Author Archives: Sean Swain

Most Stalwart Anarchist Prisoner 2013

We are increasingly doing a good job at supporting self identified anarchist prisoners. Action in the street means bodies and jails and part of the reason why our energy is low after Occupy in 2011 is because of how many of our people either suffered at the tender mercies of the state or had to bail out others who were. But all of these were short timers.

A stalwart anarchist prisoner is one who continues the fight on the inside. This may not look Berkman’s prison journals or Daniel McGowan taking heat for having an opinion but it will probably look like being a big inconvenience to the bureaucracy of the establishment that you inhabit and looking good while doing it.

While we have an increasing number of long-term anarchist prisoners entering the system including the depressing a terrifying case in Cleveland Four who will probably remain inside for the rest of their natural lives there stay is just beginning. Sean Swain on the other hand, was the winner of our award for most stalwart prisoner and already been inside for 20 years. He is associated with the prison group the Army of the 12 monkeys [editor’s note- Sean denies any involvement with A12M, @news (the original authors of this piece) only associates him with them because the ODRC has (erroneously) convicted him of infractions relating to A12M] and is running for governor of Ohio in 2014 as an anarchist.

Here is his platform

What is an anarchist engagement? I ask because I’m running for Ohio Governor in 2014 as a write in candidate from Ohio’s super-duper-uber-mega ultramax facility.

Yeah, I know.Your thinking, ‘Running for office is not anarchist-it’s reformist at best’ and thinking ‘A prisoner getting elected?’ And you likely conclude, this is all just further evidence-as if we need more-that Sean Swain is a wing nut. I would say that this is further proof that I’m brilliant and completely misunderstood- thats my story and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve been told that by running for Governor, I’m promoting the idea that reformist ballots are the answer-registering to vote, voting and all the hierarchical implications that that entails. I’ve been told that we need revolution, not diversions into electoral wheel-spinning,and that I’m doing a disservice promoting the idea that elections can be a solution.

Okay, now consider:

It’s not my goal to become Ohio Governor so that I can maintain the state. I’m openly and admittedly an anarchist and I’M running as an anarchist. I’m promising that, if elected I would tear down the state and establish the Ohio Autonomous Zone.

In fact, I have a program already planned out. It’s on my website. My first day in office, I would empty Ohio’s prisons. I would de-commission the National Guard and I would give the weapons to the Native American tribes I would be inviting back.

According to the Treaty of Greenville, they still own this territory. So it’s not exactly reparations for the genocide they experienced, but I’D give them the land back and a bunch of rifles and tanks and Apache attack helicopters in order to defend it.

With no budget signed-ever- no cops would get paid so there woulds be nobody standing between us chasing the banksters and crapitalists out of here with torches and pitchforks-like they have deserved for centuries.We could then export revolution from the Ohio Autonomous Zone.

Thats my plan. And to get elected, I propose that Anarchists and malcontents from all over the country converge on Ohio, squat here, establish residency, register to vote, and get me elected. By my math, if just a million people migrate to Ohio and vote for me, I’d win the election and implement my plan.
To me, that’s clearly an anarchist outcome-destruction of the State, elimination of the system of crapital self-rule. But fellow anarchists tell me this is not an anarchist engagement because the means of achieving the end (voting) are “reformist.”

So…it’s only revolutionary if you wear a ski mask while you do it? In other words, the revolutionary outcome is irrelevant; what matters is if you can look cool while doing it …and if you have to impersonate reformists in order to accomplish your goal, in order to infiltrate and topple the hierarchy, then it is better to instead sit around watching riot porn while the system grinds on and on? Does that sound right?

With what I propose, I’m not asking you to embrace electoral politics or recognize the legitimacy of the state. Elections and the State are bullshit. I’m asking you to recognize a glitch permanent joyride. I’m not asking you to install me in office. I’m asking you to load me into the chamber and fire me into the brain pan of the state.

Question: do the “ends” justify the “means,”does an engagement that leads to an anarchist outcome makes that engagement anarchist even if it would otherwise be seen as reformist? I say, Fuck,yes. And it’s a stupid question! If toppling the State required me to stand in toilet water firing Roman candles out of my ass and playing the Star Spangled Banner through a Kazoo, I would happily do it. If it means posing as a deluded hierarch and pulling a lever on an election machine I would do that too.

It’s not the tactics that make it anarchist. It’s the end result. I’m Sean Swain, anarchist prisoner and candidate for Ohio Governor in 2014 from Ohio supermax facility and I approve this message.

The Right To Rule

Transcript of Radio Essay originally appearing on The Final Straw.

Where does the “right to rule” come from?

