You can’t make this up. Goldman Sachs, the immensely powerful investment firm, has a charity arm that has contributed $12 million to one of the groups promoting the anti-Israel protests.
It has called explicitly for a repeat of the 2020 violent protests.
In theory this means the group could lose its tax-exempt status under the IRS code. Wonder if that will happen.
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 1, 2024
Read it and weep.
A New York City nonprofit that received more than $12 million from Goldman Sachs’ charitable arm encouraged anti-Israel activists to re-create the violent protests of “the summer of 2020,” just hours before rioters stormed and occupied a building on Columbia University’s campus.
More than 100 masked and keffiyeh-clad activists convened in the People’s Forum’s Manhattan office Monday evening to plan their next moves as anti-Israel protests reach a fever pitch across the country. The meeting, which was scheduled to start at 6:45 p.m., was delayed to give protesters from Columbia time to make it downtown.
Once the Columbia protesters arrived, People’s Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos urged the group to “give Joe Biden a hot summer” and “make it untenable for the politics of usual to take place in this country.” Los Santos praised Columbia students for “decid[ing] that resistance is more important than negotiations,” and urged those assembled at the People’s Forum to “support our students so that the encampments can go for as long as they can.”
Los Santos also ranted about the “Zionist” Columbia administrators who “want to be more like their masters in Israel.”
Let’s be clear: Goldman Sachs is not contributing itself. Instead, it manages a “donor-advised fund,” disbursing the funds as requested by the client.
The People’s Forum’s operations are made possible in large part by a $12 million donation from Goldman Sachs’s charitable arm. The source of that money is likely Neville Roy Singham, a communist who has “long admired Maoism.”
Singham, an American businessman who lives in China, reportedly helps finance the Chinese Communist Party’s “propaganda worldwide,” according to the New York Times. His wife, Jodie Evans, is the leader of the activist group Code Pink. Under her leadership, the group has celebrated China as “a defender of the oppressed and a model for economic growth without slavery or war.”
“As with any donor advised fund, the prior donation was made with the client’s money, at the client’s direction,” a Goldman Sachs spokesman told the Free Beacon. “This was not firm money.”
Yet, according to Goldman’s website, the firm claims to be significantly involved in where the funds go. They don’t appear to be merely passive. Each client gets significant personal attention as a high net-worth individual would, and the firm claims to be deeply active in how the funds are used.
The People’s Forum appears to be violating the rules for 501(c)3 charities. Calling for violent riots is generally not considered an educational activity. But then again, colleges and universities are almost all “charities,” yet many professors promote revolutionary violence, as all of us have seen.
Let’s remove charitable status from the academic institutions teaching this and any nonprofit promoting or participating in violence.
That wouldn’t be suppression of First Amendment rights, but rather enforcing tax law.
I am not generally in favor of debanking anybody. It is a horrible idea. On the other hand, banks shouldn’t aid violent revolution by advising clients about how best to further that cause.
It is unethical and would be very bad for their business.