The Group Advising Mamdani on Jewish Safety Is Run by a CCP-Linked Operative's Niece

Start with the most basic question journalism requires: who, exactly, is Jews for Racial and Economic Justice?

Not what they say about themselves. Not the press releases. Who runs it, who funds the network it operates inside, and what are their actual loyalties?

The political director of JFREJ is Alicia Singham Goodwin. She runs the organization's campaigns, speaks to the press on its behalf, stood at City Hall last week presenting herself as a representative of New York's Jewish community, and spearheaded the "Jews for Zohran" campaign to elect Zohran Mamdani as mayor. She is also the niece of Neville Roy Singham. If you do not know who Neville Roy Singham is, you should.

Singham is a 71-year-old former tech mogul who sold his IT consulting firm Thoughtworks for $785 million in 2017 and promptly moved to Shanghai. According to a 2023 New York Times investigation, he funneled over $250 million into a constellation of dark money organizations across the United States, groups with vague names, UPS mailbox addresses, and a unified mission: to advance Chinese Communist Party talking points while destabilizing American cities. Multiple congressional committees have launched investigations. The FBI first investigated Singham in 1974 for being "engaged in activities inimical to U.S. interests."¹ That is over fifty years of American law enforcement attention. He is still operating, still funding, still writing checks, from Shanghai, beyond the reach of subpoenas.

Alicia Singham Goodwin's mother, Shanti Singham, is Roy Singham's sister. She serves as a department chair at the state-controlled East China Normal University in Shanghai and has promoted Beijing's Confucius Institutes in Africa.² This is the family tree of the person Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration is treating as a legitimate Jewish community partner on questions of Jewish safety.

This requires a particular kind of clarity. JFREJ is not a fringe group with eccentric ideas. It is not well-meaning progressive Jews who have perhaps overcorrected. It is an organization whose political operations are run by a woman embedded in a network that U.S. congressional investigators believe is advancing Chinese Communist Party interests inside American civic life, and it is claiming the authority to speak for New York's Jewish community on how Jews should be protected from antisemitic violence. Goodwin was arrested at an anti-Israel protest in October 2023, one week after Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis. At a JFREJ vigil shortly afterward, she accused Israel of "75 years of occupation, displacement, death and state violence."³ This is JFREJ's political director. This is who Mamdani's chief of staff says the administration intends to work with in close collaboration on Jewish safety policy.

There is an analogy that captures this precisely. Imagine the Westboro Baptist Church, the congregation that pickets soldiers' funerals and declares that God hates America, being handed the contract to speak for American Catholics on questions of religious liberty. That is what is happening here. JFREJ has spent more than a decade positioning itself as a Jewish voice while systematically working against every security and institutional interest the Jewish community actually holds.

The record is not ambiguous. Goodwin is a public supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. JFREJ organizes most closely, by its own description, with Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, both of which are in direct relationship with Palestinian militant organizations.⁴ The group opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the internationally recognized standard, on the grounds that it limits criticism of Israel. When Governor Hochul proposed expanding hate crime charges to cover more offenses against Jews, JFREJ said perpetrators should be met with "restorative, community-based education and healing," not criminal penalties.⁵

On October 7, 2023, the day Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds hostage, JFREJ published a statement. It did not mention Hamas. It did not mourn the dead. It declared that from "our phones, we are watching war crimes carried out in real time, justified, enabled, supported, and denied by world leaders, US politicians, major media outlets, and many in our Jewish community."⁶ That was their response to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Not a word for the people butchered at the Nova music festival or dragged into tunnels.

In a radio interview, Singham Goodwin described the "Jews for Zohran" strategy with unusual candor. "We had our own voter file and phone banks targeting Jewish voters, with Jews talking to Jews," she explained. "We developed talking points about antisemitism and ways for volunteers to engage."⁷ Read that carefully. She is not describing a grassroots movement. She is describing a targeting and messaging operation specifically designed to present radical anti-Israel politics as authentic Jewish support, making it harder to criticize the agenda without being accused of attacking Jewish voices. Intelligence professionals have a name for this. It is called perception management. It is a form of information warfare, and it is being run in New York City by the niece of a man congressional investigators believe is doing the CCP's bidding.

And now this organization has the ear of City Hall on Jewish security policy.

The Westboro Baptist Church at least does not pretend to be Catholic.