I look at this vast, complex system created by poor deluded hierarchs and I see that we have those who rule-the ones Occupy called the 1%; and then there are the rest of us, the stone draggers, the ones who are ruled.
It makes me wonder where the “right to rule” comes from? Certainly such a thing has to exist. Right? What I mean is, those who rule us; kings and presidents and the corporate executives who write all their policies, lawmakers judges and cops. They give the orders, and we obey.
Where does it come from? Are they born with it? Are their two kinds of babies that come into the world, one kind that has the right, not only to rule themselves, but to rule others; and another kind far more numerous, thats born without even the right to rule themselves?
I wonder how we tell it apart, this special specie oh human who has the right to rule. Perhaps its shoe size or eye color or maybe we have to analyze the shapes of our craniums. Could be astrology. It’s certainly not brains and ability. Look at George Dubya, Sara Palin, ODRC Director Gary Mohr who sent me to the supermax facility to silence me.
These aren’t exactly exceptional specimens.But they assume ‘the right to rule.’
This right to rule has to come from somewhere , or it doesn’t exist,and if it doesn’t exist, then no human being has any right to be obeyed, has any right to order and compel the obedience of any other human being.If the right to rule doesn’t come from somewhere, if it doesn’t exist, then there is only one specie of human, not true, and that means we are all created equal-just like that hypocrite slave owner Thomas Jefferson said.
And if this right to rule at the very foundation of hierarchy is only a myth, only as real as magical beans and faerie dust, then poor deluded hierarchs are imposing a 6,000 year old fraud. Their whole system is a lie. No one has the right to rule.
That means we have a vast system designed to keep all of us under control while a small group of privileged elite exploit all of us, making us do the sweating and bleeding and dying, while they laugh at us behind our backs.They sell us on the myth of the right to rule….we’re enslaved to something no more real than magical beans and faerie dust.
Poor deluded hierarchs might say that the right to rule comes from the consent of the governed, that we vote and give permission to our rulers to rule us. Those who assume the right to rule certainly tell us that. They create billion dollar systems called schools where we are mandated to go,where we are told over and over that we give permission to our rulers to rule us, and that we are the source of the right to rule.
It takes twelve years of telling us that lie over and over again before we’re incapable of questioning it.
But this “consent of the governed ”argument that voters are the source of a rulers right to rule doesn’t really explain anything. It just transfers the problem. Now instead of asking what gives the ruler the right to rule,we have to ask what gives that voter the right to rule by proxy.What gives those voters the right to impose their ruler on others, while others lack even the right to rule themselves?
What gives anyone the right to rule, even by proxy, through a choice of ruler designee,and take from you and me even our rights to rule ourselves.Where does it come from, this right to rule, that voters imagine they have?
If it doesn’t originate from anywhere,when we are back to the right to rule being a myth.Magical beans and faerie dust. A 6,000 year old swindle that robs us of our freedom, our right to rule ourselves, while a select few benefit from our collective enslavement…to a provable lie at the very heart of hierarchy.
I say it’s a provable fact the right to rule does not exist. That means noone has the right to give orders to anyone else.That means there is no such thing as legitimate authority-not presidents, not law makers, not judges or cops. We’re all captives of a mass delusion, programmed to accept it, forcibly indoctrinated to internalize a pathology built on a lie–suffering a mass mental illness called hierarchy. And once you see the right to rule is a myth, you can never go back to your assigned seats.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s supermax facility, if your listening,you are the resistance!

Swivilization, Part 1

Transcript of Radio Essay originally appearing on The Final Straw.

To explain why I am against swivilization, I have to give you a history of the world in five minutes. If it’s ok with you, I’m probably gonna just hit the highlights. Stay with me.
For four million years humans were semi-nomadic and lived in tribes, like bees live in hives and wolves live in packs.They did not have a lot of possessions. People who migrate frequently do not want to lug 75 pairs of shoes. They did not have hierarchies.If a tribe developed a coercive authority, it already jumped the shark because compulsion degrades the social bonds of interdependence that make semi-nomadic hunter gathering successful so only failed hunter gathers would resort to hierarchy. Also we do not find caches of weapons like we always find everywhere hierarchy arises.
Humans were anarchists for four million years. And generally happy. Unhappy people don’t continue doing what makes them unhappy for four million years. Somebody would have said, “Hey lets not do this.” To abandon tribes would make as much sense as bees abandoning hives or wolves abandoning packs.
There came a group of idiots who settled in one place and grew crops, to control the future by controlling their food. They’d never starve again.They grew extra food.They grew extra food, but food availability determines population size,so by the time they harvested extra food it wasn’t extra anymore and their population grew. So they expanded the farm, regimented the natural world and turned it into resources.They took more land, planted more food, experienced population growth and took more land.You see where that’s going.
Colonization. It started right after we settled and grew crops.
Food surpluses needed management, so a social engineer with a big big brain took over. Stratification, Hierarchy, Topdown authority.Right after we settled and grew crops.
To keep people working, the social engineer with a big,big brain locked up the food. Hungry people keep working. So,the social engineer needed guards.Standing military, guards needed weapons,weapon smith specialization Right after we settled and grew.
When the fascist farm with it’s hierarchy, social engineer with a big,big brain and a standing military who locked up the food- and everyone else slaving away in the fields under threat of starvation-expanded into areas occupied by tribal people, the social engineer with a big, big brain said “We are civilized and you’re savages, get the hell out of the way.”
Genocide.Right after we settled and grew crops.Survivors became slaves in the field.More food equals more people and equals a need for more land to grow more food,You see where that is going.

