Ulex center in Spain How do power dynamics shape our relationships and organising cultures? This story shares reflections, methods and key learnings from the "Active solidarity and intersectional organizing” training. What supports meaningful solidarity across difference? Lessons from the "Active solidarity and intersectional organizing" training in Ulex-Spain A few thoughts of our days at the Ulex-learning-center in Spain, where we shared a Courageous space with a beautiful, diverse group of people …. Throughout the training “ active solidarity and intersectional organizing”, we explored and moved questions together that feel increasingly important for movements, organisations, and collective spaces: How do power dynamics shape our relationships and organising cultures? What supports meaningful solidarity across difference? And how can we build movements that are both transformative and sustainable? One of the frameworks that we focused on and that particularly stayed with me was the distinction developed by Leticia Nieto between status, rank, and power. Rather than understanding oppression only through individual behaviour or intention, this approach invites us to look more deeply at the social structures and conditioning that shape interactions and relationships. Nieto describes status as the more fluid and situational dynamics between people, while rank refers to the structural and socially assigned systems of overvaluation and marginalisation that influence access, safety, legitimacy, and visibility in society. Power, in this framework, points toward something deeper — our grounded connection to ourselves, our values, community, creativity, and collective humanity. This approach moves away from simplistic ideas of “good” or “bad” people and instead understands anti-oppression work as a process of learning and developing skills. This creates more space for reflection, accountability, and transformation rather than shame or paralysis, while still acknowledging the realities of structural oppression and unequal power. Mapping Social Movements An important part of the training was movement mapping. Together, we looked more closely at our own movements, organisations, and networks — exploring the different organising cultures, visible and invisible roles, tensions, and power dynamics woven within them. This opened important conversations about leadership, conflict, sustainability, inclusion, and the different ways people contribute to social change work. The ecology of social movements framework helped us reflect on the fact that movements are never homogeneous. They consist of diverse actors, strategies, identities, capacities, and organisational cultures. Rather than seeing tensions and differences as failure, the ecology perspective invites us to understand diversity and even contradiction as part of what allows movements to grow, adapt, and remain resilient. Pedagogy and experiential learning What made the training a Space of movement was the combination of political analysis with embodied and experiential practices. Through embodiment exercises and methods inspired by ’s Theatre of the Oppressed, we explored how power dynamics are not only intellectual concepts, but are also felt, performed, reproduced, and resisted through our bodies, interactions, and everyday organisational cultures. Working physically and creatively allowed space for a different kind of reflection — one that moved beyond purely analytical discussion and opened room for emotion, intuition, imagination, and collective learning. Especially in times of ongoing crisis, polarisation, repression, and exhaustion, questions of collective care and active solidarity become central. Sustainable movements require not only political analysis and action, but also reflection on how we relate to one another, how we work with conflict and difference, and how we create cultures that allow people to remain connected, resourced, and human over the long term.