Category Archives: Sean

Letter About Migs

From: http://oppenpal.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/an-open-letter-from-sean-swain/

The following is a letter Rachel Allshiny recently received from Sean Swain, an anarchist prisoner who is behind bars indefinitely, after she sent him a copy of her Suicide Girls blog post on prisoner support work.

11 SEP 13
You-can’t-kill-500,000-children-under-
the-age-of-6-in-10-years-of-sanctions-
without-suffering-the-blowback-day

Allshiny + Everyone –

I got your 28 AUG letter.

As you’ll note from my address, I’m now at Ohio’s super-duper-über-mega-ultra-max. It’s a program for scientifically disassembling human personalities.

I seem to be getting my mail. It seems to be timely too. Here, I’m getting zines and other reading materials. I’ve been here 2 weeks, however, and still do not have a large box of my legal documents + addresses + writings, etc.

Having read your article again just now, I see a pattern. The fascists fear ideas. Ideas on paper. Mark’s. Mine. That speaks to the poverty of their own dysfunctional ideology and the unsustainable system it creates.

Rehabilitation: They kick us in the head until we get dumber.

Another pattern I see. You mentioned that Mark looked skinnier. A year ago, I weighed 215 pounds. I now weigh 151. I’ve lost 14 pounds in the last 2 weeks here at the super-duper-über-mega-ultra-max. I’ve been hungry since August.

Something I really don’t understand about what’s going on with Mark (and also with my situation). An anarchist is one who rejects hierarchy. It is a belief. Really, it’s an acceptance of provable, demonstrable data that hierarchy doesn’t work.

Anarchist literature + symbols are expressions of those who accept the truth that hierarchy doesn’t work as advertised.

What interest do the fascists have in punishing a community of people for knowing something that’s true?

Mark and I do not like hierarchy. Do the hierarchs imagine we’ll like them better after they torture us??? And I imagine this again speaks to the poverty of hierarchy. Hierarchs only know how to punch, bomb, torture, kick, punish, tame, train, deprive, tear-gas, bludgeon, starve… “Act like you like us…OR ELSE…” Like an all-powerful, petulant child.

You 23 AUG 13 article is a masterpiece. Really awesome. You feel the pain you witness, and you convey that pain + your sense of urgency very well. It’s really a moving piece. So I want to thank you for sending that, and for all that you’re doing for Mark.

I too hope Mark focuses on documenting his experiences. Something I’ve been thinking about for seanswain.org is a series of telephone interviews. That may be an option for Mark too. Audio files.

Not everyone writes. Not everyone reads.

Having read your article, there’s an observation I want to share with you. It takes a lot of courage to be so connected in the suffering of others. It takes a real fearlessness. The natural instinct is to close off oneself and erect barriers for self-protection. It is a real gift to feel as deeply as you do. But it is also a very difficult way to go. Don’t let it destroy you.

Some of what the fascists do, they create a situation as you aptly observed where every moment is a crisis. They create a situation of long-term intolerable trauma + keep changing the conditions, making it impossible for you to stay on top of it – every update is outdated, every effort addresses events already changed. They do this as much wear you down as to wear down Mark.

They don’t fear Mark or me or any prisoner. They fear us as members of a larger struggle. They fear us working with you. In my situation, when they found out about the website, they subjected me to torture + even now hold me hostage in an effort to get supporters to shut the site down. If I have anything to say about it, that will never happen.

There’s a line by Thoreau in Civil Disobedience where he describes the state as children who have a grudge against someone so, unable to reach him, they kick his dog. That’s what the state does. The state has no grudge against my body. Its principle annoyance is my mind. But they can’t get to that, so they feebly attack what they can reach. It serves no good end for them. Even as they subject the body to more + more deprivations, my ideas follow out behind them and drift above the concertina wire + get posted on-line, and end up in the hands of others.

Even if we accept the state’s story, that it actually believes that I was a creator of the Army of the 12 Monkeys, their manuals are on-line + can be accessed thru anarchistnews.org. Hundreds of people have printed off copies of their training manuals. How does it serve the state’s interests to lock me in a shoebox when I’ve never been on-line in the first place?

The state kicks the dog.

So, what I recognize is that we’re dealing with an enemy that is irrational, not very bright, and in control of Apache helicopters. It’s like being locked in a room with a cannibal. You don’t really have a hell of a lot of options.

