Secondary Generalist
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Secondary Generalist is a microblog maintained by me, Mike Russell. I am a researcher and graduate student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA.

Secondary Generalist is my place for thoughts that are too large for Twitter and too serious for Facebook. This page where I store links for myself, talk about education, and cultivate ideas that may one day become publications. Also, there are occasional posts about cycling, multisport, or Cardinals baseball.
Adbusters on November 15: The last four months have been hard fought, inspiring and delightfully revolutionary. We brought tents, hunkered down, held our assemblies, and lobbed a meme-bomb that continues to explode the world’s imagination. Many of us have never felt so alive. We have fertilized the future with our revolutionary spirit … and a thousand flowers will surely bloom in the coming Spring. But as winter approaches an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn’t just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly. What shall we do to keep the magic alive? Here are a couple of emerging ideas: STRATEGY #1: We summon our strength, grit our teeth and hang in there through winter … heroically we sleep in the snow … we impress the world with our determination and guts … and when the cops come, we put our bodies on the line and resist them nonviolently with everything we’ve got. STRATEGY #2: We declare “victory” and throw a party … a festival … a potlatch … a jubilee … a grand gesture to celebrate, commemorate, rejoice in how far we’ve come, the comrades we’ve made, the glorious days ahead. Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement’s three month anniversary on December 17, in every #OCCUPY in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry. We dance like we’ve never danced before and invite the world to join us. Then we clean up, scale back and most of us go indoors while the die-hards hold the camps. We use the winter to brainstorm, network, build momentum so that we may emerge rejuvenated with fresh tactics, philosophies, and a myriad projects ready to rumble next Spring. Hours after that went out, Bloomberg sent the NYPD to clear the Zuccotti Park. Adbusters last night: Hey jammers, dreamers, believers, Here is a testimony from the streets of New York: Lost my stuff, including power cord for my laptop, in the raid, something or someone cleared out my bank account, and it’s raining. I could just write a country song. I’ll tell you this: the resolve is still here. People I talk to are a healthy mixture of rage, comedy, resolve, and excitement. Also exhaustion. Maybe the raid was the best thing that could happen? I worry about the inevitable suffering that will occur in the cold now, and how it will be used to clear any encampment again. But there must be something like a people’s library and kitchen. A physical heart. More soon. Must find money and charge my phone. Winning at last, winning at last, thank God Almighty, we are winning at last… Our movement is living through an existential, make-or-break moment. This is a tactical way of looking at it: When Tunisia rose up, Ben Ali scoffed … when young people occupied Tahrir Square, Mubarak resorted to paternalism and then mob violence … in Syria, Assad’s troops fire daily into the crowds. And on Tuesday, a military style assault on Zuccotti Park – news blackouts, tear gas, closed airspace, an LRAD “sound cannon” – was carried out in the dead of night to take out our movement’s spiritual home. For many weeks we had a kind of magic going for us … we held the high ground … we stuck doggedly to our Gandhian ways and blindsided the cynical world with our optimism, our camaraderie, our nonviolence, our determination to forge a different kind of future. With nothing more than twinkling fingers, mic checks, mutual respect, and hope for the future, we sparked a global democracy moment the likes of which the world had not seen since 1968. But New York’s billionaire Mayor decided to snuff us out. We wanted a Tahrir Moment, an American Spring, and he attacked us in the middle of the night while we slept. These kinds of attacks on peaceful protestors did not work in Tunisia, not in Egypt, they are not working in Syria right now, and – wake up Bloomberg & Co! – they are not going to work in America either. This assault has stiffened our resolve. Now begins the second, visceral, canny, militant phase of our nonviolent march to real democracy. We regroup, lick our wounds and begin our counterattack as early as tomorrow. We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that’ll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive. The bottom line is this … you cannot attack your young and get away with it! Good job, Bloomberg. They were getting ready to go home. Now popularity is back up, more people than ever are marching, and the OWS crowd is vowing to stay. When has violent response to non-violent protest ever worked out well? You sure showed them! I have many, many concerns and complaints about #Occupy. I just don’t think they’re serious people; I think they’re mostly dumb kids trying to capture some Woodstock meets Saul Alinsky moment that is rooted in my generations dysfunctional habit of constantly trying to mimic the baby boomers. But so what? Doesn’t a OWS protester have the right to be a hipster dofus without a cop smashing their face into the ground? Isn’t that, like, half the point of America?

