Category Archives: Current Events

Letter to C.I.I.C. Director Joanna Saul

Joanna Saul, Director
Corrections Institution Inspection Committee
Riffe Center, 15th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215

April 1, 2016

Dear Director Saul:

My communications mediums have been suspended since September 1 of last year without explanation, warning, notice, or justification. The ODRC is essentially murdering my social existence beyond prison fences. I have violated no prison rules to justify this suspension and no disciplinary action taken against me has imposed a communications restriction to justify what I experience.

I have contacted the parole board because I have a parole hearing scheduled for July that I cannot attend. I have not had communication with my attorney because of this communications suspension and he has been unable to prepare for my hearing. I am unaware if he still intends to represent me, and if he is, what he needs from me. If he is not going to represent me, I need to contact other attorneys. I currently have a legal fund for gaining counsel if only I could communicate with the outside world. But, I cannot.

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Monkey #9 Exonerates Anarchist Prisoner Sean Swain, Accuses the Charging Official

On April 30th Leslie Dillon, self-identified founding member of the Army of the 12 Monkeys testified at Sean Swain’s Rules Infraction Board Hearing. His testimony included the revelation of the source of the A12M materials: ManCI investigator Angela Hunsinger. Trevor Clark, legal counsel for the ODRC had erroneously told both Swain and his lawyer that Dillon had agreed to testify for the state.

Shawn Marshall, another admitted member of the Army of the 12 Monkeys was called to testify by Swain, but he did not appear. Marshall has stated that Hunsinger instructed him to plant A12M materials in Swain’s cell. It is unknown whether he refused to testify, or if the prison prevented him from appearing. Marshall has been in and out of the mental health wing (also known as torture-cell row) since being accused of A12M activities.

James “BlackJack” Dzelijilja is the fourth prisoner at ManCI accused of participation in the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Marshall was transferred to segregation in January, the other three have been held in local control since September, 2012. BlackJack denies A12M involvement, but has not appealed the guilty verdict of his RIB hearing, last October.

Sean Swain appealed October’s RIB decision all the way to the top, and then threatened to sue the ODRC for targeting him for protected speech and his deeply-held beliefs. April 30th’s hearing was a “redo” of that conduct report, because even ODRC legal counsel admitted the original conduct report focused inappropriately on Swain’s ideology and speech.

Since the transfer of these prisoners to administrative control, ManCI has changed their policies in 13 different ways to make isolation conditions more punitive. Everything from food rations, to Jpay email access to laundry has been altered to make life intolerable. All four have lost weight due to being fed starvation rations. Swain reports having lost 55 pounds since September. All of the incoming and outgoing mail for these prisoners has been opened, read and photocopied since September, despite a statutory 21 day limit on the investigation which authorized the opening of their outgoing mail.

All of the prisoners accused of A12M activities need support. Especially Leslie Dillon, who may face retaliation for his testimony. Supporters can call the prison and insist that they start following their rules, stop manufacturing charges against the prisoners, increase rations and improve conditions in segregation.

Warden Terry Tibbals- 419-526-2000
Angela Hunsinger- 419-526-2000 ext 2027, 2026, and 2029
Trevor Clark- 614-752-1765 (central office)

Also, please send them mail and embossed return envelopes. They can only receive 5 pages and 3 embossed envelopes at at time. Zines and books are being (illegally) restricted to 5 pages as well.

ManCI
1150N Main St
Mansfield OH 44901

Leslie Dillon 416-607
Sean Swain 243-205
James “BlackJack” Dzelijilja 530-144
Shawn Marshall 461-448

We are all Mohammed Bouazizi

On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian merchant denied the opportunity to make a living, to simply sell his wares to fee himself and his mother; lit himself on fire. He immolated himself as an act of frustration, helplessness, and protest against the government corruption that created a barrier between him and a dignified life he struggled to achieve.

His name was Mohammed Bouazizi.

In a just, fair, sane world, no one would identify with a man who lit himself on fire. In a just, fair, sane world, such an action would be seen as an act of someone emotionally disturbed.

