Party officers

Rossana Cambron, Co-chair

Rossana Cambron was elected CPUSA co-chair at the 31st Convention of the Communist Party USA in 2019.

Cambron is a former special education teacher of Mexican descent. With a lifelong commitment to social justice, she has actively participated in numerous movements and organizations advocating for workers’ rights, immigrant rights, and racial equality. Her activism has included involvement in the Mexican American student movements, the historic grape boycott of the 1960s and ’70s, and serving as a union shop steward for the teachers’ union. She has consistently worked to help organize the labor movement and promote representation for Mexican Americans in local and state government.

Cambron has supported and reported on union strikes, campaigned for the Fight for $15 movement in Los Angeles, and participated in the peace movement from the Iraq War to the present. She has also been active in electoral campaigns, the Occupy Los Angeles movement, and currently participates in the Poor People’s Campaign to end poverty in the U.S.

Joe Sims, Co-chair

Joe Sims was elected co-chairperson of the CPUSA at the party’s 31st Convention in 2019. He formerly served as co-editor of Peoples World and editor of Political Affairs, the party’s theoretical journal. He was elected to the CPUSA National Committee first in 1988 and has served on that body since.

Sims participated in the Bureau of the World Federation of Democratic Youth and led U.S. delegations to the 12th and 13th World Festivals of Youth and Students held in Moscow and Pyongyang, respectively. He attended the World Conference on Racism and Xenophobia in Durban, South Africa and was a founding member of the Black Radical Congress.

Explorations of contemporary political and ideological issues can be found in his writings at People’s World, CPUSA.org, and in Political Affairs. He lives in New York City.

Anita Waters, Organizational Secretary

Anita Waters first joined the CPUSA when Ronald Reagan won the presidency. As a professor, she was active in fighting for educational access for working people and in labor rights for college and university faculty. She was the Ohio District Organizer before being elected by the CPUSA National Committee in 2024 to the Organizational Secretary position.

Waters studied Caribbean political cultures and has published works on Jamaican electoral campaigns and historical representation in Cuba and Jamaica, as well as articles on labor and class for CPUSA.org.