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.
Hellbound and Down 