Inside CodePink's pipeline: how a communist nonprofit recruits young American activists

A feminist-branded nonprofit with ties to a millionaire Maoist and a sprawling network of allied organizations has been sending young Americans to Cuba, training teenagers in activist media, and staging protests from Bogota to California, all while a senior U.S. senator demands a federal investigation into the group's operations.

CodePink, which describes itself as a grassroots feminist organization, has drawn fresh scrutiny for its role in dispatching 23-year-old Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, on a mission to Cuba, where the group chartered a plane and boats to Havana to deliver what it says was 6,300 pounds of medicine and aid. Hirsi, a Barnard graduate, said the trip "truly changed me," the New York Post reported in an extensive investigation into the group's recruiting apparatus.

The Cuba trip is only one thread in a much wider pattern. CodePink and its affiliated groups have organized an "emergency" summit in Colombia, run a summer-long online education series on Gaza, staged anti-Israel protests at Senate hearings, swarmed a Trader Joe's in California to demand the chain stop selling Israeli products, and built a training pipeline that reaches young people as young as fifteen.

The money and the man behind the curtain

CodePink is run by Jodie Evans, a 71-year-old radical Hollywood filmmaker who is married to Neville Singham, described as a millionaire Maoist. Together, Evans and Singham control what has been reported as a $100-million web of nonprofits. That network extends well beyond CodePink itself.

Evans also runs Global Girl Media, a nonprofit she co-founded with other women film producers. The organization trains girls as young as 15 in filmmaking "to tell their own stories," and operates offices in Los Angeles, Greece, South Africa, Kosovo, and the United Kingdom. Public tax documents show Global Girl Media trained 60 teenage girls last year in digital media skills and videography.

Then there is Environmentalism Through Inspiration and Non Violent Action, or ETINA, another Evans-run group whose stated mission is to "encourage world peace, help underprivileged people (especially women and children) promote environmental preservation." IRS filings show ETINA donates tens of thousands of dollars to other nonprofits, a pattern consistent with the kind of interlocking funding networks that make accountability difficult and public oversight nearly impossible.

Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has long demanded an investigation into CodePink. His assessment is blunt. Cotton posted on X:

"CodePink tries to influence our policies and brainwash our kids. There is no place for this type of radical, terrorist supporting organization in America."

Cotton's frustration is not abstract. Capitol police removed a CodePink anti-Israel activist from a hearing of his own Senate Intelligence Committee last year. The confrontation was a reminder that the group's activism is not limited to overseas missions, it reaches directly into the halls of Congress.

That kind of direct action on Capitol Hill has become a recurring feature of Washington political life, as recent congressional culture-war clashes have shown.

Young recruits: Hirsi, Walsh, and Guinigundo

The most striking element of the CodePink operation is its focus on young Americans. Isra Hirsi's Cuba trip is the highest-profile example, but the pattern runs deeper.

Hirsi posted on Instagram after the mission, framing U.S. foreign policy as the villain:

"As Americans, bringing aid to Cuba is the least we could do, as the US has long bullied Cuba with its sanctions, and now this oil blockade is killing people."

That language, casting American sanctions as an act of aggression rather than a tool of national security, tracks closely with CodePink's broader messaging. The group's training programs appear designed to produce exactly this kind of ideological alignment in young participants.

Then there is Calla Walsh, now 21 and living in Lebanon. Walsh was just 18 when she was one of three activists arrested after occupying the office of then-Sen. Robert Menendez, the Cuban-American Democrat who is now imprisoned. Walsh, a former co-chair of the National Network on Cuba, said at the time:

"Bob Menendez cannot claim to support the Cuban people while he upholds this genocidal blockade and thwarts even efforts from within his own party to normalize US-Cuba relations."

Walsh was also a featured speaker at a 2023 CodePink-sponsored "US-Cuba Normalization Conference" at Fordham University. An 18-year-old arrested for occupying a senator's office, then elevated to a speaking platform at an Ivy League-adjacent university, that is not organic youth activism. That is a recruitment pipeline with institutional backing.

The third young figure named in the investigation is Isabella Guinigundo, a 23-year-old environmental activist with the Youth Climate Finance Alliance. Last week, Guinigundo participated in a CodePink panel on what the group called the "Struggle against Fossil Fuel Imperialism." She told the panel that "the nations who have contributed the least to fossil pollution are now on the frontlines."

Guinigundo's activist roots stretch back to her teenage years. She was among a group of teens and young adults in Cincinnati who organized a demonstration in front of then-Sen. Rob Portman's office against gun policies, following the 2019 shootings in Dayton that killed nine and in El Paso that left 22 dead. Guinigundo did not return a request for comment.

