.

Brigade scrutinized for ties to Cuban revolutionary efforts inside America

The VB’s current website describes its origins as beginning in 1969 when “a coalition of young people formed the Venceremos (‘We Shall Overcome’) Brigade in an act of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution, by working side by side with Cuban workers and challenging U.S. policies towards Cuba, including the economic blockade and the US government’s ban on travel to the island.”

The brigade says that “the people who came together to initiate this project represented a broad cross-section of the radical movements of the era.”

Among the groups the VB says helped found it were extreme far-left groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and “other organizations on the frontlines of the struggles for socialism and against racism, sexism, and U.S. imperialism and war.”

Jesus Raul Perez Mendez, a former DGI captain who defected to the U.S., told U.S. investigators that the DGI was in “control” of the VB and that VB’s leaders “receive training of indoctrination in ideology, psychology, organization, propaganda techniques, interview techniques, and intelligence gathering.”

“A very limited number of VB members have been trained in guerrilla warfare techniques, including use of arms and explosives,” a 1976 FBI report said. “This type of training is given only to individuals who specifically request it and only then to persons whom the Cubans feel sure are not penetration agents of American intelligence.”

An extensive report by Influence Watch, part of the CRC, includes a purported internal VB document from 1971 which said the group’s objectives included “to develop solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and the peoples of the Third World,” “to promote and develop the political formation of the progressive forces in the U.S. through the Brigade process in Cuba and in the U.S.,” and “to educate the U.S. movement to an anti-imperialist consciousness and to the necessity for and the possibility of unity in strategic terms.”

Influence Watch also reported that 1972 congressional testimony by Dwight Crews, a Louisiana deputy sheriff who infiltrated the VB, revealed that the preferred brigade candidate was typically “already a Marxist-Leninist” and that the goal was “to further [their] political education and to be able to bring more people over to the communist side.” Crews testified that a purpose for the VB was to help brigade alumni become effective at “supporting the Cuban revolution and furthering the cause of communism in the United States.” 

It was also reported by Influence Watch that a 1975 report by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee alleged that “the Venceremos Brigade is one of the most extensive and dangerous infiltration operations ever undertaken by a foreign power against the United States.”

Professor Teishan Latner, who has written books and papers favorable to Cuba’s Communist revolution, penned a 2018 analysis detailing some of the U.S. government’s warnings about the VB.

The CIA assessed in a 1969 situation report that the VB was composed of “radicalized American youth, all sharing pro-Castro sentiments and opposing what they term U.S. imperialism.”

The VB and the Weather Underground

The FBI called the Weather Underground, a Communist-inspired radical group formed in 1969, a “domestic terrorist group” that claimed responsibility for dozens of bombings. An FBI assessment in 1976 pointed to the links between the VB and the Weather Underground.

“When the WUO [Weather Underground] initiated, planned, and organized the Venceremos Brigade trips they did so with the encouragement and instructions of the Cuban government,” the FBI argued. “The question of foreign influence can hardly be ignored when the purposes of the VB trips primarily served the national policy of the Cubans.”

Diana Oughton, then the girlfriend of Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, was killed along with fellow terrorists Ted Gold and Terry Robbins when a bomb exploded in their Greenwich Village townhouse in 1970. The explosives were intended for an Army dance at Fort Dix in South Jersey that night. 

The Weather Underground’s bombing of the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol Building in 1971 caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage. The group also carried out bombings of the Pentagon in 1972 and the State Department in 1975, among many others. In 1978, the FBI arrested five members who were plotting to bomb a politician’s office. Others were captured after two policemen and a Brinks’ driver were murdered in a botched armored car robbery in Nanuet, New York, in 1981.

The 400-page FBI report from 1976 also described the links between Cuban intelligence, the Weather Underground, the U.S. antiwar movement, and the VB.

