Building Alliances, Networks & Coalitions

Creating a more beautiful future requires building a broad alliance of diverse social forces united not by identical politics but by a shared commitment to transformation. Today, as authoritarianism rises globally and progressive movements face intensifying pressure, the strategic case for alliance-building has never been clearer. But building alliances is hard, practical work. It demands navigating tensions, sharing power, creating coherence without flattening diversity, and sustaining trust across borders, cultures, and political traditions. 

In this four-part series, we hear from organisers doing exactly that with each offering a different model of how movements coordinate, build collective power, and hold together across scale. We'll explore what their work looks like in practice, along with the successes and the challenges and how to build sufficient coherence and cohesion to achieve their goals. If you're interested in how to build a strategic coherence, coordinate across scale, and how networks stay accountable, then this series is for you!

• 🗓 Dates: 7 April, 19.00 - 20.30 British Summer Time [check the times with your location carefully]
• ⏱ Format: 90-minute live Q&A sessions (recordings available)
• 🎟 Series: Join just one or all of the sessions as you like

Each speaker will give a brief presentation followed by lots of space to ask questions. 

From Movements to Institutions with Maria Llanos del Corral

🗓 7th April, 19.00 - 20.30 (British Summer Time / GMT+1)

This talk explores how the 15M movement in Spain gave rise to new political parties and citizen-led coalitions challenging corruption and political elites. We trace the shift from street mobilisation to institutional capability, focusing on participatory infrastructure such as Podemos’ early citizen circles. We reflect on the tensions between horizontality and collective leadership, and the challenges of governing within mainstream political institutions whose culture, processes, and logic often constrain these principles. Drawing on focus groups with activists and political leaders, we examine what happened after entering institutions, including the key challenges and fractures that emerged. Finally, turning to Uruguay’s Frente Amplio, we draw key learnings from this unique, long-standing example of successful alliance-building across diversity. The session invites European movements to reclaim alliance-building as a strategy of resistance, governance, and radical imagination.

Maria Llanos del Corral, a facilitator, organiser, and movement learning practitioner working at the intersection of complexity, participation, and social justice. They co-founded La Bolina, Eroles Project, and collaborate closely with the Ulex Project, supporting grassroots and political organisations to build alliances, strengthen networks, and develop participatory infrastructure. Their work focuses on emergent strategy, organisational culture, and collective leadership in complex and uncertain contexts. Currently, their practice centres on alliance-building and movement learning as responses to democratic erosion and the rise of the far right.

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This series is organised by Linda Doyle, co-director of the Movement Ecology Collective, with support from Jo Taylor from the Solidarity Economy Association. 

If you have any questions or accessibility requirements, please get in touch with linda [ at ] movementecology [ dot ] org [ dot ] uk

The money raised from your ticket contributions will support all of the organisations involved to continue their work. There is no external funding for this project. Please practice as much generosity as you can :)

Previous Sessions

Building Revolutionary Internationalism from Below with Women Weaving the Future

🗓 26th February, 17.00 - 18.30

Join Rua and Lava from Women Weaving the Future, a global network organising autonomously since 2018 to unite struggles against patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism. Rooted in over a century of revolutionary feminist internationalism, the network connects diverse women's movements across borders, not through symbolic solidarity, but by uniting their struggles. Building upon the principle that "No one is free until all of us are free." they are committed to organising, autonomously, from below, the internationalist struggle for a free and just world without domination and oppression.

In this conversation, we'll learn how they are weaving this emerging network by organising tours and extended visits to different regions to build relationships and understand the context, convening conferences and educations that bring diverse women's movements together, and using their website to make feminist struggles visible to inspire hope. We'll hear about how they balance bringing in small local collectives, whilst supporting them to strengthen the struggle where they already are. A key challenge is that the women most central to these struggles are often the most under-resourced, limiting their capacity to engage at the global level – something the network is actively experimenting with ways to address.

A Radical United Front: Lessons from the Kenya Left Alliance

🗓 5th March, 17.00 - 18.30

Kenya Left Alliance (KLA), also known as ‘Kenya Left’, is a united front for progressive political parties, organisations, movements, and individuals that is necessitated by the struggle for a more just, free, non-sexist, non-homophobic, non-racist, non-exploitative, non-dominating, non-oppressive, non-ethnic, equitable, ecologically safe, prosperous, and dignified society that seeks the socialist path. KLA brings together leftist political movements, organisations and individuals into a radical united front under the clarion call: Revolution Now! Land, Food and Liberation (Mapinduzi Sasa! Ardhi, Chakula na Ukombozi). We'll hear about how KLA unites struggles for just social order in Kenya and globally based on four key pillars: Socialism, Anti-imperialism, Pan Africanism and Feminism. KLA is clear on and committed to the better planet we want to see, building on the growing consciousness among oppressed and exploited people in both the global South and North of their common enemy. In the parlance of Kenyan politics, KLA fronts the alternative political leadership that Kenyans are yearning for.

Njuki Githethwa, an organiser with the Kenya Left Alliance – an alliance of progressive political parties, organisations, movements and individuals within Kenya, who have brought over 30 organisations together, including leftist political parties, movements, feminist collectives, student unions, cultural and artistic groups, radical academics and many more.

Coordinating Workers' Movements with Asia Monitor Resource Centre with Ye Yint

🗓 19th March, 12.00 - 13.30

Ye Yint is one of a team of six who make up the Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) which has been supporting the labour movement in south and east Asia for the last 50 years by supporting the coordination of 130 partners spread across 16 countries! Collectively speaking multiple languages, they bridge cultures and contexts in service of workers' rights. They coordinate human rights campaigns to protect workers from exploitation, organise workers from marginalised backgrounds to gain access to social welfare, and advocate for occupational health and safety, along with protecting the natural world.

In this conversation, we'll explore how they coordinate and build alliances across such a large and diverse network, whilst navigating power differences and culture-clashes, balancing between building trust and speaking truth to power, prioritising pedagogy over policing, and staying accountable to grassroots movements while coordinating internationally. We'll discuss how organisers across the region practice mutuality, navigate difference, and build lasting infrastructure for solidarity.

This session will also be co-hosted with the Solidarity Economy Association.