The People’s Forum calls itself a resistance movement. It is funded by a Shanghai-based Marxist millionaire who has poured nearly $23 million into the group. And it just spent about $5 million on a Manhattan building with blacked-out windows, paper-covered doors, and $20,000 in city violations. It’s a fitting 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 on Tuesday, they found a dark tarp over the storefront, and the elevator and boiler already racking up violations. The group’s own fundraising pitch describes the interior as “just a shell” — exposed wires, structural damage, the works. So far, they’ve raised about $570,000 toward the $5 million renovation goal.
Executive director Manolo De Los Santos had the appropriate, revolutionary framing ready.
“Your contribution isn’t just a donation, it’s 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. Funded by foreign money. Housed in a condemned shell. But sure — resistance.
The real story isn’t the building. It’s who’s been writing the checks.
Neville Roy Singham cashed out of his American tech company, moved to Shanghai, and has since poured $285 million into a network of far-left nonprofits pushing Chinese Communist Party-aligned narratives. The People’s Forum has received at least $22.5 million of it. Justice, State, and Treasury Department officials are all now investigating.
In December 2021, The People’s Forum posted on social media openly acknowledging Singham’s support. Public reporting put the total from Singham and his wife, CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans, at more than $20 million between 2017 and 2022, routed through shell companies and donor-advised funds. The money was never the secret. The scale of it was.
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The FBI was already looking at Singham’s ties to anti-American organizations back in 1974. He later spent seven years consulting for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant that told Congress in 2012 that yes, the Communist Party maintains an internal Party committee inside 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 going back to 2017, overseas grants, and every communication with Singham. Deadline: September 18, 2025.
Smith’s letter wasn’t subtle.
“The evidence presented in this letter makes it abundantly clear that The People’s Forum has been directly funded, as you admit, and influenced by Mr. Singham’s CCP affiliations,” he wrote.
The letter also flagged something more serious: the group may be operating as an unregistered foreign agent, a federal crime, while collecting tax-exempt donations. The DOJ indicted Russian-linked operatives in 2022 for doing exactly that with a nonprofit front.
On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas slaughtered more than 1,200 people in Israel,The People’s Forum posted that the attackers “have the right to resist,” and that it was already organizing a Times Square rally for the next day. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul (NY) called it “abhorrent and morally repugnant.” Since then, the group has been tied to anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles, campus occupations at NYC’s Columbia University, and protests against U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.
According to the Fox News Digital report linked above, the group says it serves as a hub for more than 200 organizations, has hosted over 6,000 events, and has run more than 40,000 people through its political education programs.
All of it shielded by a tax exemption that American taxpayers are legally required to subsidize.
Smith’s committee wants to know why. So do a lot of people.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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