These idiots didn’t solve starvation as they intended; they created an engine for runaway population growth.They weren’t civilized, they were swivelized- they set out to do one thing and got all spun backwards.
After they conquered several tribes they had to develop a universal system for maintaining order. Laws Courts Punishments: Right after we settled and grew crops.Became swivelized.
All the components but one were in place and swivelization kept expanding, colonizing, exterminating, forcibly assimilating everyone in it’s path, obliterating every tribal culture it encountered .After just one generation of the social engineer with the big,big brain who developed this slave plantation dystopia put the last component for swivelzation in a place where he declared: “it has always been this way” And that lie still gets told today when college courses teach you nothing happened until about six to eight thousand years ago, because your swivilized historians share the same delusion as that social engineer with the big,big brain.
Swivelization is distinguished by war and genocide, overpopulation, soil erosion, poverty, economic disparity, authoritarianism, political instability,mass migration, famine,depletion of drinkable, mass destruction of eco-systems, polution, toxification, crime, jails, prisons,proliferation of social deviance, rape culture, predation of children, school shootings, depression, mental illness, property crime, alcoholism,drug abuse, famine, plagues, ghettoes, polgroms, recessions , human rights atrocities, weapons of mass destruction, ozone depletion, global warming, unemployment, suicide, mass extinctions, bankers terrorism,Ponzi schemes, road rage, taxes, dictators, racism,homophobia,homelessness,inflation, and the NSA reading your e-mails
In 1492 the known world got so crowded a group of ass clowns risked falling off the planet and came to a land where they found tribal people and said WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Before this discovery could make them question the lie passed down from the social engineer with the big,big brain(that it has always been this way)Columbus killed everybody and made kidnapped Africans build a McDonalds on the burial site, then killed them too.
Swivelization is so intolerable we’re all on Prozac or are kids are on Ritalin, we self medicate with pot just to survive the day and still every once in a while someone snaps and shoots a school full of kids.So when a prisoner with a phone and a 165iq abandon mass production, of food live in yurts and hunt the buffalo like Dances with Wolves, some glassy eyed apologist for swivelization with PSTD living in a van down by the river says “ What?And give up all of this?

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

Dear Ukrainian People,

I want to thank you for your inspirational resistance to tyranny. Here in the United States, we made a show of resistance a while back, but in the face of police violence we surrendered and went back to our assigned seats; we lacked the courage, drive and determination of Ukrainians. Where you met state violence with rocks and gas bombs and ski masks, we met state violence with delusions of nonviolence and beatitudic dreams that permitted state violence to prevail and continue.

I saw news clips of your occupation of the Presidential Palace and our media’s scorn at the oppulence found there. Of course, our Presidential Palace – called the Whitehouse in our country – still stands, much larger and far more luxurious, complete with helicopter pads and movie theaters and bowling alleys and a basement bunker complex commonly called “Cheneyville.” The corruption and decadence of your tyrants cannot compete with the corruption and decadence of ours. Yet we do nothing.

We can’t do anything because our cops have guns while your cops only have…guns.

So, it is my hope that you will recognize that deferring now to your parliament to resolve the problem is the same mistake that the people made in Cairo, and what you have to do is oust your parliament also.

Rid yourself of the whole troublesome hierarchy.

Then, if possible, I would ask you to help us. We in the United States need you to send us some Ukrainians to topple _our_ tyranny. We’re paralyzed and incapable where you have proven to be mobilized and effective. We need you to sweat and fight and bleed for our liberation. We’ll do _our_ part of course. We’ll hold signs and sing songs and come up with snappy rhymes, things like, “1-2-3-4…,” and “Hell no, we won’t go…,” and so on. We have 200 million firearms we can put at your disposal.

