Economic Resistance — Reclaiming the Means of Survival
Part Two of The Four Domains of Cultural Resistance. Economic resistance is the practice of rerouting money, time, and skill toward community survival.
🔧 Torchlight Praxis — Tools You Can Carry
Read Part One, Narrative Resistance — Defending Truth and Memory
It starts small, close to home, and grows through trust.
The Receipt
After school, Mara Ortiz turned left instead of right.
The chain store sat in its bright rectangle of convenience. Click, swipe, arrive by morning. She had already priced the paper—cheaper online, free shipping. But the librarian had taped a new sign to the front desk: “Library Fines Forgiven by Community Fund.” Under it, a mason jar half-full of singles and quarters. Someone, somewhere, had paid for someone else’s book to come home.
Inside the print shop, the bell chimed. The room smelled like ink and warm cardboard. Mr. Salazar weighed her reams and wrapped them in kraft paper stamped with a wheat stalk.
“Where do you get these?” she asked.
“The mill by the river,” he said. “And the bakery on Twelfth. They run as co-ops. We try to keep money in the circle.”
He wrote the total in pencil at the bottom of the receipt. No barcode. Just: paper, kraft wrap, twine. A line beneath read, in smaller script: “Local mill. Co-op bakery. Rent due Tuesday.”
On the counter: a flyer—Bulk Buy Co-op Meeting, Sunday. She slid it into her bag and felt the tug of two numbers in her head: the online price… and the rent Mr. Salazar had just named. The receipt listed more than paper. It listed a choice. On the walk home she copied a note into Recipes for Freedom: Where the money goes is a story too.
The Meaning of Economic Resistance
Economic resistance is choosing flows of money, time, and skill that reduce extraction and increase neighbor survival. Not just boycotts or grand gestures: the groceries you buy, the bills you pay, the repairs you make, and the hands you hire.
Four simple levers:
Substitution: What you buy (swap disposable for repairable; brand for bulk staple).
Rerouting: Where you buy (shift to local, cooperative, or community-owned).
Reciprocity: Who benefits (ensure value returns to the circle that sustains you).
Transparency: Who decides (favor places with open books and shared governance).
Even a five-percent shift becomes a lifeline when repeated across a block, school, or town. Cultural resistance is the fabric; economics is the thread with the receipts to prove it. Your spending tells what you honor—and whom.
The Everyday Economy
She almost tapped “Buy Now” anyway. Exhaustion is its own coupon code.
Morning delivery meant one less errand. It also meant—she pictured him—Mr. Salazar counting out cash for rent. She pictured her own breath at 10pm, shallow from squeezing one more task into the edge of the day. Cheaper sometimes costs more.
At the bakery on Twelfth, Anita slid a loaf across the counter. Flour dusted the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“First time?” Anita asked.
“First reroute,” Mara said. “For my class.”
Anita nodded toward a corkboard crowded with index cards. “We buy flour in bulk together. It helps.” The ledger by the espresso machine listed credits and debits in different hands. The numbers were small. The meaning was large.
Back home, Mara labeled a jar: Bread for Books. Coins and a few crumpled bills went in. She added a sleeve to her binder: Co-op Receipts. Her thumb hovered over the chain-store app. She deleted it for the night. She could always download it again.
Finding Your Role
Economic resistance does not belong only to activists or entrepreneurs. It belongs to anyone who can make a small change and sustain it. Roles are capacities, not titles.
The Rerouter. Swap one recurring purchase to a local, cooperative, or community-owned option.
The Convenor. Organize a small bulk buy, rideshare, tool swap, or childcare exchange.
The Steward. Keep a simple, transparent jar or mini-fund for a shared need.
The Maker. Offer repair, food, art, or tech help locally and price with dignity.
The Advocate. Ask for fair fees and access at school boards, libraries, and housing meetings.
Start where you can stay. Your resistance ecosystem grows from the web of people and places you already know—and the ones you’ll meet along the way. Even one reroute, kept week after week, becomes a story of its own.
Mara’s roles: She is a Rerouter and a Convenor. Paper and flour shift to the mill, the print shop, and the bakery. Sunday, she will go to the bulk buy meeting with two colleagues and a neighbor—if her check clears. If she can bear the eye-rolls.
Friction, Cost, and Consent
Shifts create friction. People may call it disloyal or impractical. Price is real. Time is real. Dignity is real.
In the staff lounge, a co-teacher said, “You know you can get that for half online.” Another chimed in, “Must be nice to afford principles.” Mara felt heat rise. She wanted to say she couldn’t afford them either—that she wrote the new prices in her binder because she needed to see the difference in ink. Instead, she breathed. “I’m trying one thing,” she said. “I’ll see if I can keep it.”
Economic resistance is not economic purity. No one fully opts out. We move what we can, while we can—strategically, sustainably, together.
Tools You Can Carry
One-Line Reroute (Low Risk)
Pick one recurring spend this week and move it closer to home: coffee beans, flour, laundry soap, transit card recharge.
Objective: Replace a small extractive habit with a reciprocal one.