But that’s not to say that it’s hopeless. It’s not. We only live once, as far as we know, so we have to make that life count for something. We also only die once, so we also have to make that death count for something. If we can live with purpose and die with purpose, what more could we ask for?

The enemy loses. But the enemy is doomed to lose because the enemy can only kill the body. It can only defeat the carcass. And in every conflict, the enemy reveals its true character.

Do you know what a dent you kicked in the system by humanizing Mark? Or the value of my friends’ work in documenting what happened to me? The enemy loses control of the narrative. Others recognize who the real bad guy is. Then you have another dozen Mark Neiweems being inspired.

A great tide is turning.

Don’t lose hope.

We own the future.

Thank you for writing. I hope to hear back from you.

Stay dangerous.

Freedom,
Sean

Days of Teargas, Blood + Vomit

How prisoners overwhelmed fascist forces in the July 4th rebellion at ManCI. A participant’s account from inside the special manglement unit. (Follow up to this post.)

Ghandi would not approve.

It’s 11 July 13, 8 days since my last dispatch when Blackjack was strapping the plastic lunch tray to his arm. Since then, its’ been a rough-and-tumble bucket-o-blood back here in the Special Manglement Unit of Mansfield Corruptional Institution. Backjack’s missing 3 teeth (that he really doesn’t use much back here anyway) and my stomach injuries had me puking for a time (no blood, a good sign), but as of today, neither of us are leaking fluids and the fascist fuckweasels have now moved us to the veritable suburbs of the SMU.

This is the whole story, and most of it is true.

July 4 began with emergency lockdown, the fascists all hopped up on adrenaline, coffee, and the news of the escape that happened the previous night. Turns out, a prisoner escaped the old-fashioned way. He leaned a steel ladder against the fence and left. No shit.

But as with any other situation where popular forces strike a successful blow against the fuckweasel control system, those of us still locked in the showbox take the full brunt of it. Breakfast was shit and there was no recreation. So even before Warden Terry Tibbals, a.k.a, BLACK LIGHTNING, arrived at his office with his bag of donuts and cup of decaf, all hell had already broke loose in the Special Manglement Unit.

Forty steel doors banging, busted sprinkler heads pounding thousands of gallons of rusty water down the stairs and cascading over the top range, the nazis jacking cans of pepper spray and running for the exit.

Fuck them. It’s not like they planned to have a barbecue anyway.

So, if you’ve been locked in the shoebox for any length of time, you know what’s coming. A captain or a major will soon be on-station to announce his own importance, only to find every fucking cell-door window blocked and barricaded, whereupon he will slosh with wet socks and shoes back to an office to call in the Extraction Team- a crew of genetic oddities on brain-entrancing drugs, clad in jackboots and helmets, shields and flak vests. Their whole reason to exist is to crush human skulls and reckless abandon, cell-to-cell, breaking bones and spirits, but from the rumbling of the steel doors, we knew they’d better get some chips and beer because they were gonna be there a while.
In SMU4B, Blackjack and I occupied the cell closest to the entrance so by dumb luck and a twist of fate, we were the front line of the very first battle, ground zero in the struggle between the rebellion and the goddamn stormtroopers goose-stepping in mechanical unison, hopped up on their innate hatred of humanity and the echoes of unhappy childhoods.

It would be seven on two, close quarters blind fighting, the hierarch machine coming to exterminate the anarchist tendency once and for all, and for our part, the possibility that we would fight and die, not for some inglorious cause, but driven by the simple sad reality that it’s better to fight and perhaps die than to live as slaves.

Blackjack and I took a quick inventory and came up with an impromptu battle plan. They might kill us, might pound us to death, but they were going to know we were here. The least we could do on the way out, with the snapping of bones and growls of rage, is scar these fascist fuckweasels for life so they wake up from sweaty nightmares decades from now and realize that yet against they’ve shit the bd, screaming my name, “SWAIN!”, since no one know who to pronounce Blackjack’s (Blackjack included).

WELCOME TO WACO

We know how it goes down. The Extraction Team opens the food slot and sprays an industrial sized can of outdoor-use-only pepper spray into the cell, a space the size of a bathroom, blasting some napalm-death that peels off skin and lights the lungs on fire. So we had to prepare for that. Then, they’d key the door and bullrush in, a phalanx behind riot shields and helmets, pounding ahead and crushing anything organic in their way. At least 7 of them, taming, breaking, punishing.

We had to stop that too.

