Calla Walsh and the Radical Left’s Embrace of Palestine, Iran, Cuba, and China

The story of Cambridge, Massachusetts, activist Calla Walsh mirrors the shift that has taken place on the American left. In six years, she went from a mainstream Democrat to a full-time, radical supporter of Palestine, Iran, Cuba, and China who shouted “Death to America” on Iranian television.

Walsh, the daughter of a Boston University professor and a Harvard writing instructor, is co-founder of Unity of Fields, the American successor to the U.S. Treasury-sanctioned U.K. organization Palestine Action. As a teenager, she volunteered for Senator Ed Markey’s 2020 reelection campaign and was profiled positively by The New York Times. Apparently, by 2021, she had already become radicalized. In a social media post that year, Walsh urged people to “kill the cop”

In an April 2023 interview with CGTN, China’s state broadcaster, Walsh said she did not view China as an enemy of the United States but as “a global leader that is really paving the way to a more peaceful and multi-polar world.” She added, “China is a progressive force, and the U.S. is extremely regressive.” She also criticized congressional attempts to ban TikTok as “xenophobic” and a “red-scare tactic.”

The interview identified Walsh as a board member of Massachusetts Peace Action and co-chair of the National Network on Cuba.

Massachusetts Peace Action is a left-of-center anti-war nonprofit founded in the 1980s as an anti-nuclear protest group called “Mass Freeze.” It later joined the national Peace Action network and broadened its focus to global disarmament and foreign policy advocacy. According to InfluenceWatch, the group has organizational ties to the Women’s March and other left-of-center nonprofits. Its Education Fund also helped organize the 2024 anti-Israel student protests on campuses across Massachusetts.

The National Network on Cuba (NNOC) is a coalition of more than 60 U.S. organizations that coordinates delegations to Cuba and advocates for ending the U.S. embargo. In a May 2023 op-ed, Walsh opposed the U.S. government’s designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and called for an end to the embargo.

NNOC’s Cuban partner, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), is a Cuban government entity sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in June 2026 for allegedly supporting Cuban intelligence operations. At its 2025 annual meeting, NNOC hosted ICAP President Fernando González Llort, one of the “Cuban Five” convicted spies who served 15 years in a U.S. prison.

On July 20, 2026, the U.S. State Department released a 100-page report titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” alleging that Cuba had spent decades cultivating a network of sympathetic American activist organizations. The report cited a “National Rapid Response Plan” distributed by NNOC in June 2026 that called for “coordinated nationwide actions” at U.S. military bases, ICE facilities, and federal buildings within 24 hours of any U.S. military action against Cuba. Its stated goal was to make it “politically and materially costly for the U.S. government to wage war on Cuba.”

The report named NNOC as one of six organizations at the center of the network, alongside ICAP, Code Pink, the People’s Forum, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the National Lawyers Guild.

Later in 2023, Walsh co-founded Palestine Action US, the American branch of Palestine Action, a U.K.-based direct-action group that targets companies and institutions it accuses of enabling the Israeli military. Formed shortly after the Gaza war began, the U.S. branch adopted its parent organization’s tactics against Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defense contractor.

At a rally outside Elbit’s Cambridge office, nine activists were arrested on charges including assault and battery on a police officer, possession of an incendiary device, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. All pleaded not guilty. The group called the assault allegations fabricated and said the “incendiary device” was a smoke bomb. An October protest at the same site resulted in no arrests. Founder Fergie Chambers, an heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune who financed the group’s legal and organizing expenses, said chapters were being formed across the United States to target other Elbit facilities.

In November 2023, Walsh and three others, Sophie Ross, Bridget Shergalis, and Paige Belanger, occupied and vandalized an Elbit facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire. They spray-painted slogans, damaged the HVAC system, and occupied the roof before being arrested. The four, known as the “Merrimack 4,” were charged with riot, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary, and falsifying evidence.

In November 2024, they pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to commit criminal mischief and criminal trespass. Walsh received a 12-month sentence, with all but 60 days suspended. The defendants were ordered to pay $95,645 in restitution and permanently banned from Elbit properties.

In August 2024, Palestine Action US rebranded as Unity of Fields. The group described itself as a “militant propaganda front” and announced a shift from “passive solidarity” to a “new front of insurgency” inside the United States. The following month, it claimed responsibility for vandalism at Columbia University. In October, Senator Marco Rubio asked the Department of Justice to investigate the group for domestic terrorism.

Following a May 2025 protest at the University of Washington where demonstrators set dumpster fires, Unity of Fields published a since-deleted post urging supporters to push police back “by any means necessary” and aim beyond the barricades. The post was widely interpreted as encouraging arson against officers. Later that month, after two Israeli Embassy staff members were fatally shot in Washington, D.C., Walsh said in an interview that people should be asking why there were not “100 more” people who did what the shooter did.

Walsh made at least three trips to Iran in 2025 and 2026 as a guest of state media. Her appearances were broadcast by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and PressTV, both under U.S. sanctions.

At a July 2025 event honoring media workers killed in the “struggle against the Zionist regime,” Walsh chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” in Persian. She thanked her hosts and urged the audience to “struggle against Zionism and imperialism,” invoking the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hamas and Hezbollah. Upon returning to the United States, she said Customs and Border Protection detained her for several hours at JFK Airport.

In February 2026, Walsh attended Tehran’s Sobh International Media Festival, where she posed beside Iranian missiles and drones and called the country’s “indigenous” weapons program “incredible.” She told PressTV that Iranian police defending “the Revolution” were fundamentally different from American police suppressing protests.

Following Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death in July 2026, Walsh returned to Tehran for his funeral. She described him to PressTV as “the greatest anti-imperialist leader” of her generation and a leader of “all people of the world who struggle against imperialism … Zionism … genocide.”