Just don’t expect us to _use_ them. We exercise the right to bear arms, not _fire_ them. We’re like the world’s largest drill-and-ceremony color-guard. We don’t want to get dirt on our clothes or blood on our hands or soot on our faces.

We need _you_ to accomplish a noble and necessary struggle that we cannot undertake for ourselves.

Please respond quickly. This sprawling police state is really intolerable.

Freedom or Death,

Sean Swain

The Statehouse

When I first arrived here at the super duper uber mega ultramax, we could watch the Ohio channel. It was a PBS station that broadcast the legislative sessions of the Ohio general assembly’ and the hearings of the Ohio Supreme Court.It’s probably not as fun as the monkeys at the zoo when you can throw peanuts to them, but you can’t really expect Ohio
government to compete with monkeys.
A documentary that aired on the Ohio channel presented the history of the Ohio Statehouse and how it was constructed. According to the documentary, construction was started, and restarted several times. Finally, it was constructed by prisoners, who were used as slave labor, In one of the more interesting interviews, one of the historians described how, when the state required prisoners with certain experiences like brick laying or carpentry or other professions, citizens with that needed experience would get arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at an inordinate rate.
The historians who discussed this thought it humerus and chuckled at the the idea that governmental officials used the justice system to harvest free labor for purposes of building the state house. It was funny that Ohio citizens were railroaded and their lives were ruined so the the government could save money building its capital.
They also revealed that some workers died in the construction of the statehouse. They were, after all prisoners- and that meant they were slaves, so they worked long hours in substandard conditions and safety did not matter. So, sometimes prisoners slipped and fell to their deaths.
Since it was amusing that innocent people got shafted in the courts and sent to prison to fulfill the construction needs of the state, wouldn’t it be knee-slapping pee in your pants hilarious if some of those innocent people ended up plummeting to their deaths, during the building of the
of the Statehouse?Yeah, it does not get any funnier than a tyrannical state enslaving and killing its citizens.
Just in case I’m unclear, that’s sarcasm
It seems to me that this accepted, documented history of the Ohio statehouses construction points to a universal truth:
Mind over matter. The State doesn’t mind and you don’t matter.
The State of Ohio has a Constitution that describes a laundry list of rights that all Ohio citizens have.That Constitution was written by a guy named Thomas Worthington and his pals, who violated a U.S.treaty to steal peoples land who owned it so they could declare the sacred rights of those who stole it. I describe in detail that whole illegitimate process in a series of zines called Ohio.The are posted on the website. But what value is a constitution and declared rights when you have state that reserves the right to enslave you on a whim and hijack your life? All those so called rights and rules and laws are just fiction when the state decides it wants something.
And if it’s fiction some of the time, that means it’s always fiction all of the time for all of us.
The State doesn’t mind and you don’t matter.
That’s probably the reason the State of Ohio includes so many lofty ideas in its Constitution. It knows it will never be compelled to live up to them. It knows it will never be compelled to live up to them.For instance, not that it matters, but Article 1 Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution says we have the right to “abolish the
government.”Consider that Abolishing the government isn’t asking it to leave or petitioning it to leave. Abolishing the government implies telling it to leave. Making it leave.And that implies force.Violence.
We know that it must because no government would peacefully accept eviction, especially, one that has a long history of employing its troops to gun down its critics, like Ohio did at Kent State.
So that means the Ohio Constitution-not that it matters, invites the people of Ohio to use violence and overthrow the government “whenever they may deem it necessary.”I don’t know but that sounds like an invitation written by those who know they will never have to worry about it, an invitation written by a government who has Apache Attack helicopters and isn’t afraid to use them….a government who recognizes rights and breaks them at will.
The Ohio State House still stands, centuries after Ohio prison slaves built it.Isn’t that a tragedy?
This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s supermax facility.If you are listening…You Are The Resistance

De-Mystifying Political Violence: Toward a Rational Framework for Analyzing Violent Armed Struggle in the U.S.

In Pacifists Suck, I attempted to point out the fundamentally delusional worldview and the internal inconsistency of exclusivist nonviolence proponents. I hope this provides a useful framework for analysis and leads to an effective rejection of exclusivist nonviolence from any future, revolutionary effort. However, this is only part of the intellectual process that needs to be undertaken before a real and effective revolution could be sustained.
We also need to de-mystify violence.
If we consider the question of what violence is, and by that I mean what it really is and not what it has been conveniently re-defined to mean by those who wish to keep us in our assigned seats, we have to recognize that violence is pervasive in life.
Lions eat gazelles. That’s violence. It’s ultimately violence of a non-moral quality because we don’t ascribe concepts of “right” or “wrong” to life in the wild, but violence is violence. Likewise, we eat organic things.
The burger we eat wasn’t delivered by the burger-stork. Somebody hit a living creature in the head and killed it and harvested its meat as a resource to meet your demand for physiological re-fueling. Those carrots and potatoes were living and, if we believe the fascinating research recounted in Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen, plant life is also sentient.
Your stomach is a graveyard. Continue reading →

A Vision of the Future: Where All the Roberto Adinolfis Walk With a Limp

Originally published at 325nostate.net and reprinted in Dark Nights issue #39.