Ethical Note: Price is real. Seek sliding scales, discount days, EBT-friendly vendors, community credit.
Mara swaps flour and classroom paper. She writes both prices in her binder. If the gap isn’t workable next month, she’ll pivot to a bulk-buy share or sliding-scale day instead of abandoning the shift entirely.
Micro Mutual Aid Pantry (Moderate)
Set up a discreet “take what you need, leave what you can” shelf in a trusted space: teacher lounge, apartment lobby, church hall, library corner.
Objective: Reduce acute scarcity with no paperwork, minimal friction.
Ethical Note: Protect privacy and consent. Rotate perishables safely. No photos of people or items without permission.
At the library, the clerk nods toward a quiet shelf. “If you need it, it’s yours,” she says. “If you can spare it, thank you.” Mara tucks two notebooks beside a row of canned beans and leaves.
Five-Percent Map (Low/Moderate)
Sketch three flows—money, time, skill. Circle where five percent could move closer to home.
Objective: Turn values into budgets.
Ethical Note: No shame math. Count caregiving, rides, and repairs as real contributions.
How to Practice Economic Resistance
Low risk, minimal time
Keep a one-week receipt diary; circle three items to reroute locally.
Visit a repair night or library of things before buying new.
Switch one account to a credit union or add a low-cost community phone plan.
Moderate commitment
Start a block-level bulk-buy spreadsheet for staples.
Create a wage-transparency circle with trusted peers.
Host a neighborhood skill swap: repairs for rides; tutoring for meals.
Higher commitment / collective effort
Launch a small buyer’s club or school-supply co-op.
Support a community land trust or food-co-op membership drive.
Organize a fair-fee policy request at the school board (focus on lunch debt, activity fees).
Did you notice? Economic resistance doesn’t require complete disengagement; it asks for strategic shifts away from mechanisms of control and toward structures that empower communities.
Risk & Reflection
Some vendors—or supervisors—may read rerouting as disloyal. Protect your employment and relationships. Frame your choices as positive commitments rather than public condemnations tied to your workplace.
Privacy and dignity matter. Mutual-aid spaces should never demand data to receive help. Keep any tracking minimal and internal. Never post photos without consent.
Beware generosity theater. One grand drive burns people out. Small, steady, weekly wins build real resilience.
Mara chose cash envelopes and quiet drops at the library pantry. No selfies. No metrics. Enough light to see the next step.
Daily Reflections & Pivots
Daily Reflection: With each purchase today, ask, Whom does this keep alive? If the answer feels distant, pause and look for one option that brings the benefit closer to home.
Weekly Pivot: Map three flows in your life—money, time, skill. Where do they go now? Where could five percent be rerouted toward neighbors, students, or shared spaces?
These small practices strengthen attention and alignment. They also reveal leverage you control and keep your efforts sustainable. Consider a simple goal for one concrete shift—e.g., moving checking/savings to a credit union—so obstacles don’t derail you.
Bread & Meaning
Sunday evening, Mara labeled three envelopes: Books, Bread, Bus Pass. She tucked five dollars into each. Her Recipes for Freedom binder held a co-op receipt, a meeting note, and three new names from the sign-up sheet.
She almost didn’t go. Rain tapped the window. The emails kept stacking. Her phone buzzed—Coming?—from a colleague who rarely asked for anything.
She went.
In the church basement, a whiteboard listed flour, beans, paper, bus tokens, diapers. The circle argued gently about brands and limits and how to keep it fair. Someone brought oranges. Someone else brought a ledger with columns wider than they needed to be. They laughed at how official it looked.
On Monday, Mara posted a small sticky note on the staff bulletin board: Supply Swap. She taped a second envelope inside her cabinet: Unexpected Lunch.
The numbers were small. The meaning was large.
Next Wednesday: Community Resistance — Rebuilding Trust in an Age of Division.
Subscribe now to get part 3 delivered to your inbox.
You are the signal.
Keep your torchlight burning.
Explore more from Torch & Tinder Press
📣 Signal Dispatch — Signals from the field
🔧 Torchlight Praxis — Tools you can carry (you’re here)
🔥 Embers — Warmth for the long winter
Stay connected: Instagram · Bluesky · Facebook
One-Time Support & community editions: Ko-fi
Support the work:
Subscribe free on Substack to receive every post.
Become a Paid Subscriber ($8/month or $80/year) to help fund print releases and join Refuge Bonne Foi.
Join as a Torchbearer ($240/year) for early access to Core Collections and digital issues.
Group discounts: 20% per seat (min. 3).
Prefer a one-time gift? Support us on Ko-fi.
Source Acknowledgements
This essay draws from our field guide What Are We Supposed to Do? Practicing Cultural Resistance (Community Edition), and continues the narrative thread from Part One of Torchlight Praxis (Narrative Resistance — Defending Truth and Memory). For the broader framework of the Four Domains and the “signal” ethos, see: Cultural resistance as an interlocking ecosystem; “You are the signal”; and our economic-resistance playbook for strategic shifts.