Change-Links.org is a self-declared socialist newspaper based in Los Angeles, California. The paper’s name derives from the idea of linking disparate left-wing activist groups together in a single community newspaper forum to create a broader, more coordinated movement of social, political, and economic change. It hosts authors and organizations with far left points of view.

Change-Links claims a monthly print circulation of between 7,000 and 8,000 newspapers, distributed to subscribers and across 100 locations in the greater Los Angeles area.¹ The Change-Links.org website hosts a calendar of activist events, as well as articles and links to leftist groups and media.

Change-Links is a fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice, a left-wing organization. ²

Background

Change-Links was founded in Los Angeles in 1992. It originated as a calendar of community activist events at an area Winds of Change conference. ³ Articles, and eventually the website, came later. The goal of the calendar was to increase awareness of activist events across Los Angeles and Orange Counties, and to keep them from overlapping with each other.

The organization describes itself as “an open, unaffiliated and independent collective activity,” that promotes community resistance, liberation, and solidarity.⁴ In addition to locally-oriented news and information, it has published content by well-known writers and political figures, including anti-capitalist filmmaker Naomi Klein, journalist and Princeton professor Chris Hedges, and former Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Regular contributors include members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the far-left ethnic liberation movements, LGBT activists, and prisoners.⁵

Change-Links also publishes a variety of left-wing extremist authors, including former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer in 1982 and is serving a life prison sentence. ⁶

Change-Links also features Ward Churchill, a self-described indigenous activist who attained notoriety in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for referring to World Trade Center employees as “little Eichmanns.”⁷ The pejorative was a reference to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal who was a major organizer of the Jewish Holocaust.⁸

Change-Links’ founder and longtime publisher, John Johnson, died in August 2014. ⁹ Johnson was a former member of the 1960s radical extreme-left youth movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).¹⁰ The paper continues with an array of editors, and continues to receive funding support from the Alliance for Global Justice, according to its website.

Funding

Change-Links is a nonprofit under the fiscal sponsorship of the Alliance for Global Justice, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization based in Tucson, Arizona.¹¹ AFGJ funds an array of left-wing groups and projects both domestically and internationally.

In addition to Change-Links, AFGJ domestic funding agenda extends to projects such as anti-war campaigner Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network, and Occupy Wall Street. Its international funding supports groups like Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW), the Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee, and Palestine for Peace and Justice.¹² AfGJ has numerous associations with the radical left, running efforts in defense of the de facto socialist dictatorship of Venezuela,¹³ publishing a defense of the North Korean regime,¹⁴ and taking actions on behalf of radical-left extremists including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal. ^{15 16 17}

According to its 2016 IRS filing, AFGJ had nearly $2.3 million in revenue, $2.1 million in expenses, and $753,909 in assets.¹⁸ AFGJ has received funding from a large left-wing donors, such as the Tides Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Arca Foundation, the New World Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund. ¹⁹

Activism

In February 2017, it was discovered that the Alliance for Global Justice, Change-Links’ financial sponsor, had funneled $50,000 to a radical protest group called Refuse Fascism.²⁰ Refuse Fascism was involved in riots occurring at the University of California, Berkeley, that successfully shut down a speech by far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. In October 2017, Change-Links published an article which promoted planned demonstrations ahead of a free speech event at California State University, Fullerton.²¹

According to the Los Angeles Times, at least eight protestors were arrested during the CSUF rally, including a woman wearing a black helmet and black mask spraying pepper spray.²²

Change-Links November 2017 calendar of events advertised a protest called the “Trump/Pence Regime Must Go.” The event occurred on the one-year anniversary of the 2016 presidential election. “We will gather in the streets and public squares of cities and towns across this country, until our demand is met,” the post says.²³ The event was sponsored by Refuse Fascism.²⁴

Change-Links advertised activist events often occur at universities. For example, Occidental College hosted Fall 2017 events challenging public school privatization reforms and exploring racial grievances.²⁵²⁶ The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) hosted presentations in November 2017 entitled, “Sexing Empire: Producing Nationhood, Sexual Economies, and Racialized Gender and Sexuality in the Southwest Borderlands,” by a UCLA representative of the Chicano Studies Research Center; and “’Y’all Just Tryna Be Black!’ Indigenous Hip Hop and the Politics of Blackness on Turtle Island,” by a UCLA associate professor at the Department of African American Studies and American Indian Studies Interdepartmental Program. ²⁷

