While mainstream media pushes narratives of scarcity and inevitability, frontline communities practicing “Solidarity Economics” are show us how “resist and build” is not just a slogan but a proven path to collective power and a radical, livable future.
One of the most powerful roles of narrative is its ability to challenge the dominant stories that uphold existing systems. Narratives are strategic tools that shape culture and collective sense-making. Narratives are the stories we tell about who we are, what we deserve, and what kind of future is possible. As the Radical Communicators Network explains, drawing on Rashad Robinson’s framing, “narrative power frames the ability to shift the norms and rules our society lives by,” making room for new possibilities and shared visions of justice.
Today, mainstream narratives, pushed through corporately owned and rapidly consolidating media empires, overwhelmingly serve the interests of corporations, billionaires, and political elites — reinforcing structures that produce displacement, austerity, and even genocide. But these dominant stories are not the only ones being told. Across the world, communities are rising up: defending neighborhoods against ICE raids, organizing mass protests across borders, and striking against exploitative labor conditions. These acts of resistance show us that people on the frontlines are taking action and pushing back against narratives that were built to keep us docile.
Still, resistance alone is not enough. Alongside it, we must make room for radical imagination, the creative force that allows us to envision a world beyond the current crisis. We often say that another world is possible, but in order to believe it, we must first be able to see it.
About Solidarity Economy
The actions of people building community wealth and power — or what is known as the Solidarity Economy — and the subsequent narratives which come out of this practice contest the supposed inevitability of capitalism. Solidarity Economy is a vision where all the things that a community needs are controlled and governed by everyday people: the houses we live in, the parks we play at, the food we eat, or the places where we work. Solidarity Economy stories show us how communities are already practicing democracy at work, community-controlled housing, food sovereignty, mutual aid, and more. These narratives don’t just resist harmful systems: they expand imagination and strategy, aligning our movements around a vision of collective power and possibility.
The principles of the Solidarity Economy can help challenge the mainstream, and build narrative power in order to shift what is understood as common sense. Solidarity Economy is rooted in participatory democracy, cooperation, solidarity, and respect for the earth. Grown out of movements in Latin America and the Global South, Solidarity Economies honor the labor and thought of Black, Indigenous, and poor people who have always practiced economic cooperation to survive, resist, and thrive despite the violence of racial capitalism.
Countering dominant narratives with the Solidarity Economy
Some of the following Solidarity Economy narrative framings have existed for years, put in practice by many organizers and communicators and have helped intervene in the battle of ideas:
Another world is possible: The neoliberal slogan “There Is No Alternative” (popularized by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) insists that capitalism is the only viable economic system. The rallying cry “Another World is Possible” emerged from the alter-globalization movement and the World Social Forum to disrupt this notion and remind us that alternatives already exist in the movements of our past and present. This echoes the Zapatistas’ vision of un mundo donde quepan otros mundos (“a world where many worlds fit” ), a world that emphasises the dignity of others, autonomy, common struggle, belonging, and respect for diverse ways of living and caring.
Deep, everyday democracy: Under capitalism and colonial rule, “democracy” is reduced to periodic elections that leave most decisions in the hands of elites. Solidarity Economies counter this with the principle that everyday people have the knowledge and capacity to govern our lives directly. As Movement Generation reminds us, “If we’re not prepared to govern, we’re not prepared to win.” From worker-owned cooperatives, to participatory budgeting, to transformative justice practices, Solidarity Economy narratives make visible a democracy that extends beyond elections to every aspect of our everyday life: workplaces, housing, land, and community.
There is more than enough: Capitalism’s logic of scarcity tells us there isn’t enough for everyone, justifying hoarding by corporations and the wealthy. But the reality is different: while children in Gaza go hungry, communities face eviction, and essential workers struggle to survive, the world produces more than enough to meet everyone’s needs. The problem isn’t scarcity, it’s who controls resources and how they are distributed. The Solidarity Economy challenges this with abundance thinking: land, food, and labor can sustain all if shared collectively and governed collectively. Narratives of cooperation, reparations, and mutual aid push back against the myth of scarcity, showing that collective flourishing is possible when we reorganize priorities around people and the planet, not profit.
Remembering our way forward: The “new economy” isn’t new. Black, Indigenous, and other communities of the Global South have practiced cooperative economics for centuries, often criminalized or erased by racial capitalism. As the Creative Wildfire Manifesto puts it, “we carefully and lovingly hold the threads of these histories in our present work as we repair relations and remember our way forward.” This connects with Art.coop’s “Remember the Future” framing, a podcast that emphasizes honoring ancestral practices while imagining and building the art economies we want for generations to come.
We fight, and we build: By using a “Resist and Build” framework, organizers can link base-building resistance with tangible justice economic projects. Resistance becomes more than a defensive stance: it becomes a vehicle to create the systems, resources, and relationships our communities need.
