She's won against unfair employers and against governments and is now seven years out from an ovarian cancer diagnosis.

But she can certainly recognise trouble. The minute she saw the crowds at one of Donald Trump's rallies in Pennsylvania, she knew Hillary Clinton was in all kinds of trouble. Trump – by himself – had drawn crowds of over 20,000. Clinton, with both Obamas and an array of stars, could only draw 30,000.

The veteran political organiser recognised the fight for a – slightly more – progressive America was over, at least at a presidential level. But McAlevey also understood that the fight was far from over in many other ways. She's been on the front line as governments have tried to destroy the union movement in the US.

Now she is coming to Australia next week, perhaps to share grief about what's happening in the US – but far more likely to share her strong conviction that we can overcome. As she puts it, Australians overcame the Howard-era industrial relations reforms and they can win again.

She's already done quite a bit of overcoming during the course of her life. McAlevey, a former organiser with Service Employees International Union in the US, spent four years being part of a team to rebuild that union. Just as internal ructions undid much of that union's success, she heard the news that she was positive to the gene which predisposes women to breast and ovarian cancer. Preventative surgery revealed early-stage ovarian cancer. She ended up spending nearly a year in medical treatment, being cared for by those she'd spent years representing.

That was 2009. Now McAlevey has completed a post-doctoral posting at Harvard Law school and returned to doing what she does best and loves best – organising at a grassroots level. She will be in Australia next week, as a guest of Unions NSW, for her first ever visit to talk about exactly that – why and how unions and progressive interests must unite to fight.

Her first book, Raising Expectation (and Raising Hell) was pretty much a short and inspirational history of her struggles in the labour movement. Now she's written a handbook for activists, No Shortcuts, which says what it means. It's tempting to try to cut corners but it won't work in the long term.

"The [book] sums up core life lessons for me and the harder the conditions are, the more tempting it is for everyone from trade union leaders to climate campaigners to think "oh hey, we are in a hurry here, let's take this shortcut and that shortcut" and it doesn't work.

"There is no quick fix to undoing Trump [read, any conservative leader], and shortcuts on the part of the Democratic Party and the traditional Democratic coalition [read, any progressive force] is part of what got Trump elected."

Social media works to mobilise – which is necessary – but face-to face works best. That was clear in the recent Australian election when the ACTU managed thousands of doorknocks and phone calls, speaking to real people, one-on-one; and unseating, with the support and organising of GetUp, members such as Andrew Nikolic in Tasmania, who had huge margins.

As McAlevey puts it, democracy is messy and to do it well requires really conscious, hard work. And that's from everyone involved, whether you belong to a political party, to a union, or to any other entity which is trying to protect and to rebuild progressive values as they come under attack.

Rebuilding union membership is an important part of that – and you can only do that by having conversations within the workplace, she says. I tell her that we have declining union membership in Australia and ask whether she thinks that's a result of a precarious workforce.

"When we treat workers like grown-ups, when we honour the intelligence of ordinary workers, when we realise and recognise that they're smart, when we have childcare at meetings set when workers can come, when we translate into multiple languages because you've got multiple languages going on, there's just a whole bunch of basic things we have to do that constitute how you really respect ordinary people.

"Create the space, give them the space to engage and have really honest, upfront conversations with them. I don't think any of that is different than it was."

But there is something else really important that McAlevey speaks about – and that is the way the real elites try to distance everyone else from the tough engagement of politics. You could see it during the US election campaign and you could certainly see it in the Australian election campaign.

Politicians, even some journalists, those on the inside, kept telling us how exhausting campaigns were, how boring. And that feeds the idea that politics is boring and unimportant, when it's actually driving what happens in our ordinary lives. While governments cut services, pedal back on climate protection, whittle away education and health, they also wedge wildly to distract us – what's happening now is that both racism and sexism are used to divide communities.

McAlevey says racism is used in the US by employers as a weapon of choice (and we can see that here too now).

"To win, we have to confront racism, take it head-on and help people work it out. The very best and only way I know how is to go right at the attempts at division and help all workers come to understand that racism exists for only one reason, to keep all workers down."

She describes racism as the historic wedge issue and says that unions and other progressive forces need to take this and the issues of sexism and misogyny head on.

"People think we can run away from these issues, but we can't."

Fight them head on. No shortcuts.

facebook.com/jennapricejournalist

@jennaprice