The fascist fuckweasels had the latest technology for violence and brutality. We had a plastic bag, styrofoam cups, shampoo, toothpaste, sheets, blankets, a broom, socks, soap, 2 lunch trays, a razor blade and a stapler.

I don’t know where the fuck we got the stapler but it was brand new and had a full compliment of staples. We quickly concluded that the stapler, while convenient for all our segregation office needs, really proved quite irrelevant in a violent struggle for liberation against the forces of fuckweaselry. But all that other shit could kick a fucking dent in their machinery.

By the time those goose-stepping goons arrived, we were prepared- and the fascists would wish they could trade places with ATF agents crawling across the roof of some half-baked cult leader clinging to his bibles and guns in a podunk Texas town.

Welcome to Waco.

THE STANDOFF – NO SCRATCH THAT: THE EPIC MOTHERFUCKING STAND-OFF TO END ALL STAND-OFFS

If you’re reading this on your I-phone in study hall, don’t try this at home.

Well, unless you really, really hate your parents.

Unable to see into the cell because the window in the cell door was blocked, the fascists opened the food slot, only to find a bed sheet hanging in front of the door. They still couldn’t see. On top of that, a blanket was wedged in the 4 inch frame of the outside window with a roll of toilet paper to block the light from the sun, making the cell pitch dark. The lead fuckweasel reached his hand into the food slot to grab the sheet and yank it down, only to take a bar of soap in a sock across the knuckles, quickly withdrawing his hand in a stream of obscenities.

I was a pitcher in little league. I can swing the shit out of a sock.

Angered, they went straight to the pepper-spray, letting loose with about a gallon of it. What they didn’t know is that we used a whole tube of toothpaste, minty fresh and approved by the American Dental Association, to adhere a plastic bag over the food slot. That bag caught every bit of the pepper spray and when I hit that bag with the soap-in-a-sock, it coughed its contents right back at the fuckweasels who unleashed it.

That sent them running and sprawling into the cascading toilet water, coughing and cussing with gallons of snot pouring down the flesh of their inflamed faces.

Cancel the family outing with the fireworks. You’re not gonna be feeling very festive.

So as they splashed in the toilet water and rinsed their faces, the door rattling reached a savage pitch and I knew the maniacs and wildmen behind those steel doors were chewing on the inside of their own mouths just to get the taste of blood.

And here’s an abject lesson for all the forces of fascism from the colonizer troops in the oil wars to the pigs firing rubber bullets into occupy encampments to the fuckweasel prison guards imposing the program at the hot end of a can of pepper spray: It’s all fun and games until someone loses and eye. And then it’s just FUN.

They formed up, fueled on rage and pain, a seething hate machine, and keyed the door. It swung wide open and they came in behind the shield, into the dark unknown. They still could not see because the sheet wasn’t fastened to the door; it didn’t move when the door moved. It remained in the doorway because we hung the sheet from a curtain rod we created out of styrofoam cups- a lot of styrofoam cups, stacked, like 50 of them, and then wedged them into the door frame. So when they came marching into the battle dome, they came in blind with the sheet draped in front of their faces.

They didn’t see the shampoo on the floor or the plastic cup lids floating in the shampoo. The shield-man’s jackboots slid on the cup lids and we went hydro-planing forward, shoved from behind by the six-man phalanx that followed.

Keep in mind, there’s a steel bunkbed 3 feet in from the door and it’s bolted to the floor, creating a bottle-neck, a 3 foot square killing-floor where the goons must come in single-file across shampoo and cup lids sliding under their feet, as they follow a blinded shield-man into a dark room, a sheet hanging in his face.

The shield-man didn’t see me in the shower, pulling the trip line tight. It caught his foot and he fell forward, his fuckweasel friends piling up behind him. Blackjack and I both began yelling, “I got him! I got him!” and “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” giving the impression that the shield-man hadn’t fallen, but had instead tackled one of us.

I let go of the trip line and pulled the strip of sheet we had cut with the razor blade to hook into the sprinkler. I yanked it hard, unleashing thousands of gallons of black gunk fire suppressant pushed by tens of thousands of gallons of water. It was cold and disorienting and blinding, immediately blasting the pile of fuckweasels like a fire-hose from the ceiling.