An economy of death vs an economy of life: The work of the Solidarity Economy is life-sustaining and offers a compelling vision for system-level liberation. This directly opposes the economy of death we have now: the privatization of resources, over-extraction of the Earth’s resources, mass militarization, precarious housing, and so on. In the Solidarity Economy all our basic needs — a fair wage, affordable housing, access to healthy foods, free healthcare, etc. — are met so that we can all thrive.
Key narratives and slogans act as strategic tools for consciousness-building and organizing: “Fire the Bosses” and “Think Outside the Boss” emphasize that workers have the skills and know-how to run their businesses collectively, while “Make Landlords and Evictions Obsolete” shows how collective ownership through tenant unions, cooperatives, and land trusts can create real security for communities.
Solidarity Economy principles that guide our narrative work
Narratives don’t exist in a vacuum. They carry people, communities, stories, legacies, and the wisdom of those who resisted and survived, making today’s labor possible. Solidarity Economy principles guide us to center those most affected, honor collective knowledge, and shape our narrative work around these lived experiences.
- Frontline leadership: Those most affected by harm should not only be centered in our movement efforts, but also have the innate knowledge to self-determine the solutions they want and need to see for the betterment of their livelihoods and communities. If we can uplift the stories, experiences, and ideas of those on the frontline, directly from their own voices and in their own unique tones and languages, our messages and narratives will resonate more deeply with the masses we are trying to reach.
- Responsive and participatory governance. Solidarity Economies are built on collective decision-making, transparency, and community ownership. If we uplift messaging that invites participation and values everyday people as decision-makers, we’re helping grow democratic culture and build trust across movements.
- Rooted in history and culture: The Solidarity Economy isn’t a new concept. It comes from a deep ancestral and cultural lineage that transcends borders. If we honor the roots of the Solidarity Economy and our resistance movements in our messaging and narrative work, we can show that we have won in the past, and we can and will win again.
- Culture of reparations and restoration: We can’t build the new without addressing and rectifying the centuries of harm caused by settler colonialism and racial capitalism. If we center repair in our narrative and messaging work, we can better meet people where they are at, addressing their immediate needs, serving as a bridge to the new worlds we can create together.
- Adaptable to crisis: In a time of deep polycrisis, our messaging and narrative work will fall flat if we don’t address the current conditions and realities of everyday people first. If the messaging and narrative work of our efforts remain adaptable to crisis and connected to current events, we can link our work to any issue, inspiring hope for real possible alternatives that can better serve us all.
How can Solidarity Economy stories spark radical optimism?
For the last two years, the Center for Economic Democracy — in collaboration with a cohort of grassroots communicators, artists, organizers and film makers — have been developing a documentary project, titled A Collective Future, to highlight Boston’s Solidarity Economy victories. The film centers three “resist and build” stories, exploring campaigns that resulted in community ownership and shared decision-making power across the realms of housing, labor, and budget organizing. Each is told directly by the Boston organizers who share the same powerful practice: when the current economic system threatened their basic needs, they strategically leveraged their organizing experiences, combined with people power, to fight for and win community control over vital economic resources.
Yvette, a housing organizer who got a “no-fault” eviction notice in 2022, not only fought against her landlord to stay, but she also worked to build long-term stability. Partnering with the Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust, she and her neighbors purchased their building, locking in lifelong affordable rents for generations to come.
Or look at May, a trans union organizer facing the closure of her café in Cambridge. Instead of watching the doors close, she and her coworkers pooled their labor and resources to form Circus Cooperative Café, a worker-owned space where the people who do the work call the shots and share the profits.
And then there’s Khalil, a campaign organizer who turned budget battles into tools for liberation with the Youth Justice and Power Union. By redirecting public funds from policing to youth jobs, community programs, and participatory budgeting, he is showing that fighting the system can build life.
These stories are snapshots of the “Resist & Build” approach in action. In telling these stories together, the project aims to inspire movement groups to tie in Solidarity Economy work into their existing resistance efforts and to grow solidarity across sectors, towards a better and brighter future beyond capitalism.
In a similar vein, another project aiming to inspire radical optimism comes from Creative Wildfire, a cultural organizing strategy led by Climate Justice Alliance, Movement Generation, New Economy Coalition and Art.Coop. The 5 part “Resist and Build” series combines examples of current organizing with historical examples and information to serve as an educational tool to those who want to build a new world, but don’t know where to start. In the form of a digital zine, the project shows inspirational examples of when our communities have taken to the streets to resist and then organized for the long-term to build power and truly regenerative economies. In both of these examples, we see how resistance can feed the building of community-controlled systems, and how narrative can amplify possibility.
As communicators, it’s our job to weave concepts together, uplift unheard and excluded voices, cut through the noise, and make calls that incite action. We know that narrative change takes time: it requires infrastructure, sustained energy, and a persistence that matches the forces we’re up against. The corporate media machine has spent decades normalizing extraction and violence. Undoing that and replacing it with solidarity, justice, and radical optimism takes consistent organizing, collaboration, and demonstration of our communications. The work ahead is immense, but every story told, every narrative contested, every refusal to bow to fascists and the beautiful solutions that we uplift is adding to this other world we are building.
