Background of “A Revolutionary”

Born in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 22, 1954, Jodie Evans is a radical activist and Democratic fundraiser best known as a co-founder of Code Pink for Peace. As of December 2023, Evans’ page on the Code Pink website described her as “a revolutionary” with a relentless “commitment to social change.”

“Living Wage” Protests

Evans’ first foray into activism occurred in 1970, when, while employed as a maid in a large Las Vegas hotel, she and other domestic workers held protest marches demanding that they be paid a “living wage.” Their efforts were supported by actress Jane Fonda, who marched with them.

Involvement in Democrat Politics

In 1972, Evans spent six months as a volunteer for Democrat George McGovern’s presidential campaign.

From 1975-83, Evans served as a director of administration under then-California Governor Jerry Brown and his chief-of-staff Gray Davis.

In 1992, Evans managed Jerry Brown’s presidential campaign.

Code Pink For Peace

Evans rose to public prominence via her leadership role with Code Pink for Peace, a self-described “grassroots peace and social justicemovement” which she co-founded on November 17, 2002 along with Medea Benjamin, Diane Wilson, Gael Murphy, a radical Wiccan activist calling herself Starhawk, and approximately 100 additional female activists.

Evans’ Anti-War & Anti-American Stance

For four months, from late 2002 through early 2003 – shortly prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq – Evans led Code Pink members in staging all-day antiwar vigils outside the White House. These public displays brought Evans and her group considerable national news coverage and many invitations to appear as guests on talk shows.

During the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Evans and her Code Pink cohorts blamed America for all of Iraq’s ills. In late 2002, for instance, they said: “In Iraq today, a child with cancer cannot get pain relief or medication because of sanctions [imposed by the United States]. Childhood diarrhea has again become a major killer. Five hundred thousand children have already died from inadequate health care, water and food supplies due to sanctions.” Yet Evans and her allies were silent regarding the reason why those sanctions had been put in place: Saddam Hussein‘s refusal to honor the very pledges he had made following the first Gulf War in 1991. Nor did they mention that while Iraq’s overall population was struggling during the era of sanctions, Saddam and his inner circle lived like royalty, illegally diverting rivers of “United Nations Oil-for-Food” dollars into their own pockets.

In late January/early February 2003, Evans and fellow Code Pink members Medea Benjamin, Gael Murphy, and Rev. Patricia Ackerman went to Iraq to make a “preemptive strike for peace” by condemning the looming American invasion.

In late June/early July of 2003, Evans, Benjamin, Murphy, and Ackerman returned to Iraq to report on what they called “the Iraqi’s [sic] struggle for democracy in the face of ongoing U.S. and British occupation.” While in Baghdad, Evans and her companions repeatedly and publicly portrayed America as an unprovoked aggressor, and Iraqis as noble defenders of their homeland.

Arguing that the Iraqi resistance against the U.S. troops who had invaded that country in March 2003 was well-justified, Evans said in an August 2003 interview: “Basically what the Americans did was destroy any form of infrastructure that could have held the country together – like the Iraqis say, to wipe anything that could hold the country together off the map…. There isn’t an Iraqi you meet who doesn’t feel that they’re being disrespected, that this is being done on purpose. It’s made them hate the American government, hate it. They just think it’s stupid and cruel and mean and thoughtless and everything you can think of…. What’s cool about the resistance is that the Iraqis don’t back down.”

After Saddam was toppled from power in April 2003, Evans supported the insurgents who were fighting American soldiers, despite the fact that many of those insurgents were foreign jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda-type groups, and were former members of Saddam’s intelligence service, Republican Guards, and Fedayeen militia. To Code Pink, these were the representatives of the Iraqi people fighting for liberation.

During the early part of the Iraq War, Evans joined the advisory board of Iraq Occupation Watch (IOW) as a founding member. Medea Benjamin and Leslie Cagan established IOW in Baghdad to convince American soldiers serving in Iraq to obtain “conscientious objector” status and get sent home. As part of this process, they recycled anti-American news stories to the troops in Iraq, and spread “first-hand” accounts of mythical U.S. “atrocities” back home. Other IOW officials included Tariq Ali, Joel Beinin, Phyllis Bennis, Rania Masri, Maria Luisa Mendonca of the World Social Forum, Milan Rai of Voices in the Wilderness, and Pratap Chatterjee of Berkeley’s Pacifica radio station KPFA.