That was Blackjack’s cue. They hadn’t seen him under the mattress on the top bunk. He sprang to his feet, all possible pepper-spray neutralized by the water filling the air, and with his half of the broomstick secured to his wrist with a strip of bedsheet (just in case he might drop it, he could recall it to his hand with a flick of the wrist) he leaped down from the top rack onto the fuckweasel heap, swinging like a madman. From the opposite side, out of the shower, I rushed into the maelstrom with my half of the broomstick tied to my wrist, and the soap-in-a-sock in my other hand screaming and snarling like a savage. In no time, we were behind the bewildered pile of drenched muscle and heavy equipment, and we bolted for the door.

Fuck everything else. If we got through the open cell door and out into the block, we faced one guard with a cell phone taking video and another guard with a handful of keys.

Yeah. Keys. The great equalizer. We had 2 primitive clubs in our fists, rags wrapped round our faces, and as many as 78 other comrades trapped behind steel doors – doors that could be opened with those keys. We only had to get out of the cell and lock the extraction team inside. But, as we reached the door, the fuckweasels outside the cell dropped everything and threw themselves against the closing door. Blackjack got his club wedged in to keep it from closing as he struggled against the door, I swung on the extraction team trying to regain their feet, and a helmet flew against the wall.

Unfortunately, there was no head inside it.

Maybe next time.

Blackjack thrust against the door and it gave, knocking down the guards on the outside, and we tumbled out of the cell and into the block, the rattling doors and cheers completely deafening. We crawled forward in the ice-cold water and gunk, clawing at the fallen guards, but before we gained purchase, the extraction team had us by the legs, dragging us back into the containment of the cell, our nails dragging on the concrete, one pig’s tasteful yet understated loafer still gripped in my left hand, pepper spray firing from every direction.

Strange, but they didn’t beat us to death. Sure, they got their random kicks and punches in as they held us down and confiscated our weapons, but then they bolted, leaving us sprawled, broken and bloody in a flood of toilet water on the concrete floor.

It was surprisingly comfortable, but I still had all my teeth. As amazing as this is, with all the damage the fascist fuckweasels have inflicted over the decades, the dentist tells me that my teeth are in fantastic shape. Blackjack’s missing 3 teeth. We couldn’t find them. And, even if we could, they had been floating in toilet water.

I pulled something in my abdomen that caused me to puke from the pain for a few days and we both have scorch marks from random pepper-spray blasts, but no broken bones. Our eyes are still firmly in their sockets, and neither of us appear to be leaking any vital fluids.

It took a long time for the fascists to regain control of SMU 4, as they faced inspired and courageous resistance in every fucking cell. The extraction team left the unit at the end of their shift dispirited and haunted by their experience.

Brave new world, shitbags. Brave new motherfuckin’ world.

THE AFTERMATH

We should be dead right now. I mean, several prisoners died here in Terry “Black Lightning” Tibbals’ mismanaged care for a hell of a lot less. Our survival seems a complete absurdity. But here we are.

The official story is that the video of events was lost when the pig dropped the cell phone in his effort to contain us in Cell 1019. I suspect that’s bullshit. I suspect that nobody wants to explain why we had a broomstick in the first place (general incompetence by the pigs on cell-cleaning day), or why the extraction team marched into a cell without visual capacity, or how to starved-out captives out-manoeuvred and out-fought their best fuckweasel fighting force. Whatever their motive, I’ve been told that these events didn’t happen… not the way they happened, anyway.

HELLA HELLA OCCUPY

Four days later, we remained in a burned out shell of a cell, paint peeled from the walls, chunks of concrete missing out of the ceiling. So on July 8, as Pelican Bay revolutionaries undertook a monumental, historic hunger-strike, Blackjack and I were cuffed and escorted out to the outdoor recreation cage. No shit.

Beginning at 6:30 in the morning, we announced to the fuckweasel establishment that we were occupying the recreation cage and not giving it back until our demands were met. Inside the block, the rest of the SMU4 prisoners were again off the chain, rattling doors and flooding the unit. By dinner, they sent in a negotiator to use his “interpersonal communication” training to talk us out of the cage. When that failed, they called the extraction team… who simply did not show up.

Officer Miller, a shitbag of the highest order and a regular feature on SMU4 (who can be reached by calling ManCI and then dialing 806 and extension 6101), took a cell phone video of our demands for coming out of the recreation cage. When told all demands would be met, we surrendered, only to be dragged, handcuffed, back to our burned-out cave to find our food in the toilet and most of our property destroyed. Miller and Bradshaw had taken all of our soap, toilet paper and pens. As if we needed them.

