The Jane McAlevey Residency
Jane McAlevey working on a homemade blueberry pie in the Blue Mountain Center kitchen.
Blue Mountain Center is raising $100,000 to establish the Jane McAlevey Residency to honor and carry on the work of alumnus, ally, and our dear friend who passed away too soon in July of 2024. Your donations can help make this residency a reality.
In the early summer of 2024, Jane spoke with Harriet Barlow, co-founder and former Executive Director of Blue Mountain Center, about endowing a residency to support writers, artists, and organizers who are involved in the labor movement and committed to mobilizing for social change. In the wake of her passing last July, friends of Jane and Blue Mountain Center are coming together to endow this residency in her honor. This will join the Harriet Barlow and Boren Chertkov Residencies as Blue Mountain Center’s third named residency. All named residencies are awarded annually to a resident whose work embodies the respective values and commitments of their namesake. Now, we look to our wider community, who Jane would have considered extended family, to make this a reality. With your timely support the Jane McAlevey Residency could be awarded as early as this summer.
About Jane
Likely off to a bike ride, Jane is pictured laughing on the BMC front porch.
Jane F. McAlevey was known by many as a fierce labor organizer, strategist, and scholar. She devoted her life to increasing working-class power through on-the-ground organizing, training thousands of workers in strategies to transform and shape their unions. When she was not organizing the rank-and-file, she taught and wrote on building community power, creating guidelines for organizers to follow - and win - their campaigns. Jane was herself the quintessence of the spirit embodied in work. Hers was a dedication to win on behalf of working people.
Raised in an activist-union household, Jane spent the first half of her organizing life working in the community organizing and environmental justice movements and the second half in the union movement. Early in her career, she worked at the Earth Island Institute, Highlander Research and Education Center, and the Veatch Program. In time, Jane rose to leadership as the Executive Director of SEIU Nevada. Jane’s success in the labor movement is in no doubt a direct result of her steadfast belief in what she calls “whole-worker organizing” and social movement unionism. Throughout her life, Jane maintained an uncompromising faith in the power of a well-organized work force at a time when many lost hope in the labor movement’s capacity to organize, much less mobilize for social change.
Prior to her first of four residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Jane had visited several times both as a conferee and a friend of BMC. During her time at Blue Mountain Center Jane worked on her first book, Raising Expectations (And Raising Hell); My Decade Fighting For the Labor Movement (2012). It was named the “most valuable book of 2012” by The Nation Magazine. Two years later, upon her return to BMC, Jane became the first ever recipient of the Boren Chertkov Residency Award for Labor and Justice. In the years after, she went on to write four more books, each of which had a profound impact on the labor movement. You can read more about Jane’s life, work, and impact at www.jane mcalevey.com.
Support the Jane McAlevey Residency
Jane McAlevey, labor organizer, scholar, and friend of Blue Mountain Center.
In order to establish the McAlevey Residency, $150,000 must be raised to ensure that each year’s awarded residency spot is fully funded to defray BMC’s per-resident cost. This amount will ensure that the McAlevey Residency will be awarded annually, in perpetuity, and include stipends for Residents. We hope that you will give to the Jane McAlevey Residency and help extend her impact through this award. With your contributions, BMC will be able to award the inaugural Jane McAlevey Residency this year.
You may donate by mailing a check to Blue Mountain Center, PO Box 109, Blue Mountain Lake, NY 12812. Please specify that the donation is for the Jane McAlevey Residency. You may also donate online through Blue Mountain Center’s Paypal by clicking the button below. Please be sure to select “Jane McAlevey Residency” in the drop-down menu to designate your donation.