But we don’t live in a just, fair, sane world. We live in a world defined by injustice, defined by unfairness, and defined by insanity. We live in a world so utterly broken that, when Mohammed Bouazizi became visible for the first and only time in his life by how he chose to die, millions of people the world over understood exactly how he felt. Millions understood immediately what drove him to burn himself alive as one final symbolic statement no one could misinterpret.
We are all made invisible inside a complex machine of global crapitalism. We are all disposable to the select few opportunists who assume the right to rule us. Our so-called “rights” don’t matter; and where rights don’t matter, they don’t really exist.
We are not free; we are constantly under control and under surveillance. We have no power over even the basic necessities of our lives: our homes are constructed by someone else’s designs; our clothing is fashioned by someone else’s tastes; our food is prepared by strangers and filled with materials we can’t identify or pronounce, our jobs are more internationally mobile than we can afford to be.

We have the right to be invisible.

We have the right to be unheard.

We have the right to drag stones up the side of someone else’s pyramid.

That is the unjust, unfair, insane world in which we live – The very circumstance that drove Mohammed Bouazizi to make his final statement with fire. When we are denied the right to live with dignity and meaning and purpose but we are instead reduced to objects, to labor-machines, to slaves who toil and shop in service of markets (and those who run them).
We are denied lives. We are delegated instead an existence that feels intolerable. It takes all we have and more just to maintain, to keep from screaming out loud, from running away from the slow-roasting trauma of day-to-day death.
Mohammed Bouazizi lit himself on fire because he felt that way. But he believed he was invisible. He believed he was alone. He had no way to know that millions felt the same way he did.

Mohammed Bouazizi lit himself on fire because the millions of us didn’t know he felt that way. We couldn’t see him. We had no way to let him know he wasn’t alone, that millions of us feel the same way he did.

But by the fire that Mohammed Bouazizi lit, we can see each other now. And we can see ourselves. We know we are not alone. We are millions. Our world is unjust, unfair, and insane.

So the only question that remains is:
What are we going to do about it?

Ohio Spring.
May 1, 2013.
Shockudy.

*I wanted to write this in part to correct errors in past articles where I inaccurately described Mohammed Bouazizi as Egyptian, when he is not. I felt it important to honor Mohammed Bouazizi, and to honor all of us.

JPay, Sock Puppets and Our Reduction to Slavery

At the end of August, ManCI administrators posted a notice related to a change in money order transfer procedures to be implemented here at the prison. By the old procedure, anyone could send money orders to prisoners directly at the prison and those funds would be posted to the prisoner’s account by the cashier’s office. There also existed electronic transfer options for a service fee, but money orders could be sent directly without any fee at all. By the new procedure, only approved visitors may send funds to prisoners and rather than sending them to the prisoner directly, the funds are sent to JPay, a company in Hollywood, Florida– the prescription-pill addiction capital of the world. With each transaction, approved visitors must send a copy of their photo identification and a portion of the money order they send is kept by JPay as a “service fee,” otherwise known as a tax.

As I’ve already written, all of this struck me as patently illegal, as none of my visitors consented to having the private information they turned over to the State for visiting purposes suddenly compiled into a database and turned over to a company hiring an inordinate number of pill addicts who can upload information and sell it to identity pirates in order to support their pill habits.

Bewildered that the prison system would betray the trust of 750,000 prisoner-visitors, I sent kite communications to a number of ManCI administrators, asking specific questions about this money-transfer boondoggle. This is what I wrote:

Sir or Madam:

These are questions I need answered before I get back to my attorney:
1. When did my visitors consent to having JPay get access to their private information, which was given to the ODRC only for purposes of getting on my visiting list?
2. What kind of electronic security does JPay have to make sure the sensitive information of 750,000 visitors isn’t hacked for identity theft?
3. Since data entry employees for JPay can access a database to confirm visitor status, what protocols prevent those workers from stealing the identities of 750,000 visitors who never consented to their information being accessed by JPay in the first place?
4. What statute provides for a tax to be levied upon prisoner visitors when they transfer funds to prisoners?
5. When did the Ohio Assembly approve this tax?
My attorney would like to arrange a conference call with the custodian of records to insure that my visitors’ sensitive information is not transferred, transmitted, nor accessed by JPay or any other private company. Who should my attorney contact?
Thank you.