By Sean Swain, anarchist prisoner

Back in May 2012, Roberto Adinolfi managed Ansaldo Nucleare, constructing nuclear power plants all over Europe, including the one in Kroko, Slovenia, and Cernadova, Romania. Adinolfi had power, money, prestige, and influence. To him, the suffering and death in Fukushima, Japan wasn’t nearly as real as his spacious, air-conditioned office or his luxurious Genoa home or his expensive suits.

Sometimes, you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. And besides, none of his death-traps had melted down yet.

Yet. Key word. Yet.

Roberto Adinolfi with his power, money, prestige, and influence never noticed that vehicle following him home. He suspected arrogantly that he would spend an entire career raking in money hand over fist by rolling the radioactive dice and betting millions of other people’s lives, and he would never have to answer to anyone at any time, anywhere. Continue reading →

On Mumia

Transcription of audio essay that originally appeared on The Final Straw.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, he was convicted in the early 1980‘s of killing a cop in Philadelphia and not too long ago his death sentence was reduced to life. Mumia has maintained all along that he did not shoot that cop; and there is plenty evidence to support his claims, but you know what? If I am going to be completely honest, part of me kinda hopes Mumia did shoot him.

I’ve always had a different take on this case than most people. Remember Mumia was found at the scene shot in the chest. He almost died. We can presume the cop shot Mumia before he died, which means he was not shot yet, which means he shot Mumia before getting shot. It’s safe to assume the cop fired first, whoever it is that shot him in response.

And so what if Mumia shot him. What? Are we gonna run out of cops?

Look, we live in a capitalist society. It’s governed by capitalist values.One of the central principals of capitalism is the law of supply and demand.The more plentiful a product, the lower it’s value; the more rare a product, the higher it’s value. That’s why coal is cheaper than diamonds. Continue reading →

Idiot Factories

This is a transcript of an audio essay that originally aired on The Final Straw. Imagine the government hired you for a secret program and it turned out you were the manager of an idiot factory. This idiot factory took normal people and mangled their minds. Idiots come off the assembly line. Do you think you’d feel a moral duty to shut down that idiot factory?And if you couldn’t shut it down would you find some way to burn it down?
Okay.Well, if you are a school teacher and you care about the best interests of the students, I urge you to go into the idiot factory that employs you on Monday with a can of gasoline and a book of matches.

Consider: We do more learning from birth to the age of five than we do the rest of our lives. All of us. All humans. And if you think about it, it makes sense the incredible amount of learning we have to do. Learning for instance that we are separate from the rest of the world, that we end at the bottoms of our feet and tops of our heads: object permanence, the idea things still exist when you can’t see them; language- that sounds mean something, and that words are symbolic representations of something, and which words apply to which things. We learn gravity by throwing mashed potatoes. We learn to walk. The most crucial event for any swivilized human: we learn to control our bowels. We learn that it is bad to walk around leaking and then we learn a complex process to dispose of our leakage.

Continue reading →

Distinguishing Freedom From Recognized Rights

Sean Swain
Submitted for OSP Writing Contest, Black History Month, 2014

Distinguishing Freedom From Recognized Rights
(500 words or less)

Any discussion of rights must distinguish real freedom—the absence of external regulation—from the concept of “recognized rights” arising as it does from theories of constitutional authority and law. To contrast, real freedom is a condition of existential reality, while “recognized rights” are paper fictions.
To understand real freedom, one must imagine two points at either end of a continuum. The first point, “freedom,” is “the absolute absence of external regulation.” At the opposite end of the continuum is complete external regulation, the absence of freedom. Thus, where freedom exists, there is an absence of external regulation, and vice-versa. The line connecting these two points represents interplay between the two opposing forces, varying degrees of freedom and regulation:

Freedom —————————————-——— Absolute external regulation
(absence of external regulation) (absence of freedom)

Importantly, implicit in this analytical framework, freedom cannot coexist with government, because government’s purpose is to govern. To govern is to regulate, and where regulation exists, as already established, freedom is absent. Thus, governments by their very character are the antithesis of freedom. Continue reading →