In late December 2004, Evans and Medea Benjamin participated in a delegation to Iraq that also included representatives of Global Exchange, International Occupation Watch, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Families for Peace. These delegates delivered more than $600,000 in cash and medical supplies (many of which were donated by the Middle East Children’s Alliance and Operation USA) to the families of the insurgents who were fighting American troops in Fallujah, Iraq. Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. Raul Grijalva, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Rep. Henry Waxman provided diplomatic courtesy letters to help facilitate the transport of this aid through Customs. The organizations sponsoring the delegation were Code Pink, Global Exchange, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Peace Action, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Project Guerrero Azteca for Peace, United for Peace and Justice, and Voices in the Wilderness.

Evans wrote in June 2005: “We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. The Iraqi people are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to preserve all they love. They are fighting for their lives, and we are fighting for lies. We must get out of Iraq now. They will rebuild their country, it will take time, a long time, but they cannot start until we are gone.”

In August 2006, Evans was part of a 12-person delegation of American radicals—including also such notables as Cindy Sheehan, Tom Hayden, Medea Benjamin, and Judith LeBlanc—who traveled to Jordan to meet with several members of the Iraqi parliament. Team member Geoffrey Millard referred to this trip as a “diplomatic communication.” As such, it may have violated the legal prohibition against private U.S. citizens conducting their own foreign policy. Among the prominent individuals with whom Evans and her cadre met were:

• Sheikh Ahmad al-Kubaysi, who: (a) once declared that foreign-born jihadists killing U.S. soldiers were “very brave” heroes who were “guaranteed Paradise,” and (b) reportedly gave $50 million to the terrorist militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr
• Saleh al-Mutlaq, the trip’s prime sponsor, who impugned Americans for trying “to brand as terrorists the honorable national resistance movements”

Shortly after that 2006 trip, Evans said that Iraq had been better off before the U.S. invasion, and she praised the degree to which Saddam Hussein’s (now-fallen) government had provided social services for the Iraqi population. “Let’s go back to the Iraq before we invaded, there was a good education and health care system, food for everyone,” said Evans. “That system didn’t belong to Saddam it belonged to the Iraqi, it belonged to years of creating what a civilization needed. If your parents didn’t send you to school they could be put in jail.”

In August 2010, Debbie Lee – the mother of a young Navy SEAL named Marc Alan Lee, who had been killed in action in the Iraqi city of Ramadi four years earlier – reported that during a 2008 Code Pink protest at a Berkely, California military recruiting station, Evans and her fellow “Code Pink degenerates” had callously “taunted me and made light of my son’s sacrifice, telling me, ‘Your son deserved to die in Iraq if he was stupid enough to go over there.’”

Supporting Gray Davis over Arnold Schwarzenegger for CA Governor

In the weeks preceding the October 2003 recall election of California Democratic governor Gray Davis (who was Evans’ longtime friend and political ally), Evans was instrumental in convincing several women to come forward and tell the Los Angeles Times about sexual harassment they had suffered years earlier at the hands of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was seeking to replace Davis as governor. Moreover, Evans helped organize picketing sessions in front of Schwarzenegger’s campaign headquarters. By contrast, she had nothing to say about Davis’s well-documented episodes of violent and obscene behavior toward female staffers. Nor, for that matter, did Evans impugn the ill-advised remarks of her friend Bob Mulholland, a California Democratic Party spokesman who had told ABC News that “Schwarzenegger is going to find out, that unlike a Hollywood movie set, the bullets coming at him in this campaign are going to be real bullets and he is going to have to respond to them.”

“We Have Nothing Against Communism”

In an August 2004 demonstration against Fox News in New York City, Evans reportedly acknowledged to a counter-protester: “We have nothing against communism.”

Suspecting 9/11 as an “Inside Job”

Evans was a signatory to an October 26, 2004 statement circulated by 911Truth.org demanding that the U.S. Government investigate the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a possible “inside job.” The statement said, in part: “[W]e have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current [Bush] administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.” Among the other high-profile signers were: Ed Asner, Medea Benjamin, Kevin Danaher, Richard Falk, Stan Goff, Randy Hayes, Van Jones, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Cynthia McKinney, Mark Crispin Miller, Ralph Nader, and Howard Zinn.

Demanding U.S. Diplomacy with Iran

In 2005, Evans traveled to numerous U.S. cities and gave presentations on the need for diplomacy, rather than war, with Iran. As part of this effort, she led a ten-person Code Pink delegation to Iran that April.

