of certain actions on prisoners of ordinary firmness, in the abstract, is required. Our conclusion in Thaddeus-X that physical threats and a transfer to base level of segregation would be sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness from engaging in protected conduct, for example, was not based upon any independent testimony in the record predicting how an average prisoner would react to these actions. 175 F.3d at 398. This was a conclusion that could be drawn simply from the facts concerning the nature of the threats and the conditions of confinement on the base level. The plaintiffs evidentiary burden is merely to establish the factual basis for his claim that the retaliatory acts amounted to more than a de minimis injury. Accord Dawes v. Walker, 239 F.3d 489, 493 (2d Cir.2001) (<HOLDING>). Once this threshold has been passed, it is up
holding that the defendant did not show prejudice to support ineffective assistance of counsel because any evidentiary error was harmless holding that the record contained insufficient evidence that increasing the prisoners work load would chill a prisoner of ordinary firmness from using the prison grievance process holding that burden is on government to show that error in failure to provide notice is harmless holding that namecalling without any appreciable injury did not violate an inmates constitutional rights holding that prisoners evidentiary burden under ordinary firmness standard was to show that guards references to him as an informant or rat actually risked inciting other inmates against the plaintiff and was not merely harmless namecalling