WASHINGTON — Activists living in America have been traveling to Cuba in active support of the country’s oppressive communist dictatorship, offering aid and resources to the regime and expressing disdain for the United States of America.
The Venceremos Brigade and National Network on Cuba, a coalition of more than 65 “social justice organizations,” organized a trip to bring 150 people from the United States to Cuba to commemorate the 100th birthday of Fidel Castro, the founder of Cuba’s communist regime. The activists’ goal was to “engage in solidarity labor” with Cuban workers, “meet revolutionary heroes and community organizers,” deliver aid, and “learn about Cuba’s fight against the blockade, its campaign to eliminate racism, and its internationalist medical missions.”
The Daily Wire has learned the identities of multiple activists who traveled from the United States to Cuba in defiance of American sanctions and travel restrictions. Sources familiar with the junket confirmed that Adrienne Cabouet, Jada Peten, Sulan Mlynarek, Isabel Spafford, and Yamisi Dorothea Combahee each joined the trip, which explicitly celebrated Castro and aligned the activists with an authoritarian government that is openly hostile to the United States.
The Cuban junket comes as President Donald Trump increases pressure on the socialist country through increased economic sanctions and an oil blockade. Leftist activists argue that the United States is waging an “all-out assault on Cuba,” blaming America for blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.
Adrienne Cabouet, who operates under the name “Onyesonwu ‘Onye’ Chatoyer,” serves as a co-chair of the National Network on Cuba and an organizer with the Venceremos Brigade. The network’s website lists her among the coordinators on its 2026 leadership team who “facilitate organizational coordination and follow-up between [National Network on Cuba] National Meetings.”
“Solidarity with Cuba is unshakable,” she said at a “Cuba Solidarity Forum” in Havana earlier this year. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “We will defy the blockade as long as it exists.”
A biography for Cabouet describes her as “an African woman marooned in the United States, organizing to defeat capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy.” She is an editor with “Hood Communist,” has described America as an “evil empire,” and previously worked as a movement leader with Black Lives Matter Portland.
Another activist who traveled to Cuba is Jada Peten, who traveled to Cuba as part of the brigade’s “all Afrikan, Indigenous, and Palestinian” contingent in December and shared on “Cuba Livestream”: “we are collaborating with the National Network on Cuba for the Centenary of Fidel Brigade.” That brigade would bring 80 “brigadistas from 22 states,” she said, noting that organizers were “focused on coming back and building a stronger, more militant anti-imperialist movement, more interconnected movement, to end the U.S. blockade on Cuba.”
Peten has a long history of activism, dating back to her work at the 2016 Democratic National Convention where she served as an 18-year-old alternate delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during his first run for the Democratic presidential nomination. She returned to the 2020 Democratic National Convention as a Sanders delegate. She’s worked for Revolutionary Action-St. Louis, the Black Organizing Summer School (BOSS), the Electoral Justice Organizer, spoken on Code Pink panels, denounced America as a “white supremacist capitalist genocidal state” in a 2023 interview, and called for the abolition of prisons and policing.
Sulan Mlynarek is a trans-identifying member of the Venceremos Brigade’s National Coordinating Committee who traveled to Havana ahead of the group’s 51st contingent to meet with “representatives from the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and other institutions in order to reiterate their determination to continue the long history of the Venceremos Brigade.” Mlynarek has been a national coordinator for the brigade since 2019.
“Hello comrades and community,” wrote Mlynarek in an Instagram post dated June 2025. “[A] crew of us are bringing an *all queer* anti-imperialist solidarity brigade to Cuba in a few weeks. We travel wit [sic] the Venceremos Brigade… and be engaging in solidarity labor/exchange/relationship building with queer Cubans and their orgs + gov.”
Isabel Spafford was arrested in April 2024 after occupying the University of New Mexico student union during a pro-Palestinian demonstration. Spafford worked as a case manager at Lutheran Family Services, an organization offering refugee and immigrant services, where she helped “over 30 refugees and 80 asylum seekers in multiple languages, assisting clients in accessing public benefits and other resources.” She also worked for Las Cumbres Community Services, another organization helping immigrants and refugees.
Yemisi Dorothea Combahee, an “abortion doula” and “reproductive justice organizer” at Black Feminist Future, is yet another activist who made the journey. Combahee identifies as a “Fat Black Queer Femme liberation strategist, full-spectrum doula, and reproductive justice organizer,” and her profiles say that she “convenes and organizes the Black Reproductive Justice Ecosystem through campaigns like Abortion is Freedom and the campaign for Black Midwives Day.”
Peten, Mlynarek, Spafford, and Combahee did not respond to requests for comment.
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