“Three years before militant members of the Students for a Democratic Society split off to form the Weather Underground Organization in 1970, North Vietnamese and Cuban officials were influencing radical antiwar strategy through foreign meetings. Many of these meetings were held in Communist countries, including Hungary, Czechoslovakia and North Vietnam,” the outlet wrote when describing the FBI assessment. “The conduit for contact in the United States was a group of intelligence agents assigned to the staff of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York. These agents arranged for American youths to be inculcated with revolutionary fervor and, occasionally, to be trained in practical weaponry by Cuban military officers through the so‐called Venceremos Brigades.”

Bill Ayers was a longtime professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago but is most famous for his leadership of the Weather Underground. Ayers is married to Bernardine Dohrn, another Weather Underground leader, who is a former law professor and was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Declassified FBI documents recount a 1969 speech that Ayers gave touting the work that the VB was doing, saying the SDS had helped send 150 people to Cuba earlier that year. He said the groups the VB would be sending to Cuba would be roughly half from SDS and half from the Black Panther Party and other groups.

“The Venceremos Brigade is an idea which is an attempt to show the people of the world that all Americans aren’t solid in their nature of Cuba,” Ayers said, saying that “we’re going to attempt to help the Cubans in their efforts.”

Then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s connections to Ayers were brought up by Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2008.

Ex-CIA officer David Atlee Phillips in 1982 also traced the founding of the VB to Weather Underground leaders, writing that “U.S. Weathermen — members of the underground radical group which boasted of bombing the U.S. Capitol — met Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations in Havana. Within weeks of their return they fanned the flames of the Chicago riots.”

Bass tries to distance herself from her Communist roots

When her name was in the mix to possibly be Biden’s vice presidential running mate in 2020, Bass was hit hard by the Trump campaign and others, and she responded by trying to distance herself from her radical roots.

“Facing scrutiny, Rep. Karen Bass is misleading Americans about her past,” the Trump campaign said in an early August 2020 press release. “This morning, Bass portrayed the Venceremos Brigade as a humanitarian organization, but according to official congressional testimony, contemporaneous news reports, and a Cuban exile news outlet, the Brigade was in fact a Marxist-Leninist front group designed to subvert American democracy.”

Bass had made the Sunday show rounds that morning, attempting to defend herself on Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday.

“In my early twenties, I went to Cuba to help the Cuban people, to build houses,” Bass told NBC’s Chuck Todd. “But over the last 20 years, Chuck, I have been working — one, I've always believed in bridging the divide between our two countries. Cuba's 90 miles away. But for the last 20 years, I've actually been working on health care related issues in Cuba. You know, the Cubans train U.S. doctors. And I've been recruiting those doctors to work in the inner city because they come in tuition free.”

Bass said that “I know the Castro regime has been a brutal regime to its people. I know that there is not freedom of press, freedom of association.”

“And interestingly, when I went in my late teens and early twenties, you know, one of the things that — one of the reasons was to build relations with the Americans that were there, because there were over 100 young people that were there. And all of us worked on different issues,” Bass said of her time with the VB. “Well, what's interesting is that we had the ability to come home and protest against our own government. But the Cuban people most certainly cannot do that. They couldn't do it then and they can't do it now.”

Bass also said she regretted calling Fidel Castro “Comandante en Jefe” but claimed she hadn’t seen it as an endearing term. “I don't think that is a toxic expression in California. But let me just say [...] lesson learned. Wouldn't do that again. Talked immediately to my colleagues from Florida and realized that that was something that just shouldn't have been said.” Bass said that “I don't consider myself a Castro sympathizer.”

The then-congresswoman and future Los Angeles mayor told Chris Wallace of Fox News, “Do I know an awful lot more now? Do I understand that the Castro regime did not have the same freedoms as we do in the United States, was a brutal regime? They don't have freedom of press, freedom of protest … My perspective has definitely developed over time.”

After Bass was passed over by Kamala Harris for the Biden vice presidential slot, The New York Times reported that Biden had seen Bass’s “Castro-era baggage” as something which “could cause political headaches” but also that Biden “did not see it as politically disqualifying.”

Biden and Harris would go on to serve one term as president and vice president, while Bass would be elected as mayor in 2022 — where her Communist roots are again being scrutinized as Communist-supported protests plague her city.