Lauding Hugo Chavez

In January 2006, Evans traveled to Venezuela with Cindy Sheehan and Medea Benjamin for a friendly meeting with that country’s Communist president, Hugo Chavez. Evans characterized Chavez as a “sweetheart,” adding: “He was a doll. Generous, open, passionate, excited, stimulated by the requests and happy to be planning with us. He was realistic but willing to stretch.”

In a June 3, 2008 radio interview with Paul Ibbetson, Evans said: “I love Hugo Chavez. I think he’s an amazing person.” She added: “He, as a leader of his country, has taken his country, which was 30 percent illiterate, to 98 percent literate. He’s taught everyone to read and write. He’s created social programs that are amazing. He’s taken the assets of the country and let the people of the country benefit from them. I mean, I watch what he’s done. I’ve been to the country, I’ve seen everything, and it’s amazing. it’s actually a leader who cares about the people in his country and takes care of them. That’s awesome. Why would I not like that person?”

Visiting Fidel Castro & Publicly Condemning America

In January 2007, Evans led a delegation to Cuba as a guest of that nation’s Communist regime, and she worked with Fidel Castro‘s government to propagandize against the United States. In particular, Evans and her comrades condemned the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, where the U.S. was holding hundreds of captured Islamic terrorists.

Supporting Barack Obama for President

In 2007-08, Evans devoted considerable energy and money to supporting the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. BigGovernment.com/Breitbart.com chronicled Evans’ extensive ties to Obama:

• In February 2007, Evans co-hosted a Hollywood fundraiser for Obama with her husband (financier Max Palevsky) and Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen.
• In April 2007, the Obama presidential campaign announced that Evans was one of its early fundraising bundlers. All told, she “bundled” at least $50,000 for the Obama campaign. Evans herself donated the maximum $2,300 to both Obama’s primary and general election coffers.
• Evans donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Obama Victory Fund, an entity administered jointly by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
• In June 2008, Evans met with Obama at a high-priced fundraiser.
• In late August 2008, Evans attended the Democratic National Convention and, because of her status as a bundler, was invited to two private receptions with Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden.
• In September 2008, Evans attended two exclusive Hollywood fundraisers with Obama.
• In October 2008, Evans worked with Code Pink’s Los Angeles chapter on a get-out-the-vote campaign in Obama’s behalf.
• On June 19, 2009, Evans visited the White House and met with Buffy Wicks, deputy to Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. That same month, Evans visited the White House residential quarters.
• In October 2009, Evans attended a $30,400-per-plate fundraising dinner featuring an appearance by Obama.
• In the fall of 2009, Evans, at a San Francisco fundraiser for Obama, personally gave the president a propaganda package compiled from her recent trip to Afghanistan, where she had secretly met with the Taliban. The next day, Evans was given a briefing by Obama’s deputy chief of staff.
• In November 2009, when Obama announced his plan to send additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, his staff coordinated with Evans on the matter of how the anti-war left’s dissent against that policy should be expressed.

Using Identity Theft to Infiltrate the 2008 RNC Convention

In early September 2008, Evans perpetrated identity theft that enabled her to sneak past security personnel and gain admittance to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota; she was detained by the Secret Service when she attempted to rush the stage during the acceptance speech of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Evans Says the Grievances That Caused Bin Laden to Attack U.S. on 9/11 Were “Valid”

In a June 3, 2008 radio interview with Paul Ibbetson, Evans expressed sympathy for the grievances that had prompted Osama bin Laden to order the 9/11 attacks: “We [the U.S.] were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia, that was the message of Osama, was that because we had our [military] bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United States.” When the interviewer subsequently asked Evans whether she considered that “a valid argument” against the U.S., she replied: “Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East?” As national security expert Ryan Mauro subsequently noted: “Apparently, Evans is unaware that those bases were constructed with the permission of the Saudi government and are meant to protect the country from the very people she defends, like Saddam Hussein.”

Boasting That Code Pink Seeks to Undermine Military Recruiters

In that same June 3, 2008 interview, Evans explained why a major part of Code Pink’s work was to target military recruiters: “As an antiwar activist, one of the things you try to do is you try to find the pillars that keep us at war and try to undermine those pillars. And one of the things: You can’t go to war if you don’t have soldiers…. We [Code Pink activists] were trying to undermine the war effort!”