Note, I opened and closed the kites with references to legal counsel and made clear that my concern was to address the legalities and privacy concerns of my visitors. You would think prison administrators, as officials in the criminal justice process, would want to ensure the legalities of their procedures. Because their job is to instill a respect for the law in all of their wayward captives, they would certainly want to make sure their own conduct is well beyond reproach, right?

Well, no.

Ms. Wainwright is the Deputy Warden of Special Services. Among her duties, she’s the supervisor of Ms. Allen, the Unit Management Administrator. Deputy Warden Wainwright did not answer a single one of my questions. She wrote, “All the information we have re: JPay is posted by Ms. Allen. She is sending all updates. Refer to those. This is a statewide initiative.”

That’s all she said.

So, when did visitors consent to having private information handed over to pill-poppers in Florida? When did the legislature approve of this tax? What stops pill-poppers from selling my elderly parents’ identities and trashing their credit? No idea.

I sent an identical kite to Sharon Berry, the Institutional Inspector, the zealous advocate who protects us captives from the abuses of our captors. She didn’t answer any of my questions. She referred me to Ms. Allen, the Unit Management Administrator.

Fortunately, I had already sent an identical kite to Ms. Allen. I received her kite back, stapled to the kite I had sent to the Deputy Warden of Operations. Their joint response was, “Please direct your questions to JPay for guidance.” They answered none of my questions.

No shit. Ms. Allen really told me to direct my questions to JPay. Think of the implications: ‘Mr. Swain, you’re ostensibly in the custody of the alleged State of Ohio, but our authority is now out-sourced to our corporate masters whose profit margins dictate government policies. They make the rules. Please consult the corporate dictators who give us our marching orders.’

That’s pretty fucking disturbing.

How long is it before ODRC director Gary Mohr moves ODRC Central Office from Columbus, Ohio to Hollywood, Florida so he can be useful to his corporate golf buddies, help them count their money between sniffing lines in the clubhouse, and maybe give them hand-jobs over drinks? How long before John Kasich joins him?

Like I said, pretty fucking disturbing. I’m in the custody of corporations who have their hands up the asses of prison officials, making them walk and talk like they’re real humans. Prison officials are now sock-puppets on the hands of corporations.

The last of the kites I sent to Warden Terry Tibbals. He is, after all, in charge of the prison. At least, by all appearances. Since he is the warden, you’d expect him to be concerned about the legality of this new policy. You’d expect him to answer all of my questions. His answer? “Contact: Steven Young, Legal Counsel, 770 W Broad St., Cols. Ohio 43222.”

I’m not making this up. I asked specific questions about the legality of this dubious proceedure that profits corporations at the expense of Ohioans and I got the John Gotti response from the warden: I have no comment; ask my attorney.

This too is quite revealing. It lets us know that when these administrative sock puppets fail at union busting, they out-source Ohio jobs to corporate masters out-of-state, whether it’s legal or not, whether it violates the privacy rights of Ohio citizens or not, whether it leads to identity theft of 750,000 Ohioans or not. It’s all done without the consent of tax-payers, who end up footing the bill. Oh, yeah– when the lawsuits happen, JPay won’t have to hire counsel. Oh, no. Steve Young, ODRC counsel, will head the dream-team for an out-of-state corporation, at the expense of the very Ohioans whose jobs were down-sized so Gary Mohr’s coke-snorting golf friends could turn Ohio prisoners into a cash cow.

Yeah, I know. You probably think this is only about prisoners and how funds get to us, and nobody cares about prisoners. But it isn’t. This is about a system-wide approach that Naomi Klein documented in her book The Shock Doctrine where government, reduced to sock puppets for the corporate elite, hollow out government and reduce the majority of us to slaves while those who control the “commanding heights” of the economy end up with all the cash. It’s about our so-called “public” officials bending over so the wealthy elite can cram a fist in their asses, voluntarily becoming sock-puppets for the Enrons and Halliburtons and Banks of America and JPays and AccessSecurePaks and Global Tel*Links. You can’t stop it by voting the bums out because the bums are just disposable gloves worn on the hands of our true enemies.

