Shanghai Money, Havana Survival: How a Beijing-Aligned Network Recruited 23 NYC Lawmakers

Cuba went fully dark again today. On March 16, 2026, Cuban officials confirmed an island-wide total blackout affecting all 11 million residents. Hospitals running on generator fumes. Surgeries postponed for tens of thousands. A government that has run the island into the ground for 65 years told its people the problem is Washington.

On the same day, a fleet of activists organized by CODEPINK and the Democratic Socialists of America are converging on Havana to deliver aid and political cover to the regime responsible for that darkness. Twenty of them are DSA members, deployed through the organization's "Stop the Siege" campaign. They are not going to meet the Cuban dissidents in prison. They are going to stand with the government that put them there.

This is the story of how that operation was built, who paid for it, and which American elected officials handed it legitimacy without asking a single question.

What the Cuban People Actually Want

Start with the people the convoy claims to champion.

In July 2021, Cubans took to the streets in the largest protests since the revolution. They chanted "patria y vida" — homeland and life — and "libertad." They burned Communist Party offices. They demanded food, medicine, and the right to be governed by someone other than the same party that has run their country since 1961.

The regime's response was mass imprisonment. From July 2021 through the end of 2024, Cuba jailed 1,801 people for political reasons, according to Prisoners Defenders. As of early 2025, 1,161 remain imprisoned. Four hundred twenty of those arrested specifically for the July 2021 protests are still behind bars, with 751 still serving sentences. The charges: "public disorder," "sedition," "contempt" — criminal categories applied to people who posted criticism on social media or simply showed up to march.

A 2024 survey by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights found that 7 in 10 Cubans skip at least one meal a day. Sixty-one percent cannot afford basic necessities. Ten percent of Cuba's entire population — more than a million people — left the island between 2022 and 2023 alone.

That is the Cuba the DSA and CODEPINK convoy is flying to support. Not the Cuba of the people in prison. The Cuba of the government that put them there.

The Campaign and Its Money

In February 2026, a campaign called "Let Cuba Live" circulated among American elected officials, demanding an end to Trump's oil embargo and pushing solar panels and generators as the solution to blackouts. The campaign attributed Cuba's crisis entirely to Washington. The 65 years of one-party mismanagement that produced Cuba's structural energy collapse did not appear in its text.

Twenty-three of the 51 New York City Council members signed it. Four congressional candidates from New York and Illinois added their names. State legislators signed too.

Every dollar donated to the campaign runs through The People's Forum, a Manhattan-based nonprofit. The People's Forum received over $20 million from Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans between 2017 and 2022, routed through shell companies and donor-advised funds, according to congressional investigators. That sum accounts for nearly all of the Forum's funding during that period.

Singham is a Shanghai-based technology magnate who sold his firm Thoughtworks to private equity in 2017 for $785 million, then moved to China. He is a self-described Maoist. He shares office space in Shanghai with Maku Group, whose stated mission is to educate foreigners about what it calls the miracles of Chinese governance. He attended a CCP workshop on "promoting the party internationally" in July 2023, per the New York Times. His wife Evans co-founded CODEPINK and has publicly described Uyghurs — a Muslim minority subject to mass detention by Beijing — as "terrorists."

CODEPINK has received over $1.4 million from Singham-linked organizations since 2017, per a Senate letter from Sen. Marco Rubio to the DOJ. Also on the "Let Cuba Live" signatory list: Jewish Voice for Peace, the ANSWER Coalition, and DSA — all documented parts of the Singham network, all of which led anti-Israel protest operations beginning the day after October 7, 2023.

The network is not subtle. The People's Forum offers courses titled "Lenin and the Path to Revolution" and "China75 — When the People Stand Up." Its website address for years pointed to offices that also housed Singham's CCP-aligned media projects.

The Congressional Record

None of this is secret. The House Ways and Means Committee sent a formal letter to The People's Forum on September 4, 2025, demanding financial records and communications with foreign principals. Chairman Jason Smith accused the Forum of acting as a CCP-funded propaganda arm while enjoying U.S. tax-exempt status. His compliance deadline: September 18, 2025.

Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a parallel letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel requesting FARA investigations into both The People's Forum and CODEPINK. Sen. Tom Cotton sent his own letter demanding DOJ probe CODEPINK for potential material support to foreign terrorist organizations.

No FARA prosecutions have followed. No registrations have been filed. The network continues to operate.

The Network Contagion Research Institute flagged DSA in a May 2024 report for mirroring foreign state rhetoric following member trips to China, Cuba, and Venezuela. Congressional hearings in 2025 labeled JVP, DSA, and ANSWER as organizations with documented foreign ties. The Party for Socialism and Liberation — whose members also signed "Let Cuba Live" — was identified by DOJ as a primary organizer of the synagogue-targeting protest wave.

The Operational Sequence

The timing is not coincidental. It is operational.

On January 3, 2026, U.S. special operations forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas during Operation Absolute Resolve. Venezuela had been Cuba's primary oil supplier. That supply line ended the day Maduro landed in a Brooklyn federal detention center. Cuba's grid began its final collapse.

Within weeks, the "Let Cuba Live" campaign launched with a $200,000 fundraising goal channeled through The People's Forum. Two anonymous NYC Council sources confirmed to Jewish Insider that the Progressive Caucus actively urged members to sign. Twenty-three members complied. None asked who was funding the infrastructure. None disclosed the Singham network to constituents.

The convoy followed. On March 20, 2026, a CODEPINK delegation of 140 people departed Miami for Havana, carrying 6,300 pounds of medicines and medical supplies. DSA deployed 20 members through its "Stop the Siege" campaign. The People's Forum is listed as a strategic partner of the broader Nuestra América Convoy, which organized participants by air, land, and sea to converge in Havana on March 21.

The sequencing from Maduro's capture to campaign launch to convoy deployment took less than 11 weeks. That is not grassroots organizing. That is a network executing a prepared response.

The Subversion Frame

Here is what distinguishes a humanitarian mission from a foreign influence operation: a humanitarian mission helps the people suffering. This one helps the government causing the suffering.

The Cuban people have told the world clearly what they want. They have chanted it in the streets. They have paid for it with prison sentences averaging ten years. Musicians who wrote protest anthems are still in Miramar and Guanajay maximum-security facilities four years after their arrest. A woman in Camagüey received 15 years for streaming protest footage on Facebook.

DSA and CODEPINK are not flying to Havana to demand those prisoners be freed. They are not calling on the Cuban government to hold free elections or account for the 1,801 people it has jailed for political dissent. They are delivering political cover to a regime that has earned none — cover paid for, at the organizing level, by a Shanghai billionaire whose documented financial relationships with CCP-aligned entities have drawn formal FARA inquiries from multiple U.S. senators and a House committee chairman.

The doctors on that plane may be acting in good conscience. The organization that deployed them is not running a humanitarian operation. It is running an influence operation that uses genuine human suffering as its vehicle.

The Accountability Gap

The mechanism that should interrupt this is FARA. If organizations receiving millions from a Shanghai-based actor with documented CCP ties are conducting political activities inside the United States, registration as foreign agents is legally required. That registration has not happened.

Twenty-three elected officials lent their names to a campaign financed through that infrastructure. They did not disclose this to constituents. One congressional candidate told Jewish Insider he was aware of CODEPINK's involvement but not the larger Singham network. He expressed no regrets.

No elected official has been asked publicly — by a reporter, a constituent, or a colleague — to explain the funding chain behind the petition they signed. The DOJ has not acted on formal requests from Grassley, Cotton, and Rubio. The Ways and Means compliance deadline has passed.

Cuba today has no power. The people demanding freedom from its government have no international advocates willing to stand with them in public. What they have instead is a network funded from Shanghai, organized in Manhattan, and given a veneer of democratic legitimacy by council members from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens — who told their constituents nothing.

That is not solidarity. It is subversion. Of the Cuban people. And of the Americans who pay the salaries of the officials enabling it

The Cubans who want freedom are in cages. The Americans going to Havana are propping up the government that put them there — using your council member's name to do it. Check the full "Let Cuba Live" signatory list.

If your rep signed, call their office today and ask one question: Did you know the fundraising infrastructure was flagged by Congress as a CCP-linked operation? Demand a written answer. Share this piece.