1. “Donate.” Change-Links. Accessed November 5, 2017. http://change-links.org/volunteer-or-donate/.
2. “About.” Change-Links. Accessed November 5, 2017. http://change-links.org/about/
3. “John Johnson Remembered.” Change-Links. August 16, 2014. Accessed November 6, 2017. http://change-links.org/john-johnson-remembered/.
4. “About.” Change-Links. Accessed November 5, 2017. http://change-links.org/about/.
5. “John Johnson Remembered.” Change-Links. August 16, 2014. Accessed November 6, 2017. http://change-links.org/john-johnson-remembered/.
6. Williams, Timothy. “Execution Case Dropped Against Abu-Jamal.” The New York Times. December 7, 2011. Accessed November 7, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/us/execution-case-dropped-against-convicted-cop-killer.html.
7. Reid, T.R. “Professor Under Fire for 9/11 Comments.” The Washington Post. February 5, 2005. Accessed November 7, 2017. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A76-2005Feb4.html.
8. “Adolf Eichmann.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Accessed November 7, 2017. https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007412.
9. “John. F. Johnson.” Obituaries. Los Angeles Times. August 19, 2014. Accessed November 7, 2017. http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?pid=170708826.
10. “John Johnson Remembered.” Change-Links. August 16, 2014. Accessed November 6, 2017. http://change-links.org/john-johnson-remembered/.
11. “About.” Change-Links. Accessed November 5, 2017. http://change-links.org/about/.
12. “AfGJ Fiscally Sponsored Projects.” Alliance for Global Justice. Accessed November 9, 2017. https://afgj.org/sponsored-projects/fiscally-sponsored-projects/fiscally-sponsored-projects.
13. “Protest at OAS says ‘U.S. hands off Venezuela!’” Workers World. June 09, 2017. Accessed November 30, 2017. https://www.workers.org/2017/06/09/protest-at-oas-says-u-s-hands-off-venezuela/
14. Smith, Stansfield. “An Interview with North Koreans.” Alliance for Global Justice. April 07, 2013. Accessed December 07, 2017. https://afgj.org/an-interview-with-north-koreans. Workers.org version: Smith, Stan. “A Korean View of Current Situation.” Workers World, April 12, 2013. https://www.workers.org/2013/04/8171/. Archived version of both: AfGJ + Workers.org – North Korea
15. “Political Prisoners in the USA.” Alliance for Global Justice. September 07, 2017. Accessed December 08, 2017. https://afgj.org/politicalprisonersusa
16. Pamela Anderson Foundation, Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990-PF), 2014, Part XV
17. “AfGJ’s Fiscally Sponsored Projects.” Alliance for Global Justice. Accessed December 08, 2017. https://afgj.org/sponsored-projects/fiscally-sponsored-projects/fiscally-sponsored-projects.
18. “Alliance for Global Justice.” NonProfit Explorer. ProPublica. Accessed November 9, 2017. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/522094677.
19. Hogberg, David. “Communists Funding the Resistance: The Alliance for Global Justice.” Capital Research Center. August 29, 2017. Accessed November 7, 2017. https://capitalresearch.org/article/communists-funding-the-resistance-the-alliance-for-global-justice/.
20. Ross, Chuck. “Look Who Funds the Group Behind the Call to Arms at Milo’s Berkeley Event.” The Daily Caller. February 3, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017.

    http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/03/look-who-funds-the-group-behind-the-call-to-arms-at-milos-berkeley-event/.

21. “Racist Provocateur Milo Yiannapoulos to Face Opposition at CSUF.” Change-Links. October 28, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017.

    http://change-links.org/racist-provocateur-milo-yiannapoulos-to-face-opposition-at-csuf/.

22. Tchekmedyian, Alene, Makeda Easter, and Benjamin Oreskes. “Eight arrested in protests as Milo Yiannopoulos speaks at Cal State Fullerton.” Los Angeles Times. November 1, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-milo-comes-to-fullerton-20171101-story.html.
23. “November 2017 Calendar of Events.” Change-Links. October 28, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017. http://change-links.org/november-2017-calendar-of-events/.
24. “LA- This Nightmare Must End: Trump/Pence Regime Must Go – Nov 4.” Refuse Fascism. Facebook. Accessed November 10, 2017. https://www.facebook.com/events/770801056441240/.
25. “November 2017 Calendar of Events.” Change-Links. October 28, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017. http://change-links.org/november-2017-calendar-of-events/.
26. “October 2017 Calendar of Events.” Change-Links. October 28, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017. http://change-links.org/october-2017-calendar-of-events/.
27. “November 2017 Calendar of Events.” Change-Links. October 28, 2017. Accessed November 9, 2017. http://change-links.org/november-2017-calendar-of-events/.