Sean Swain: In Defense of Cece McDonald

I have read about the case of Cece McDonald, who was attacked because she is a transgendered woman of color. She is now charged with two counts of murder because she survived and her attackers didn’t. I don’t know, but I suspect no police were present to protect Cece when she was attacked. No prosecutors. No judges.

Cece was left to protect herself, so she did. She protected herself in the absence of police, prosecutors, and judges.
Now the same police who left Cece to protect herself have no problem with arresting her. The prosecutors– who also weren’t there– couldn’t protect Cece, but they can prosecute her. And the judge who failed to preside over Cece’s protection will undoubtedly preside over her trial without blinking an eye. They will all refer to the almighty “law” as their reason for attempting to take the rest of Cece’s life away from her, for succeeding where her previous attackers failed.

If the “law” they worship says Cece must go to prison, then I say the community is better off with Cece than with the law, and the law should be abolished. And while we’re at it, if Cece isn’t valued any more than that by these worshipers of the law, then we need to abolish the police, abolish the prosecutors, and abolish the judge. We’re better off getting rid of all of them and keeping Cece in the community.

Cece is not the problem.

But I suspect if we set out to solve the problem and we come up with effective strategies for abolishing cops, prosecutors, and judges, they will not go quietly. I suspect they will fight like their lives depend on it. I bet they will exhibit a particular ferocity and employ all means at their disposal, however brutal, to prevent us from achieving our aims.

Just imagine how they will fight if we try to abolish them.

Now, let’s use that as our example of how we need to fight to defend Cece. Let’s exhibit a particular ferocity and employ all means at our disposal, however brutal, to prevent them from achieving their aims. Let’s show them with our actions what if it comes down to it, we would rather keep her and get rid of them.

Let’s make that message so clear, the cops and prosecutors and judges don’t have the option of not listening.

Freedom,

Sean Swain
Mansfield Correctional
Mansfield, OH
February 8, 2012

On the Colorado Theater Shooting

By ____ _____¹

Is anybody really surprised?

Some may think this isn’t the appropriate question ask. It may be that popular opinion would dictate that we should be asking why this happened, or how anybody is really surprised.

Now, before you think I’m saying something I’m not, I want to be clear: I’m not asking you in a veiled way if you think this guy was right or whether you think his actions make sense and therefore what he did should have been expected. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m only asking a simple question:

Is anybody really surprised?

The reason I ask is, I’m not surprised at all. And I’m quite frankly suspicious of the people on television who act like they’re surprised this happened.

I mean, when Columbine happened, everybody was shocked, right? High school students with firearms gunning down other high school students, seemingly at random. Wow. But then you had Virginia Tech, and school shootings became, well, fashionable in a sense, so much so that most school shootings like the one in Chardon, a Cleveland suburb, barely made the national media and remained a local story.

It happens with such regularity, we don’t notice it anymore.

You had the Gabby Giffords shooting, but that only made headlines because the targets were no longer high school students but politicians. So, we were shocked again for a minute. Wow. That’s terrible.

But now, what’s left to shock us? We know it’s coming. We expect it. Sure, the location may change- one might be a school and the other a mall; one at a McDonalds and the other at a movie theater. And the victims may also be from various groups, like kids at a Jewish day-care or Batman movie-goers, or people who prefer Big Macs to Whoppers. But my point is, when a medical student dons body armor and a gas mask, loads up several weapons, goes berserk during a showing of the latest Batman movie, and then keeps police occupied for hours with explosives rigged all over his home, nobody’s shocked.

I don’t think anybody can be. If you have just a handful of brain cells that haven’t been pickled in bong water and high fructose corn syrup, you understand full-well how somebody in our world, facing the hopelessness of the future and the meaninglessness of the present, could uncork all that disillusionment and just, well, go nuts. We all know. Despite our adherence to conventional morality and our obedience and loyalty to the non-violent dictates of our culture, and even while we empathize with the victims and mourn with their survivors, on a deeper level that probably makes most of us very uncomfortable, a level we would probably like to deny even exists, we know where that shooter came from. Whether we like it or not, deep down– deep, deep down — we know that each time we see another shooting, we take an inventory of uptight bosses and demeaning teachers and all the back-stabbers and suck-asses who have made our lives miserable, and we measure the distance we would to go from here in order for us to be donning the body armor.

