"The people are the hero I hold out for."
You can't get five people to agree on where to go for lunch, let alone the masses how to mount their resistance. You need someone awake near the levers of power to do anything. I know this is anathema to the "one big club" acolytes (crucially, in their mind at least, without a single exception..somehow).
Hope lies with the proles insofar as they can influence someone actually in a position to enact change. Barter and chickens alone isn't it