Amazingly, the stapler we hid under the steel sink and toilet combo remained there, and was in perfect working condition.

Very durable.

Officer Miller threatened to put his dick and balls in our food, so- as a natural consequence, Blackjack and I went without food the entire day, right along with the heroes of Pelican Bay and the thousands of hunger strikers across the country and around the world. Miller’s threats sparked a night of mayhem, leading the Gestapo High Command to conclude that Blackjack and I are a dangerous influence, and they moved us out of that stagnant cave in SMU 4 to the veritable zombie suburbs of SMU2- a comfortable peaceful corner of the special manglement unit where we are surrounded by prisoners incapable of action if you lit their asses on fire and chased them with a super-soaker filled with gasoline. The mentality of the entire unit revolves around a betting ticket put out by a prisoner called Vegas, and daily discussions of professional sports events. No revolution here.

Though we’ve been put out to pasture, the situation has greatly improved. Our food portions are back to standard; the laundry service has resumed; the cells are clean and dry, without toilet water pouring from the ceiling; and Blackjack and I are now in a cell where we can sleep without steel doors 3 feet away, banging us awake every ½ hour.

Some kind of disciplinary action was taken against us, but we don’t know what it was since we refuse to answer any more conduct reports. When the officer who came to shackle us heard we refused to go, he asked, “Are we gonna have to do this the hard way?” We responded, “you better go ask the extraction team.” He left, never returned.

So, there’s a lesson to derive from all this: the only effective answer to state terror in any form is equal and opposite revolutionary violence. Plain and simple. It’s the only thing the fascist fuckweasels understand.

I think of the last 9 and a half months that Blackjack and I foolishly tried to go along with the fascist program, to appeal to reason, to employ the non-violent processes made available to us – while our captors reduced us to conditions that where inhumane and intolerable, starving us out. If only we had undertaken this path nine months earlier, and maintained it, we might be drinking martinis by an olympic-sized swimming pool right now.

A point Derrick Jensen made in Endgame applies here: more prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps survived by resisting than by going along with the program.*

So I think about the events of these last 8 days and consider how the world would be different if this approach had been undertaken by the occupy encampments across the US and around the world, undertaken by everyone rejecting the global concentration camp imposed on us all. Imagine if the skull-bashing and finger snapping pigs of the State-terror machine, instead of being met with passive resistance to the dismantling of the encampments, had been met with molotov cocktails and bowling balls raining from roof tops; and resisters sporting helmets shoulder pads, and baseball bats appropriated from Dick’s sporting goods; or had faced man-hole covers blasting into the sky and streets collapsing under them from improvised explosive devices in the sewers – perhaps the trajectory of history would be quite different today.

All I’m saying is, if a former gas station attendant and a former sandwich station tech at Wendy’s can nearly defeat the hyper-fascist forces inside the State’s mind-fuck control unit by employing styrofoam cups, a tube of toothpaste, and a broken broomstick, what hope exists for the crapitalist pigs and their fuckweasel enforcers? If only a small fraction of so-called anarchists, revolutionaries, freedom-fighters, libertarians, tea-partiers or occupy supporters got serious for a moment, all the world’s officer Millers would have to remove their balls from our instant potatoes and run naked, screaming for their miserable and worthless lives, chased by angry hordes carrying pitchforks and torches, demanding a reckoning. I don’t want to impress you. I don’t even want to inspire you. I just want to wake you up. The state is a can of pepper-spray and there’s no reasoning with it. Freedom means destroying it.

We don’t need Gandhi’s approval. This is reality, however it is we feel about it. We need Gandhi to pass that tube of toothpaste and get that lunch tray strapped to his arm.

This is how you take back the future.

Brave new motherfucking world, Mohandas. Brave new motherfucking world.

Freedom or Death,

Sean Swain

Anarchist Prisoner of War

Mansfield Corruptional Institution

Super Mind-fuck Unit 2

11 July 2013

*BTW Sean doesn’t have access to the internet, so he doesn’t know about DJ being a a transphobic salmon touching turd.

Armchair Anarchists Suck

ARMCHAIR ANARCHISTS SUCK- A Response to Trolls on @news.

Irony of ironies- some mush-brained, liberal, state-worshipping hack wrote an online article slamming me as an “oddball” because, like all real anarchists, I want to abolish the state… and who is it that agrees with that state-worshipping hack? Other so-called anarchists.

