Building Social Movement Infrastructure

A movement needs a way of developing unity around broadly shared ideas and goals, and it needs different kinds of groups that have different kinds of strengths. A movement needs bottom-up leaders who can relate, as equals, with national leaders. Movements need networks and alliances that are flexible, in which various roles, divisions of labor, approaches, tactics and strategies are regularly negotiated. To maintain the ongoing connections and relationships that hold these networks together, movements need flexible infrastructure.