This might be inevitable, but movements can accelerate their own decline and waste their own potential by neglecting their structures, by failing to encourage participation at various levels and by failing to help people adapt at times of change. For many of us, it is also important to demonstrate alternatives to the top-down models of organising characteristic of conventional power structures. Identity bonds a movement, whether it's around values or around oppression. Sometimes this takes external forms. Sometimes it takes the form of self-affirmation.
Identity can, of course, be double-edged.
One source of a movement's identity can be the ways it tries to do things, its methods of action and modes of organising, their concern to be inclusive and participatory. In thinking about power with one must consider how we make alliances and who with. For some, it is enough to combine power within and power with , concentrating on building our own strength. Hence to power in relation to - in relation to our goals and to the dominant power relationships. However, whatever validity these classic answers retain, they are too sweeping to meet the needs of most movements.