Un-fucking-believable.

I ran for governor in Ohio – from prison – on the promise that, if elected, I would employ a number of radical steps that, foresee-ably, would cause the cataclysmic collapse of the state government. It doesn’t surprise me that the state-worshipping hack, his mind mismanaged and pickled in corporate slime, couldn’t comprehend why my campaign was funny. It also doesn’t surprise me that he couldn’t understand why my campaign was also potentially dangerous. So, he dogged me.

Still, I never thought I’d have to explain myself to anarchists. But, it appears that I do. So-called anarchists are now taking shots at me and continuing the smear work of a reformist, state-worshipping hack, making it necessary for me to explain myself and justify my actions to armchair anarchists whose only “action” involves a jar of peanut butter and the family dog. Here goes:

Reasons my campaign was funny:

I ran for governor from prison. From prison.
I ran for governor in Ohio, a conservative, republican, backwater shithole, a veritable zombie apocalypse that elected and re-elected George Dubya, arguably the most dangerous sociopath to be president, and Bob Taft, arguably the most dangerous fuckweasel to serve as a governor in the history of fuckweaselry.
I was proposing to utterly destroy the oppressive state that this lemming population utterly idolizes, and I was promising to burn down their beloved capitalist system with a can of gasoline and a book of matches.

In short, I was saying everything I could possibly say to not get elected. But the campaign was also potentially dangerous because:

It was funny and it was a mockery of the electoral and political system – and nothing is more dangerous to “authority” and “prestige” than laughter.
This stunt got regional and even national media coverage, which created the chance for people to read my writings and perhaps begin to actually question the legitimacy of the state.
It drove the prison fascists absolutely ape-shit.

Other prisoners knew why it was funny. It made me a minor celebrity. Whereas, before my campaign, I was “that anarchist guy” and nobody quite understood what anarchy was, my campaign made prisoners curious and before long, young black prisoners from the inner-city and from conflicting gang backgrounds were reading Berkman, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Sterner, Goldman, Bakunin, Parsons, and DeCleyre. They had a prison-wide revolution library. Some of them began a writing collective called The Conditions Factory (from a quote by George Jackson, “where the conditions for revolution are not present, they must be manufactured”).None of these prisoners have gone back to sleep. None of them have resumed their assigned seats.

So here I am, years later, still in direct conflict with the fascist fuckweasels. I’ve got the scars to prove it. I’m kicking and punching and drawing blood – fighting for your liberation and mine, fighting so fucking long now that I’m fighting because I don’t remember how to do anything else; I’ve been pegged as the creator of the Army of the 12 Monkeys because, out of 50,000 Ohio prisoners, the fascist fuckweasels concluded that I am the only one who could have done this to them.

I’m not telling you that I’m the most dangerous revolutionary locked up in the State of Ohio…

The State of Ohio is.

So do I get a unified anarchist army coming to my defense, organizing in solidarity, rising up to defy the mind-fuck machine? No. I get sniped by so-called anarchists who want to help a hierarch propagandist throw me under the bus… and they’re doing it now, when I’m more in need of solidarity from real anarchists than ever before.

I have to cut this short because here on the former death row, toilet water is pouring down the walls from the cells above us; Blackjack is strapping a plastic food tray to his arm with a sheet for use as a shield. It’s hard to see through the fog of tear gas. We still have to barricade the door because the fascists with their helmets and shields and weapons are about to march into the special management unit, and all we’ve got are bars of soap in socks and our bare hands to fight back. I can hear 30 raging fists pounding on steel doors, awaiting the clash, toilet water ankle deep on the storm troopers’ jackboots.

Happy Fourth of July.

Not trying to offend anyone here, but to all the armchair anarchists out there who aren’t surviving on a steady diet of teargas and blood: why don’t you stop typing that witty punchline, wipe the peanut butter off your balls, shove the dog to the side, and do something… just an idea. If I live through this, I’ll write more later. The state will get tired of killing us before we get tired of dying.

