Workers Circle Northern California

golden gate bridge.jpg — Workers Circle
Northern California

Follow the Northern California Workers Circle branch on Facebook for updates!

Questions about Workers Circle Northern California? Email Diana Scott to learn more.

Taking Action

International Global Day of Action in San Francisco on March 6, 2022.

Chair of the Workers Circle Northern California branch, Diana Scott, with hundreds of other Workers Circle supporters, protesting against the war in Ukraine.

Resources

UPCOMING EVENTS

Wednesday, April 23, 2026, 7:00 PM PT
"Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaze – A Reckoning" with Elaine Leeder

Thursday, April 24, 2026, 6:00 PM PT
"Opening a Confiscated Archive" with Elissa Sampson

Cornell University’s archive of the International Workers Order (IWO) and the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order includes a huge body of materials seized by the State of New York in 1954. As she discusses the organization’s history, Dr. Elissa Sampson will draw visually from the archive to show its rich cultural and historic resources, highlighting interracial relationships and early civil rights advocacy.

The IWO, founded in 1930 as a mutual benefit insurance society by leftist Yiddish- speaking garment workers who had split from the Workmen’s Circle, rapidly became an umbrella organization that opened its membership benefits to others. It was organized chiefly along ethnic lines, of which the Jewish section, the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order, was the largest. They tied their support for creating a new Yiddish culture to fighting antisemitism, Jim Crow, and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Presenter Elissa Sampson, urban geographer and lecturer in the Jewish Studies program at Cornell University, is co-editor with Robert M. Zecker, of a new volume of essays drawing on material from this archive, entitled *From Popular Front to Cold War: The Interracial Left and the International Workers Order, 1930-1954