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James Cox Chambers Jr. (born ), also known as Fergie Chambers, is an American Communism political Activism and former Inheritance in the Cox family, which derives its wealth from Cox Enterprises.
Around age 12, Chambers was introduced to Marxist literature by a teacher, including Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, something which made a lasting impression, although by his account, his focus on political activism has ebbed and flowed throughout his life.
By the time he was a teenager, Chambers recalls having severe mental health issues, being committed to psychiatric institutions, becoming depressed and suicidal, and turning towards drugs.
In the early 2010s, Chambers opened a gym called the Berkshire People's Gym in Alford, Massachusetts, which was closed to "landlords and capitalists", among others. His property purchases in the Berkshires have been described as forming a "commune" by Mother Jones. In January 2024, the Berkshire People's Gym was shut down when Alford town officials enforced a cease‑and‑desist over zoning violations, finding that the gym had been operating in a barn permitted solely for agricultural storage.
Chambers has owned and operated other gyms, including a CrossFit gym in Alpharetta, Georgia. In 2012, an employee of Chambers' was Marjorie Taylor Greene. In 2020, Chambers claimed to have witnessed Greene conduct multiple extramarital affairs while employed by him.
Chambers began funding left-wing causes in the early 2000s and later founded the Babochki Collective, a grantmaking initiative that provides approximately US$5 million annually in grants to left-wing organizations and projects. He has directed millions of dollars in funding to organizations and initiatives focused on Palestinian political, humanitarian, and advocacy causes.
His public activism began in Atlanta in 2014, during protests and organizing efforts following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. While based in Atlanta, Chambers regularly organized and participated in direct actions associated with radical political causes. During this period, he worked as a volunteer with several community and activist organizations and also engaged in independent journalism.
In 2017, Chambers participated in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Chambers also ran a commune in Madison, Georgia on land he owned there for a period in the late 2010s, in which Chambers provided a stipend of $2,000 a month for members. Many members had been Standing Rock protesters. Many former commune members recall in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone that little happened on the commune aside from rampant psychedelic usage and that Chambers pressured commune members to take part in polyamory/free love relationships. The Georgia commune was closed in early 2019 and the property sold by Chambers in 2020.
In 2022, he traveled to the Donbas region during the war in eastern Ukraine. His reporting and commentary from the region were published by outlets including Monthly Review, teleSUR, and Toward Freedom, among other international publications.
In Georgia, Chambers has provided financial support for members of the Stop Cop City movement.
Chambers is a vocal supporter of Hamas; he described the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel as "a moment of hope and inspiration". Chambers denies that rapes occurred during the October 7 Attacks. Chambers previously told Mother Jones in an interview that he believes "the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the US", while he told Los Angeles magazine "I chant death to America every day. Imperialism is the death of humanity".
Chambers has also been supportive of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and visited Russian-occupied Donbas. Chambers has referred to Vladimir Putin as a "great man".
Chambers has changed religions several times during his life. Born into a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) family, Cox stated that, at times in his life, he tried to rationalize his family's wealth by buying into the idea of a Protestant work ethic and committing to being a conservative Protestant. In his early 20s, Chambers converted to Catholicism and embraced hardline anti-abortion views. In the late 2010s, Chambers attended the Peyote Way Church of God, a Native American Church in Arizona. In 2023, Chambers converted to Islam.
He resided in Tunis, Tunisia until 2025, where he is a sponsor of the football club Club Africain. Chambers previously lived in New Hampshire and the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. His wealth is self-reported to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
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