Soros-backed, pro-China network fuels protests against US tech firms
As the U.S. and Israel continued joint military strikes against Iran earlier this week, a woman pounded on a piñata resembling President Donald Trump as a small crowd cheered and clapped.
But the scene wasn’t in Tehran.
It was Aventura, Florida, outside Miami, near the new headquarters of Palantir Technologies, a government contractor that is supporting U.S. military and immigration enforcement operations, including "Project Maven," an enterprise that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze large amounts of data quickly for military targeting and surveillance.
There, hammering away at the piñata was Britney Cooke, a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, a pro-China group that openly says it wants an "international socialist revolution."
It has railed against "US hegemony" and the "American empire" and advocated for an "anti-imperialist mass revolutionary movement" in the U.S. from within the "belly of the beast."
While local coverage framed the gathering as "a crowd" of "protesters" with "plenty of passion," a Fox News Digital review of nonprofit filings, grant records and organizing materials indicates the event was orchestrated by groups operating within a sophisticated, donor-backed protest network with ties to far-left tycoons George Soros and Neville Roy Singham.
The findings raise questions about how coordinated activist campaigns — led by organizations, like the Party for Socialism and Liberation, that openly oppose U.S. "imperialism" and praise foreign adversarial regimes — are mobilizing against American military contractors amid escalating conflict abroad and intensifying technological competition with China. A spokesperson for Palantir declined to comment. Singham hasn't responded to requests for comment.
"This type of fake activism disturbs me," said Chuck Flint, president of the Alliance for IRS Accountability and a former assistant prosecutor in Florida. "These groups are helping China and hurting the United States."
"This is certainly not grassroots activism," Flint told Fox News Digital. "It looks more like a foreign influence operation that is actually weaponizing American tax laws to undermine American national security interests."
He noted, "It's coming at a time when U.S. troops are relying on Palantir technology in active combat right now."
A Fox News Digital investigation found the protest campaigns operate through several hubs that bring far-left groups together, forming an ecosystem of organizations targeting technology firms on multiple issues, from immigration enforcement to predictive policing, military technology and healthcare data systems.
The operations behind these campaigns reflect what experts describe as a professional protest infrastructure, including tax-exempt nonprofit organizations, digital messaging tool kits and coordinated protest actions across multiple cities, with shared leadership, research, messaging and organizing.
In recent years, this network has organized protests against companies including Amazon, Google and Microsoft over their work with U.S. military and law enforcement agencies.
As China wages an AI race with the U.S., the network has also supported regimes with well-documented histories of aggressive surveillance of their citizens and suppression of human rights.
The Florida demonstration was co-organized by the local chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a protest arm of a network funded by Singham, an American-born, self-described Marxist based in Shanghai, openly supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Another group leading the protests against technology companies — and the demonstration in Florida this week — is Phoenix-based Mijente, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has received $1.6 million in funding since 2020 from one of the Open Society philanthropies established by Soros.
Open Society Foundations has supported Mijente's advocacy for "civil and human rights." In 2023, Open Society said its grant to Mijente was to "support the grantees [sic] social welfare activities." It didn't respond to a request for comment.
In its last tax filing, Mijente reported $2.6 million in revenues. Mijente leads campaigns called #NoTechForICE and "Take Back Tech," which plans its third conference in mid-April in Atlanta to map its strategy for a "winning movement" against the "Tech Oligarchy."
Its "Take Back Tech" cosponsor is the Center for Media Justice, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif., with $4.3 million in revenues, according to its most recent tax filing, and donations from traditionally Democratic philanthropies, including $2 million over the years from Soros' Open Society network.
WATCH: HARDCORE SOCIALIST GROUPS STAGE-MANAGE ANTI-ICE PROTEST IN WASHINGTON
Outside the entrance to the Aventura Mall, one of the Mijente leaders, Cathy Carrillo, handed the microphone to Romeo Umana, a leader with the Miami chapter of Party for Socialism and Liberation, for his remarks, as Cooke, from the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, stood in the flanks.
These groups have protested together against Israel, ICE and the Trump administration.
In its coverage of the Florida protest, one media outlet only described Umana as an "activist" with the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Cooke by her role with an innocuous-sounding group, the Climate Organizing Hub.
For years now, the Party for Socialism and Liberation has dispatched its members to be foot soldiers at anti-U.S. protests, wearing distinct bright red shirts with the group's name across the front.
Reading his talking points from a cellphone, Umana said, "We refuse to let Miami become the Silicon Valley of surveillance repression, so we say really clearly, ‘No to mass surveillance! No to mass deportation! And no to genocide!’"
The Party for Socialism and Liberation works closely with other socialist organizations funded by Singham, including the People’s Forum Inc. and CodePink Women for Peace, which have lauded the autocratic governments leading China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Gaza and Venezuela, while calling the U.S. "fascist."
The Party for Socialism and Liberation runs a financially opaque operation, but the People's Forum, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that hosts many of its events, reported $7 million in revenue in its last tax filing.
TK, the former prosecutor now leading IRS Accountability, said that the IRS should investigate the nonprofits in this network to remove their nonprofit designations, and he said that the Justice Department should investigate the organizations for possible violations of laws that require groups and individuals that represent foreign interests to register as foreign lobbyists.
"You should not get a federal tax subsidy to do the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party," he said. "This is just disguised activism that's really foreign influence. It's not grassroots activism."
In late 2024, the People's Forum hosted an event with the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, blasting the "American empire," writing: "War, genocide and exploitation of labor and resources are sowed into the fabric of the American empire, irrespective of which ruling-class party holds presidential office."
The promotion, advertised on a Democratic platform, Action Network, continued: "The US is an enemy to Africans and Palestinians alike. It is of necessity that we colonized and oppressed peoples in the belly of the beast, whose fates are tied to our homelands, build a unified anti-imperialist mass revolutionary movement to consolidate our power and put an end to US hegemony."
As Tuesday's protest came to an end, the event's leaders gathered their pre-printed signs, speaker system and remnants of the piñata. The TV crews pulled away after documenting the group's "passion" off U.S. Route 1.
Fox News Digital's Kyle Schmidbauer contributed to this report.