Claiming That Iraq Was Better off Under Saddam Than Under U.S. Occupation

Also in the aforementioned June 3, 2008 interview, Paul Ibbetson said to Evans: “I’ve read quotes where you said that you thought Iraq would be better with Saddam [back in power]. Are those [quotes] accurate?” Evans instantly replied, “Oh yeah.” Ibbetson then asked, in turn, “So you would like to have him back out of the rat hole or wherever we pulled him from?” Evans answered: “Me and every other Iraqi I know.”

“Why Is Being a Communist Anti-American?”

In the same June 3, 2008 interview, Evans and Ibbetson had the following exchange:

Ibbetson: Is Code Pink a communist organization?
Evans: Why would we be a communist organization?
Ibbetson: Well, because you surround yourself with people that are communists. You go, I believe you had a photo-op with Hugo Chavez the communist, with Medea [Benjamin] … and Medea has done a lot of writings and work with the Castro government…. You’ve got organizations that work with you [and] support you [like] Socialist Action and the Socialist Party USA, which is led by Leslie Cagan, who I believe you co-chair a group with. She’s also an activist for the American Communist Party. So I mean, that’s the reason why the question comes up. It seems to be that, one, you seem to have this real anti-American stance. And if you are with communists, it only makes sense that you wouldn’t like the [American] system and what we’re doing here. So, the question stands: Is Code Pink a communist organization?
Evans: So, I just have a couple of questions: Why is being a Communist anti-American, would be my first question?
Ibbetson: We’re a capitalist democracy, and communism has sort of been at odds with America for a long time. We had the Soviets and the Cold War, etc.
Evans: No, but they’re not at odds with us any more. So now, why would you say that? […]
Ibbetson: Okay. The question is, are you a communist organization? Do you support the Communist Party?
Evans: No, we are not a communist organization, nor do we support the Communist Party.

Meeting & Lauding Iranian President Ahmadinejad

In September 2008, Evans and Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin were among some 150+ “peace group representatives” who met with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York, where he was slated to address the United Nations. During their meeting, Evans and her cohorts presented Ahmadinejad with a plan for the construction of a “peace park” in Tehran, and offered to invest money in Iranian businesses “that produce green and sustainable products, such as bicycles.” “It’s rare for a head of state to take time during an official U.N. visit to meet with the peace community, especially in a situation where the host government—represented by the Bush administration—is so hostile,” Evans said afterward in a statement. “The fact that the meeting took place and was so positive is, in itself, a major step forward.” Moreover, Evans said that Ahmadinejad was “really about peace and human rights and respecting justice.”Evans and Benjamin were subsequently invited to meet with Ahmadinejad again, in Iran, two months later. During that subsequent visit, Davood Mohammad Niar, head of the U.S. Desk of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, escorted the Americans on a tour of the holy city of Qom.

Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel

In 2009, Evans and Code Pink led several trips to Gaza, Egypt, and Israel, to deliver cargoes of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza’s Hamas-led government, and to publicly denounce the Jewish state. During one trip to Gaza in early June of that year, Hamas gave Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin a letter to be hand-delivered to President Obama, exhorting the latter to use his influence to help the Palestinian people in their struggle against alleged Israeli abuses.

In December 2009, Evans and Code Pink led more than 1,300 leftists from 43 nations – among whom were Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn – to Cairo, supposedly to deliver “humanitarian aid” to the Hamas-led government of Gaza. Their plan was to cross through Egyptian border crossings into Gaza and to join, on December 31, the so-called “Gaza Freedom March” which was slated to take place there. To lend credibility to her mission, Evans carried with her a letter of support from Senator John Kerry. Prior to the trip, Hamas had guaranteed the safety of the Code Pink retinue in Gaza.

Ultimately, however, Egyptian authorities prevented most of the 1,300+ activists from entering Gaza. As journalist Caroline Glick reported: “Many were surrounded by riot police and barbed wire as they demonstrated outside the U.S. and French embassies and the UN Development Program’s headquarters. Others were barred from leaving their hotels. Those who managed to escape their hotels and the bullpens outside the foreign embassies were barred from staging night protests in solidarity with Hamas on the Nile. In the end, … all but one hundred of them were barred from traveling to Gaza.”