Freedom or Death,

Sean Swain

Anarchist Prisoner of War

Special Management Unit

Mansfield Corruptional Institution

July 4, 2013

Rules Infraction Board Fails to Mount Coherent Case, Finds Swain Guilty Anyhow

On April 30th, 2013 the Mansfield Correctional Rules Infraction Board (RIB) held a hearing for Sean Swain where they again tried to make the case that he is the leader and founder of the Army of the 12 Monkeys (A12M), an anarchist prison gang / guerilla army. The hearing lasted an unprecedented three hours and forty-five minutes. Leslie Dillon, admitted founding member of A12M testified that Swain is innocent and that the charging official, investigator Angela Hunsinger actually provided the guerilla manuals. The hearing and conduct report were rife with inaccuracies, jurisdictional issues, illegal investigative procedures, and absurdities, but still resulted in a guilty verdict against Mr Swain.

A summary of some of those irregularities (more detailed analysis, from Sean is online here.:

1. They admitted that the first conduct report was harassment and unconstitutional targeting- and described the current conduct report as a rehearing of that conduct report. In other words, they are saying that they are repeating and continuing harassment and unconstitutional targeting.
2. This is NOT a rehearing, there are new charges and a whole new set of supposed evidence, collected in March of 2013. 200 days after the investigation was supposed to be over.
3. Legally, there is no conduct report. ManCI investigator Angela Hunsinger signed the conduct report, she’s the charging official, but in the hearing, she disavowed the entire thing and testified that she did not write it.
4. Leslie Dillon’s testified in Sean’s favor, re-affirmed his affidavit. This exonerates Sean completely and proves the entire process is just malicious harassment.
5. No evidence was admitted during the hearing by the charging official. None. Not one piece of paper. The guilty verdict of the RIB was based on Hunsinger’s totally inaccurate and blatantly false characterizations of letters written by 12 Monkey-accused prisoners.
6. ManCI investigators should not have had access to those letters. They can only review prisoners’ outgoing correspondence for a 21 day investigation. The investigation started September 19th and ended October 10th, 2012. The letters referred to in the conduct report (but not presented as evidence during the hearing) were written in March of 2013.
7. Three of those letters were written by other prisoners and have no bearing on Swain’s conduct.
8. None of the letters Sean wrote are conceivably threats to the security of the facility or indications of involvement with the army of the 12 Monkeys.
A. Letters in which he mentions that 12 Monkeys manuals can be found online at http://ge.tt/2ckaeFo/v/0 and http://ge.tt/6UJJ4xp. He has presented this information to people he wrote to (including ODRC Director Gary Mohr) as evidence that someone outside the prison with access to the internet must have created A12M.
B. In one letter he makes a joke that outside supporters should capitalize on 12 Monkeys notoriety by printing T-Shirts. He compares them to the famously ironic Che Gueverra t-shirts. This is obviously irrelevant and protected speech.
C. In another letter, he proposes a feature to a website he does not own or control (seanswain.org). A proposal which was rejected by the people who do control the website, and which, even if adopted, would be considered protected free speech by precedent set in federal courts.
9. Trevor Clark- who assisted in writing the conduct report (or, based on Hunsinger’s testimony, likely wrote the report and had her sign it) was visibly agitated and left the hearing. Later, he repeatedly burst back in to interrupt the hearing and tell everyone that he was on the phone with the FBI and had told them about that time when he shared the home addresses of Ohio politicians with Sean during one of their interviews. Clark seemed to intend this as some kind of threat… we’re not sure how stupidly sharing his mistake with more people hurts Sean. Clark said he would be writing a new conduct report against Sean.

Despite all of these absurdities, the RIB hearing found Sean guilty and will continue to hold him in the control unit and deprive him of basic rights and human needs, like sleep and adequate meals while he files his appeals.

Swain’s supporters believe this is ManCI’s true intention. They want to keep Sean there, so they can continue to torture him. If we beat these charges, they’ll just manufacture new conduct reports to keep Sean under investigation permanently. The conduct report Clark threatened to write would be the fourth frivolous and nonsensical report filed against Swain since September: 1.the admittedly ideology-targeting report, 2. the “redo” report producing this hearing, and 3. a frivolous report filed by Uriah Melton– Swain’s supposed advocate at ManCI are the other three. 4. Clark’s new report, to be uncovered.

Please send Sean mail, please donate to his legal fund. We are going forward with the lawsuit and could use all the help we can get. Thanks to hours Kate from RedBird spent on the phone with central office, Sean and the others can receive zines again. Please send things to read.

It seems like the mailroom continue to throw Sean’s mail away, randomly. If you mail him, or any of the A12M accused prisoners anything, please drop redbirdprisonabolition@riseup.net an email so we can verify if he received it (via Mr Fitrakis’ legal mail).

