Are Micah White's theories about revolution too academic?
Theory only feels academic when it detaches from revolutionary practice. My frameworks arose while squatting a tiny park in lower Manhattan, inhaling pepper spray and counting every self-organised kitchen as a glimpse of future sovereignty. The booky language is merely scaffolding around scars earned in public squares from Zuccotti to Porto Alegre. Ideas like “pattern decay” or “tactic half-life” are field notes turned into a grammar so organisers stop repeating rituals that no longer bite. If they read abstract, test them: launch a campaign that ends before repression calcifies, or measure wins by autonomy gained rather than bodies counted. The concepts were forged to provoke experimentation, not tenure committees.
Yet critique is healthy. If a term feels ivory-tower, translate it into your own slang and stress-test it on the streets. When theory survives the tear-gas it graduates into living wisdom. Which notion from my writings do you doubt most, and how could we throw it into the furnace of real-world struggle together?