We all know where the shooters come from. We know what drives them. It’s the same thing that drives chickens crammed like sardines in industrial feedlots to wig-out and start pecking each other to death. With us, the factory feedlots are schools and traffic jams, board meetings and check-out lines. Our unnatural, pressurized, unfulfilling way of life, reducing us as it does to worker ants with no sense of purpose, is starting to get to more and more of us.

More and more of us chickens are starting to peck each other to death.

Those Columbine kids weren’t so unusual. And every day, as the body count gets higher, they become more and more ordinary.

So what’s next? A WalMart? A Kroger? A tanning salon, perhaps? A mall?

It won’t be long before the ordinary and mundane settings of our lives will be riddled with bullet holes and splashed with blood splatter as we continue working and shopping and stepping around the blood-spill in aisle five. We may even see new industries, like fashionable body-armor for soccer moms on-the-go.

And we won’t be surprised.

We really won’t be.

***

¹ This may or may not have been written by Sean Swain but since the federal courts have stripped Sean Swain of all constitutional protections, he must write underground. If Sean wrote this, and no one is saying he did, he meant every word of it. Sean Swain supports Anonymous, the Earth Liberation Front, the Anarchy Bridge! Five, the NATO Five, and the groups now emerging from the Occupy Movement.

Florida Golf Buddies and Identity Pirates to Profit from ODRC Out-Sourcing Plot

by ____ _____¹

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has out-sourced fund-transfer services to a private Florida firm called JPay. As a result, persons on prisoner visiting lists can send money to prisoners only by sending the money to JPay for processing. This processing involves a “fee” which is withdrawn from the funds sent to prisoners.

This new procedure is virtually identical to the old procedure, except that now a private Florida company makes a huge profit conducting services that used to be performed by downsized Ohio employees.
Also, the procedure is completely unconstitutional and will result in many legal challenges– challenges that will cost Ohio tax-payers… although the Florida firm making huge profits will not suffer the loss of a single dime.

The first problem with the new procedure is that JPay’s “fee” for processing funds into prisoner accounts constitutes a tax. Because citizens are charged a fee to put funds on a prisoner’s account, it matters not whether that money is collected by an out-sourced company or the State directly– it is a fee collected for a public service.

That’s a tax.

And that’s illegal.

The Ohio Constitution delegates the power to tax only to the Ohio General Assembly, not to the ODRC or to Director Gary Mohr’s rich Florida golf-buddies looking to make a profit off of human bondage. Since the Ohio House and Senate never approved this tax, JPay’s service tax is illegal.

Not that legality matters. Why would you want someone charged with the duty of reforming Ohio’s offenders to abide by something called “law”? Clearly, Gary Mohr is nota role-model. And clearly, crime pays.

But an even more troubling aspect of this new procedure is that the ODRC has given Gary Mohr’s rich golf buddies access to the State’s information databases. That means approximately 750,000 citizens on Ohio prison population’s visiting lists will have their private information– addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, to convicted felons — accessed by complete strangers working for a Florida company, something these 750,000 citizens never approved, never consented to, and never signed up for.

As one prisoner’s visitor said, “I only sent required information to the Ohio prison so I could visit my husband. I didn’t know that my private information was going to be bundled iwth thousands of other people’s information and then handed over to some company where employees can steal my identity or profit off of selling that information. I feel betrayed. I don’t even know if this is legal.”

ODRC administrators have denied that JPay will have access to prisoner visitors’ private information, but this denial is directly conflicted by their own description of the process. According to the ODRC’s own postings, visitors sending funds to prisoners must send them to JPay along with a photocopy of their identification (which itself contains sensitive information that could be used for identity theft), and then JPay will compare that photocopy to the prisoner’s visiting list to confirm the visitor’s status before posting the funds.