The broader trend of sharp partisan confrontation in Washington, from Democrats weaponizing complaints against Trump-aligned officials to activist groups pressuring lawmakers in their own offices, has created an environment where organizations like CodePink can operate with minimal pushback from the institutions that should be asking harder questions.

The Bogota summit and the Maduro connection

CodePink's international reach extends well beyond Cuba. Shortly after the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores earlier this year, CodePink and other groups backed by Singham sponsored an "emergency" two-day summit in Bogota, Colombia, branded as the "Nuestra America" conference.

The summit featured an unlikely headliner: former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. He told the New York Post that representatives of over 20 countries attended, and described the event's purpose as showing "support for the Colombian people's right to self determination in light of Trump's threats of military action." De Blasio also characterized the gathering as evidence of the "continued growth of a coalition of international leaders supporting self-determination for Latin America in response to the 'Donroe Doctrine.'"

Also featured at the Bogota summit: Roxanna Valenzuela, the mayor of South Tucson and identified as de Blasio's girlfriend. Progressive International, another radical group, was part of the coalition that organized the event.

The Maduro angle is worth pausing on. After Maduro was removed from Venezuela by U.S. forces in January, protests were held in his favor. CodePink and its allies moved quickly, the Bogota summit was organized shortly after the capture. President Trump had imposed an oil blockade on Cuba in connection with the Maduro operation. CodePink framed that blockade not as a consequence of Maduro's authoritarian rule but as American bullying, the same framing Hirsi echoed in her Instagram post.

The alignment is not subtle. A communist-friendly nonprofit responds to the removal of a dictator by organizing an international solidarity conference, then sends young Americans to deliver aid to Cuba while coaching them to describe U.S. sanctions as the real problem. The message discipline would impress a campaign operation.

Training programs and the activist assembly line

CodePink's domestic programming reinforces the pattern. The group runs an "Anti-Imperialist Campaign Series" that includes a two-week "deep dive" of webinars, radio shows, and other educational resources. In 2024, it launched the "Gaza Summer School," a summer-long online education series. These are not casual webinars. They are structured ideological training programs aimed at shaping how young people understand American foreign policy.

The group has also participated in anti-Trump "No Kings" protests in Los Angeles and Chicago, and organized the California Trader Joe's protest demanding the chain drop Israeli products. Each event feeds the same pipeline: recruit young people, train them in a specific ideological framework, deploy them against American institutions and allies.

Meanwhile, the ongoing battles between congressional Democrats and Trump administration officials over national security matters have consumed much of Washington's attention, leaving groups like CodePink to operate largely below the radar of serious oversight.

Global Girl Media, Evans's other nonprofit, adds another layer. Training girls as young as 15 in media production and storytelling is, on paper, a worthy mission. But when the same person running that program also runs CodePink and ETINA, and when her husband sits atop a reported $100-million nonprofit empire with Maoist sympathies, the question of what these young people are actually being taught deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.

Open questions and the accountability gap

Cotton's demand for a federal investigation remains unresolved. Several basic questions about CodePink's operations remain unanswered: What is the full scope of the financial relationship between ETINA, Global Girl Media, CodePink, and the broader Singham nonprofit network? How are the training programs structured, and who designs their curricula? What oversight, if any, applies to a nonprofit that sends young Americans to sanctioned countries and organizes emergency summits in response to U.S. military operations?

The IRS filings and public tax documents referenced in the investigation offer fragments, ETINA's donations to other nonprofits, Global Girl Media's training numbers, but not a complete picture. The interlocking nature of the organizations makes tracing money and influence difficult by design.

Congressional dynamics continue to shift, with new Senate races reshaping the political landscape even as lawmakers like Cotton press for accountability on national security fronts.

What is clear is the product. An 18-year-old gets arrested occupying a senator's office and is rewarded with a speaking slot at a university conference. A 23-year-old is sent to Cuba and comes back calling American sanctions an act of bullying. Another 23-year-old moves from teenage gun-control protests to a CodePink panel on "fossil fuel imperialism." Each step follows the same arc: identify a young person with activist energy, plug them into a structured ideological program, and point them at American institutions.

When a $100-million nonprofit network run by a self-described Maoist's wife can charter planes to Havana, organize emergency summits to protest U.S. foreign policy, train teenagers in media production, and recruit the daughters of sitting members of Congress, all while calling itself a feminist grassroots organization, the word for that is not activism. It is an operation. And it is long past time someone treated it like one.