Evans, Ayers, and Dohrn were not among those 100 (actually perhaps closer to 80). But they bore no bitterness toward Egypt, instead placing the blame squarely on Israel. “It’s obvious that the only reason for [Egypt’s treatment of the demonstrators] is to make Israel happy,” said Evans. “Israel is behind the refusal [to allow the demonstrators into Gaza] – what other excuse could there be?” Hamas “Prime Minister” Ismail Haniyeh addressed the 80-to-100 leftists via the cellphone of an Israeli Knesset Member, Talab El-Sana, and told them: “We have managed to overcome the occupation plans and we will surely meet at the al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem, which will remain Arab and Islamic.” In the course of his talk, Haniyeh made no mention of any delivery of humanitarian aid by the protesters.

In 2009-11, Evans was a supporter and key organizer of the Free Gaza Movement. In May 2011, she condemned the “illegal and immoral [Israeli] blockade [of Gaza] that is slowly strangling the life out of Gaza by impoverishing and starving its people.”

At daybreak on October 7, 2023 — which was the major Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah — the Islamic terror group Hamas carried out a massive, multi-front, surprise attack against Israel, firing thousands of rockets from Gaza into the Jewish state, while dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the Israeli border in a number of locations by air, land and sea. The attack had been planned in conjunction with officers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with agents of three other Iran-sponsored terrorist groups. “In an assault of startling breadth,” reported CBS News, “Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities as far as 15 miles from the Gaza border. In some places they gunned down civilians and soldiers as Israel’s military scrambled to muster a response.” By October 8, at least 600 Israelis had been killed and 1,800 wounded, making it the bloodiest day Jews had experienced since the Holocaust. Moreover, Hamas took more than 240 Israelis hostage, including dozens who were American citizens, and moved them to the Gaza Strip. The terrorists also paraded Israelis’ mutilated bodies in Gaza, to cheering crowds of Palestinians. By October 19, the official casualty toll in Israel had reached more than 1,400 dead (including at least 32 Americans) and 4,500 injured.

• In the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, a few dozen Harvard University students signed a statement blaming alleged Israeli transgressions for having precipitated the atrocities of that day. The statement said, in part: “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise [in retribution] to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence. The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
• After the aforementioned Harvard students were widely criticized in the media, the ANSWER Coalition issued a document titled “Open Letter Against Intimidation at Harvard: Defend the Freedom to Speak in Support of Palestine!” The letter read, in part: “We stand together against the racist harassment and demonization of Pro-Palestine student activists at Harvard and elsewhere across the country. These attacks are designed to intimidate, weaken, and silence people’s right to speak out in support of the Palestinian people’s struggle against occupation and apartheid…. The case of Harvard University is only one of many examples of the attacks that those who express solidarity with the Palestinian struggle face; attacks that are rapidly escalating at this time. Likewise, violent hate crimes against Palestinians are taking place around the country…. We reject the campaign that tries to silence those who support the Palestinian people in their just struggle against occupation and apartheid.”
• Jodie Evans lent her name to the ANSWER Coalition letter. Other notable signatories included Rashid Khalidi, Charlotte Kates, Mahdi Bray, Brian Becker, Medea Benjamin, Marjorie Cohn, and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard.

Secret Meeting with the Taliban in Afghanistan

In October 2009, Evans’ friend, Jane Fonda, recounted how Evans, in an effort to gain information and promote an end to the U.S. war inAfghanistan, had recently met with Afghani warlords and members of the Taliban: “I sat next to Jodie who told me a little about her recent trip to Afghanistan with an American delegation that included a retired colonel, and member the State Department. While there, she met with people ranging from the brother of President Karzai, Afghan members of Parliament, activists, to warlords and members of the Taliban.”

Asking the Muslim Brotherhood to Help “Cleanse” America by Kidnapping Bush, etc.

In January 2010, Evans and Code Pink asked the Muslim Brotherhood to “join us in cleansing our country!” – and implied that an appropriate means of doing that would be to kidnap former President George W. Bush, his wife, Republican strategist Karl Rove, and various members of the Bush administration.

Disrupting a Book Signing by Karl Rove

Evans and other Code Pink activists disrupted a March 2010 book signing by Republican strategist Karl Rove. At one point, Evans charged the stage towards Rove with a pair of handcuffs, stating that she intended to make a citizen’s arrest. “Look what you did … you lied to take us to war. You ruined a country. You totally ruined a country!” she shouted.