Adbusters on November 15:

The last four months have been hard fought, inspiring and delightfully revolutionary. We brought tents, hunkered down, held our assemblies, and lobbed a meme-bomb that continues to explode the world’s imagination. Many of us have never felt so alive. We have fertilized the future with our revolutionary spirit … and a thousand flowers will surely bloom in the coming Spring.

But as winter approaches an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn’t just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly. What shall we do to keep the magic alive?

Here are a couple of emerging ideas:

STRATEGY #1: We summon our strength, grit our teeth and hang in there through winter … heroically we sleep in the snow … we impress the world with our determination and guts … and when the cops come, we put our bodies on the line and resist them nonviolently with everything we’ve got.

STRATEGY #2: We declare “victory” and throw a party … a festival … a potlatch … a jubilee … a grand gesture to celebrate, commemorate, rejoice in how far we’ve come, the comrades we’ve made, the glorious days ahead. Imagine, on a Saturday yet to be announced, perhaps our movement’s three month anniversary on December 17, in every #OCCUPY in the world, we reclaim the streets for a weekend of triumphant hilarity and joyous revelry.

We dance like we’ve never danced before and invite the world to join us.

Then we clean up, scale back and most of us go indoors while the die-hards hold the camps. We use the winter to brainstorm, network, build momentum so that we may emerge rejuvenated with fresh tactics, philosophies, and a myriad projects ready to rumble next Spring.

Hours after that went out, Bloomberg sent the NYPD to clear the Zuccotti Park.

Adbusters last night:

Hey jammers, dreamers, believers,

Here is a testimony from the streets of New York:

Lost my stuff, including power cord for my laptop, in the raid, something or someone cleared out my bank account, and it’s raining. I could just write a country song. I’ll tell you this: the resolve is still here. People I talk to are a healthy mixture of rage, comedy, resolve, and excitement. Also exhaustion. Maybe the raid was the best thing that could happen? I worry about the inevitable suffering that will occur in the cold now, and how it will be used to clear any encampment again. But there must be something like a people’s library and kitchen. A physical heart. More soon. Must find money and charge my phone. Winning at last, winning at last, thank God Almighty, we are winning at last…

Our movement is living through an existential, make-or-break moment.

This is a tactical way of looking at it:

When Tunisia rose up, Ben Ali scoffed … when young people occupied Tahrir Square, Mubarak resorted to paternalism and then mob violence … in Syria, Assad’s troops fire daily into the crowds. And on Tuesday, a military style assault on Zuccotti Park – news blackouts, tear gas, closed airspace, an LRAD “sound cannon” – was carried out in the dead of night to take out our movement’s spiritual home.

For many weeks we had a kind of magic going for us … we held the high ground … we stuck doggedly to our Gandhian ways and blindsided the cynical world with our optimism, our camaraderie, our nonviolence, our determination to forge a different kind of future. With nothing more than twinkling fingers, mic checks, mutual respect, and hope for the future, we sparked a global democracy moment the likes of which the world had not seen since 1968.

But New York’s billionaire Mayor decided to snuff us out. We wanted a Tahrir Moment, an American Spring, and he attacked us in the middle of the night while we slept. These kinds of attacks on peaceful protestors did not work in Tunisia, not in Egypt, they are not working in Syria right now, and – wake up Bloomberg & Co! – they are not going to work in America either.

This assault has stiffened our resolve. Now begins the second, visceral, canny, militant phase of our nonviolent march to real democracy. We regroup, lick our wounds and begin our counterattack as early as tomorrow.

We will turn this winter into a training ground for precision disruptions – flashmobs, stink bombs, edgy theatrics – against the megacorps and the unrepentant 1%, a festival of resistance in the snow with, or without, an encampment that’ll lay the tactical foundation for our Spring Offensive.

The bottom line is this … you cannot attack your young and get away with it!

Good job, Bloomberg. They were getting ready to go home. Now popularity is back up, more people than ever are marching, and the OWS crowd is vowing to stay. When has violent response to non-violent protest ever worked out well? You sure showed them!

I have many, many concerns and complaints about #Occupy. I just don’t think they’re serious people; I think they’re mostly dumb kids trying to capture some Woodstock meets Saul Alinsky moment that is rooted in my generations dysfunctional habit of constantly trying to mimic the baby boomers.

But so what? Doesn’t a OWS protester have the right to be a hipster dofus without a cop smashing their face into the ground? Isn’t that, like, half the point of America?

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