Jonathan David Rosenblum

Jonathan David Rosenblum, a writer, labor lawyer, devoted father, and community leader, passed away peacefully in his home on June 5th after a four-year battle with cancer. Jon was the fifth of eight children of Victor and Louise Rosenblum in Evanston, Illinois. After a brief stint on the Duke University baseball team, Jon graduated and took his manual Royal Touch Control typewriter to the mountains of Western North Carolina where he began a career as a journalist for the Waynesville Mountaineer. Over the next years, Jon wrote and fact-checked for The New Republic and Time Magazine, drafted speeches for Arizona Governor Bruce Babbit, and even studied torah at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.

Jon received his J.D. from Northwestern Law School and shortly after published Copper Crucible: How the Arizona Miners’ Strike of 1983 Recast Labor-management Relations in America. The book has become a seminal text in labor studies, focusing on the hiring of replacement workers during the Phelps-Dodge copper strike in Bisbee, Arizona. During his time at Northwestern, he met his first partner Jane Elizabeth Larson (d. 2011).

After a year at the International Labor Organization in Geneva working to protect freedom of association and collective bargaining rights for workers around the world, Jon served on the Clinton Administration’s White House task force on eliminating sweatshop labor as a representative of Global Labor Justice. He developed and implemented monitoring programs in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador to help eliminate sweatshop labor from apparel supply chains, particularly for clothing sold at U.S. colleges and universities.

In 1997, he and Jane moved to Madison, Wisconsin where their son, Simon, was born and where Jon would spend the rest of his life. Jon was a notable leader in the protest movement against Scott Walker’s elimination of public sector collective bargaining. In that role, he helped organize the Solidarity Singalong, a protest song circle that gave music to the labor movement’s struggle in the Capitol Rotunda, first daily and later weekly, for many years. When not in Madison, Jon traveled the country, joining the crowds at an extraordinary number of Simon’s baseball games.

Until the end, Jon was dedicated to community, music, family, and social justice, even planning Scattered Light, a songfest and benefit concert for UW Carbone Cancer Center in March 2025. He continued to offer pro-bono employment law services to workers facing unjust treatment even in his late life. Jon is survived by his siblings, nieces and nephews, his son Simon, his beloved partner Lana Shklyar Nenide, her two children Samuel and Annushka.

The family will gather at Beth Israel Center on Sunday, June 7th at 2:00 PM for the funeral followed by a burial at Beit Olamim Cemetery. Shiva will begin in true Jon fashion with Skee-Ball at the Kickback Arcade Bar on Sunday night and continue at Lana’s house, 7208 Century Place, Middleton for the traditional seven-day mourning period. Memorial contributions can be made to Carbone Cancer Center.

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