Protesting Against the Koch Brothers

On January 30, 2011, Evans was arrested for disruptive behavior at a California protest she was leading against conservative philanthropists David and Charles Koch, because of the financial support they were giving to the Tea Party Movement.

Disappointed in President Obama

Notwithstanding her support for, and collaboration with, Barack Obama, Evans eventually became disappointed in the president. In a 2011 interview with The Progressive, she recounted:

“In 2007, when Obama started to run, I wanted to support a black man for President, I wanted to support an anti-war activist for President. I thought it would be amazing while we were at war with Iraq and Afghanistan to have someone leading the country who said he was against war.

“By the general election, he had started talking about Afghanistan as ‘the good war,’ and I had pulled back. As a matter of fact, when I did go to events (because my husband continued to support him), I confronted him and said, ‘There is no such thing as a good war.’ I took the opportunity to really get under his skin and make him uncomfortable….

“And we watched the anti-war movement slowly just evaporate with Obama coming in and putting everyone to sleep. The betrayal was so shocking for people…. There is no leadership there. And you saw it early on. He compromises before he’s at the table.”

Supporting Bernie Sanders for President

In 2016, Evans was a leader of People For Bernie, an organization promoting the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders.

Evans’ Changing Stance on China

In April 2015, Evans used her Twitter account to passionately articulate Code Pink’s demand that “China stop brutal repression of their women’s human rights defenders,” and she later posted on Instagram a photograph with the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei.

But Evans subsequently reversed her political stance vis-a-vis China when she became romantically involved with the software entrepreneur/Marxist multi-millionaire Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai resident who:

• was a longtime admirer of Maoism;
• had worked closely with, and had helped to fund, the Chinese government’s propaganda media operations worldwide;
• once attended a Chinese Communist Party propaganda forum where he wrote in a notebook whose cover was adorned with a red hammer and sickle; and
• was affiliated with a wide-ranging network of individuals and organizations that: (a) mostly had ties either to Code Pink or to No Cold War, another pro-China group backed by Singham, and (b) had their social media posts retweeted at least 122 times by the state media accounts of the Chinese government between February 2020 and August 2023

Evans and Singham married in a 2017 beachside ceremony which was part of a three-day, Bob Marley-themed affair titled “One Love Union,” and featured a “radical chic festive” dress code and a three-hour panel discussion on “The Future of the Left.” The couple advertised their wedding with a logo incorporating the Jamaican flag and a clenched-fist power salute. Among the guests in attendance were Vagina Monologues writer Eve Ensler and ice-cream mogul Ben Cohen.

After marrying Singham, Evans’ stance on China changed dramatically. For example:

• Evans portrayed China’s authoritarian regime as “a defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war.”
• She defended China’s genocide of the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang province, characterizing the latter as “terrorists.” Moreover, Evans claimed that China’s treatment of Uyghurs was better than America’s treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, where the U.S. was “torturing and keeping people in jail for 16 years with no due process.”
• She said in 2021 that “if the U.S. crushes China, it … would cut off hope for the human race and life on Earth.”
• In June 2023, Code Pink activists protested at the office of Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, where, The New York Times reported, they “denied evidence of forced labor in Xinjiang and said the congressman should visit and see how happy people were there.”
• Also in June 2023, when a YouTube commenter asked Evans if “there was something negative you could tell us about China,” Evans answered: “I can’t, for the life of me, think of anything.” She later thought of one minor complaint, noting that Chinese business establishments “don’t take American credit cards.”
• During a July 2023 virtual talk, Evans, assuring her listeners that “I know what it’s like to be with people who are oppressed,” stated: “The idea that it’s an authoritarian system that controls everything [in China] is, like, so crazy, what a crazy notion that we’ve been sold.”
• Between 2017 and 2023, two nonprofit organizations linked to Singham funneled more than $1.4 million in donations to Code Pink — a total representing approximately one-fourth of all the contributions that were made to Code Pink during that period. All told, said The New York Times, Singham had given “hundreds of millions of dollars” to a multitude of far-left nonprofits that “echo Chinese government talking points, echo one another, and are echoed in turn by the Chinese state media.”

Democracy Spring

In early 2016, Evans was a key endorser of Democracy Spring, a new initiative that arose in response to Donald Trump’s political ascendancy, and whose mission was to warn Americans that “our democracy is in crisis” because U.S. “elections are dominated by billionaires and big-money interests who can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns to protect their special interests at the general expense.” Other notable supporters of Democracy Spring included Medea Benjamin, Heather Booth, John Cavanagh, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jim Hightower, Cenk Uygur, Noam Chomsky, and Dream Defenders co-founder Umi Selah.

