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Joe Sims is the national co-chairman of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), as well as a co-editor of the Party's online newspaper, People's World. He has held the position of co-chairman since 2019, when he was elected alongside Rossana Cambron at the party's 31st national convention in Chicago. [1]
Joe Sims was the section chairman for the Young Workers Liberation League in Washington, D.C. when he attended the Communist Party USA's extraordinary conference in Milwaukee in April 1982. [2]
Sims had the opportunity to participate in the World Federation of Democratic Youth festivals in Berlin in 1973, Moscow in 1985, and Pyongyang in 1989. [3]
As of March 1994, Sims was a member of the Organization Commission of the Communist Party USA. [4]
In March 1998, Sims was part of the “Endorsers of the Call” effort, founding the Black Radical Congress from the Communist Party USA. [5] In 2000, Sims was the New York United contact for Black Radical Congress. [6] In 2001, Sims served on the Black Radical Congress journal BRC Today editorial board. [7]
On March 30, 2002, the Communist Party USA paper People's Weekly World called for a national holiday in honor of late United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez. The article was followed by a long list of endorsers including Joe Sims. [8] Almost all endorsers were confirmed members of the Communist Party USA.
In 2009, he was publisher on the Editorial Collective of Political Affairs, theoretical journal of the Communist Party USA. [9]
He traveled frequently to South Africa since the unbanning of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, and has written and reported extensively on South African developments. [10]
He was a People's World Editorial Board Co-editor in 2015. [11]
In June 2019 Sims and Rossana Cambron became co-leaders of the Communist Party USA.
In March 2021, CPUSA committee members Joe Sims, Zenobia Thompson, and Eric Brooks initiated the reform of the African American Equality Commission. According to Sims, the AAEC will "support the CPUSA National Committee, clubs, and members in maintaining a focus on outreach and recruitment in the Black community, help the CPUSA strengthen the theoretical framework for a Marxist/Leninist understanding of the current struggles of the Black community in the USA, and spotlight struggles to improve Black living conditions."
Gus Hall was the General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a perennial candidate for president of the United States. He was the Communist Party nominee in the 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1984 presidential elections. As a labor leader, Hall was closely associated with the so-called "Little Steel" Strike of 1937, an effort to unionize the nation's smaller, regional steel manufacturers. During the Second Red Scare, Hall was indicted under the Smith Act and was sentenced to eight years in prison. After his release, Hall led the CPUSA for over 40 years, often taking an orthodox Marxist–Leninist stance.
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), also known as the American Communist Party, is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.
Earl Russell Browder was an American politician, spy for the Soviet Union, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s.
Samuel Webb is an American activist and political leader, who served as the Chairman of the Communist Party USA from 2000 to 2014, succeeding the party's longest running leader Gus Hall. Webb did not accept nomination to be reelected as chairman at the 30th National Convention of the Communist Party USA in 2014, at which John Bachtell was elected the party's new chairman. Webb continued to serve on the party's National Committee until 2016.
The Communist Party USA, ideologically committed to foster a socialist revolution in the United States, played a significant role in defending the civil rights of African Americans during its most influential years of the 1930s and 1940s. In that period, the African-American population was still concentrated in the South, where it was largely disenfranchised, excluded from the political system, and oppressed under Jim Crow laws.
The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.
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Henry M. Winston was an African-American political leader and Marxist civil rights activist.
During the ten decades since its establishment in 1919, the Communist Party USA produced or inspired a vast array of newspapers and magazines in the English language.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Clubs of America was a national youth organization sponsored by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and launched at a national convention held in San Francisco in June 1964. The organization was active in the American student movement of the 1960s and maintained a prominent presence on a number of college campuses including Columbia University in New York City and the University of California in Berkeley. The organization was dissolved by decision of the CPUSA in February 1970 and succeeded by a new organization known as the Young Workers Liberation League. They were named after socialist and racial and social activist W. E. B. Du Bois, co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders took place in New York City from 1949 to 1958. These trials were a series of prosecutions carried out by the US federal government during the postwar period and the Cold War era, which was characterized by tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. The leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) faced accusations of violating the Smith Act, a statute that made it illegal to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government. In their defense, the defendants claimed that they advocated for a peaceful transition to socialism and that their membership in a political party was protected by the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and association. The issues raised in these trials were eventually addressed by the US Supreme Court in its rulings Dennis v. United States (1951) and Yates v. United States (1957).
The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) is an American political party with a communist platform that was founded in 1919 in Chicago, Illinois. Its history is deeply rooted in the history of the American labor movement as it played critical roles in the earliest struggles to organize American workers into unions, in leadership of labor strikes, as well as prominent involvement in later civil rights and anti-war movements. Many party members were forced to work covertly due to the high level of political repression in the United States against Communists. CPUSA faced many challenges in gaining a foothold in the United States as they endured two eras of the Red Scare and never experienced significant electoral success. Despite struggling to become a major electoral player, CPUSA was the most prominent leftist party in the United States. CPUSA developed close ties with the Soviet Union, which led to them being financially linked.
The Yokinen Show Trial was a March 1931 public disciplinary proceeding conducted by leaders of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) against August Yokinen, a Finnish-American Communist janitor who allegedly denied several African Americans entry to a dance at the Finnish Workers Club in Harlem and made racially disparaging remarks against several African-American members of the organization at a social event. Attended by more an audience of 2,000 people, the "party trial" of Yokinen was publicized across America and was intended to emphasize the CPUSA's commitment to eliminate "White Chauvinism" from its ranks and to thereby bolster its status in the eyes of the black American working class and among white intellectuals seeking an end to racism.
African-American self-determination refers to efforts to secure self-determination for African-Americans and related peoples in North America. It often intersects with the historic Back-to-Africa movement and general Black separatism, but also manifests in present and historic demands for self-determination on North American soil, ranging from autonomy to independence. The freedom to make whatever choices as a free American, and willfulness to do for self are often a key demand for advocates of African-American self-determination.
Henry O. Mayfield was an American miner and social activist. Mayfield was one of the Black miners who played an active role in forming the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) between 1935 and 1955; he also had a leadership role in the SNYC. He served the United States as a soldier in World War II; afterwards, he and other veterans worked to support voting rights. He worked with other Black leaders in the Congress of Industrial Organizations to advocate for the rights of laborers, especially in the southern United States. Mayfield was watched by the FBI and was arrested for his work in the Communist Party and advocacy for civil rights. Mayfield served as chairman of the board for Freedomways Associates, the publishing company for the cultural magazine Freedomways, up until his death.