That means JPay must have access to the visiting lists in order to make the comparison. So that means JPay does have access to 750,000 citizens’ private information without their consent. It also means the ODRC’s denials are a lie.

Again, these people are not role models.

But even if JPay didn’t have access to the database, they still require citizens to send photocopies of their state identification with every fund transfer, which means each person could have dozens or even hundreds of copies of their sensitive information floating around in the hands of data processors who were fired from Burger King for sniffing glue.

“Who else will they sell my address and social security number to?” a visitor asked. “And what will those people do with it? What stops a JPay worker from selling three quarters of a million names to identity pirates? And what kind of a clown slow is this prison director running, anyway?”

A profitable one, it seems– if you’re Gary Mohr’s Florida golf buddies.

***

DISTRIBUTION:
Corrections Institution Inspection Committee
seanswain.org
CURE-Ohio
Cincinnati Enquirer
Columbus Dispatch
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Toledo Blade
Akron Beacon Journal

If YOU are wondering “what kind of clown show” Gary Mohr is running, feel free to contact him at (614) 752-1164 during normal clown-show hours.

¹ This may or may not have been written by Sean Swain, but the federal courts have given Ohio prison administrators free license to punish Swain for his published views beyond prison walls. Swain is exceptionally stripped of all constitutional protections, so whether he wrote this or not, and no one is saying he did, this will likely be posted at seanswain.org when it launches in the next 30 days. If Sean Swain wrote this, he meant every word.

On The Colorado Theater Shooting

Is anybody really surprised?

Some may think this isn’t the appropriate question to ask. It may be that popular opinion would dictate that we should be asking why this happened, or how we can show support for the victims of this tragedy. But I want to know if anybody is really surprised.

Is anybody really surprised?

The reason I ask is, I’m not surprised at all. And I’m quite frankly suspicious of the people on television who act like they’re surprised this happened.

I mean, when Columbine happened, everybody was shocked, right? High school students with firearms gunning down other high school students, seemingly at random. Wow. But then you had Virginia Tech, and school shootings became, well, fashionable in a sense, so much so that most school shootings, like the one in Chardon, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, barely made the national news and remained a local story.

It happens with such regularity, we don’t notice it anymore.

But now, what’s left to shock us? We know it’s coming. We expect it. Sure, the location may change—one might be a school and the other a mall; one at a McDonalds and the other at a movie theater. And the victims may also be from various groups, like kids at a Jewish day-care or Batman movie-goers, or people who prefer Big Macs to Whoppers. But my point is, when a medical student dons body armor and a gas mask, loads up several weapons, goes berserk during a showing of the latest Batman movie, and then keeps police occupied for hours with explosives rigged all over his home, nobody’s shocked.

I don’t think anybody can be. If you have just a handful of brain cells that haven’t been pickled in bong water and high fructose corn syrup, you understand full-well how somebody in our world, facing the hopelessness of the future and the meaninglessness of the present, could uncork all that disillusionment and just, well, go nuts. We all know. Despite our adherence to conventional morality and our obedience and loyalty to the non-violence dictates of our culture, and even while we empathize with the victims and mourn with their survivors, on a deeper level that probably makes most of us very uncomfortable, a level we would probably like to deny even exists, we know where that shooter came from. Whether we like it or not, deep down—deep, deep down—we know that each time we see another shooting, we take an inventory of uptight bosses and demeaning teachers and all the back-stabbers and suck-asses who have made our lives miserable, and we measure the distance we would have to go from here in order for us to be donning the body armor.

We all know where the shooters came from. We know what drives them. It’s the same thing that drives chickens crammed like sardines in industrial feedlots to wig-out and start pecking each other to death. With us, the factory feedlots are schools and traffic jams, board meetings and check-out lines. Our unnatural, pressurized, unfulfilling way of life, reducing us as it does to worker ants with no sense of purpose, is starting to get to us more and more.

More and more of us chickens are starting to peck each other to death.

Those Columbine kids weren’t so unusual. And every day, as the body count gets higher, they become more and more ordinary.

So what’s next? A WalMart? A Kroger? A tanning salon, perhaps? A mall?

And we won’t be surprised.

We really won’t be.