The People’s Forum

From 2017-2022, Evans and Neville Roy Singham together served as the two principal funders of The People’s Forum, a New York-based organization describing itself as a “movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.” During that period, the couple — through an array of shell organizations and donor advisory groups — gave more than $20.4 million to The People’s Forum, a sum that accounted for almost all of the funding which the organization received.

Climate Change Activist

Starting in October 2019, Evans joined actress and fellow leftist Jane Fonda in a series of weekly rallies and acts of civil disobedience, called Fire Drill Fridays, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.  The purpose of the demonstrations was to draw public attention to what Evans and her comrades viewed as the climate crisis that threatened the well-being of all forms of life on Earth. Both Evans and Fonda were arrested on multiple occasions at these events.

As of December 2023, Evans was an emeritus board member of the Rainforest Action Network, along with Randy Hayes, Mike Roselle, Allan Badiner, Deepa Isac, Michael Northrop, Ibrahim AlHusseini, James D. Gollin, and Anna Hawken.

Supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement

On June 8, 2020 — two weeks after the highly publicized death of a black man named George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis — the California Arts Council, of which Evans was a member, published a statement titled “In Solidarity with the Black Community, for Justice and Liberation.” The statement read, in part, as follows:

“We write today to acknowledge and condemn the recent and historic violence against Black people, to address this present moment in our communities, and to share our hope for a liberated future for all.

“Black lives matter. In California and around the world, the Black community is in pain. The families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery are in pain.

“The pervasive threats to Black lives, Black health, and Black joy come in many forms and harm not just bodies, but souls. Routine acts of injustice, brutality, and murder cannot continue.

“We’ve spent the past several years examining the history of our nation and the government’s role in creating and maintaining systems of oppression that have been destructive to the overall well-being of Black people. This is compounded by the tragic reminders that inequality and prejudice still shape much of American life. Racism is a threat to us all….

“We acknowledge the duty and platform we have as a California state agency and we accept responsibility for dismantling racist systems together, prioritizing community voices…. We stand with the Black community, uplifting all members including Black transgender and queer lives, and reaffirm this commitment through our present and future actions….

“We believe that Black lives matter. We believe in a liberated future for all. And we believe in you.”

As of December 2023, Evans was an emeritus board member of the Rainforest Action Network, along with Randy Hayes, Mike Roselle, Allan Badiner, Deepa Isac, Michael Northrop, Ibrahim AlHusseini, James D. Gollin, and Anna Hawken.

Evans also has sat on the boards of such organizations as the Women’s Media Center, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Community Self-Determination Institute, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Foundation for World Art, the Hereditary Disease Foundation, We Got Issues, See Jane, Global Girl Media, Circle of Life, the Sisterhood is Global Institute, the Motion Institute, 826LA, and the Office Of the Americas.

In addition, Evans once sat on the advisory board of Progressive Democrats of America.

Groups That Evans Has Supported

Over the years, Evans has supported activist groups like Citizen Action, the Earth Island Institute, and the California subsidiary of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Political Candidates Whom Evans Has Supported

Over the years, Evans has donated money to the political campaigns of many Democrats, including Alan Grayson, Donna Edwards, Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, John Edwards, Al Franken, Dennis Kucinich, Russell Feingold, Bill Richardson, Jim McGovern, Bernie Sanders, Tammy Baldwin, Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Lee, Norman Solomon, Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader, John Kerry, Hilda Solis,  Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Maxine Waters, Claire McCaskill, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, John Kerry, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Cori Bush.

Additional Information about Jodie Evans

Evans has produced a number of documentary films over the years, including: (a) Stripped and Teased: Tales from Las Vegas Women (1999); (b) The People Speak (2009), based on Howard Zinn‘s highly influential book A People’s History of the United States; (c) The Square (2013), which focused on the 2011-2012 democratic uprisings in Egypt; (d) the climate-change documentary This Changes Everything (2015); and (e) The Brainwashing of my Dad (2015), a condemnation of right-wing media and its effects on people’s worldview.

Evans also co-edited two books, Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation (2003), and Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism (2010). In addition, she contributed to a third book, Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution (2013).

Additional Resources:

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