Sean’s Statement before RIB

Sean sent us a copy of what he wrote for his opening statement before the RIB board on April 31st. We transcribed it and combined it with other notes and details he has sent to us.

I have four issues to raise for the record before addressing the facts of the case, if I may.

First, the State of Ohio is in breach of contract, which precludes the holding of a disciplinary hearing and qualifies as grounds for dismissal of these charges.
The State of Ohio is a “creature of law”. It is not a living thing. It is brought into existence by a legal document. In this case, the Ohio Constitution. That legal instrument, the Ohio Constitution, is the creating document for the State of Ohio, bringing it into existence.
Like all contracts, the Ohio Constitution describes the duties and powers of the parties. In this case, there is The State of Ohio, the government, and the People, who are subjects. The state has powers designated to it – the power to make laws and enforce them – and it also has duties – the duty to protect rights. Those are terms of the contract.
Subjects, you and me, also have powers and duties. We must obey the laws, which is a term of the contract.
Article I of The Ohio Constitution provides in part that the State of Ohio must protect my right to free speech. This is a duty The State of Ohio has – a contractual duty. On 19 September, the State of Ohio breached that duty. I was placed in a torture cell on torture cell row, my rough draft of a published article and my typewriter were confiscated and I was subjected to a long ordeal admittedly for protected speech. The State of Ohio has undone the disciplinary findings and in this conduct report the State admits that there was a focus on my protected expression. When the State of Ohio did that to me, it violated the terms of the Ohio Constitution. It violated the contract.
There are consequences from violating a contract.
If you and I have a contract that I will de-ice your windows in the morning if you pay me $5 per day, we have a contract. On Monday, I de-ice your car windows. On Tuesday, you pay me $5 and I de-ice your windows. But on Thursday, I don’t de-ice your windows. When I come to you on Friday for $5 will you pay me? I ask, because your part of the contract requires you to pay me $5.
You certainly won’t pay me – because I breached the contract. When I breached the contract, I released you from your obligations. You no longer have to meet your end because I defaulted on my end.
Well, the same situation here. The State of Ohio had a contractual duty to protect my right to free speech. It’s part of the contract, and in breaching the contract, it released me from my obligations.
The State of Ohio crumpled up the contract. Ohio’s laws are passed by the legislature, which derives it’s power from that contract. No contract, no laws. The State of Ohio told me the laws do not apply. It released me from its laws. It breached the contract. I no longer had to follow its laws anymore than you had to pay me $5 for services I’m no longer performing.
The State of Ohio released me from the contractual obligation of following it’s laws on 19 September when it breached its contract. Its actions said the laws do not apply here. Lt Dahlby expressly told me the laws do not apply here. So, from 19 September, 2012 until The State of Ohio admitted what it did and attempted something curative – at least until then – there was an absence of law between The State of Ohio and me. You, the State of Ohio, said so.
Well, herein is the problem. The rules of conduct that the State is now attempting to prosecute are a product of the Ohio Administrative Code – the very law that the State of Ohio released me from following when it breached the contract on 19 September and punished me expressly for protected speech.
As I was released from the contract, I cannot be held to its terms. The State of Ohio has no standing to bring these claimed rules violations and the conduct report, as a matter of law, must be dismissed.
I move for its dismissal on this basis.

Second, this disciplinary case lacks jurisdiction. I was confined beginning 19 September 2012, admittedly profiled and targeted for protected speech. After 217 days, the guilty findings were reversed. Now, the form says that it is overturned by legal for re-issue and rehearing of new conduct reports, and it says that the charges may be reheard. However, legally, there’s a problem in all of this. In fact, there are a few problems.
1. This is not a rehearing. I am not facing the same charges – two new charges have been added and one old charge was dropped. So, this is a new case with a new code number, not a rehearing of the old case.
2. I am not accused of the same conduct. The conduct previously was protected speech for which I cannot be legally punished. So, now, it appears that the State is proceeding as if I am not being punished for the reason the state has already admitted it is punishing me, but, instead the State tossed me in the hole last September for alleged rules violations I was going to commit 6 months later.
3. You can’t shove the poop back into the mule. We know why Angela Hunsinger ideologically profiled me. We know why I came to the hole. We know why I was subjected to torture where two men have since died. It was admitted in the first conduct report. Ideology. Jpay. Anarchist. So now, with a new conduct report and new charges and new allegations of new misconduct, we have an effort to shove the poop back into the donkey. We’re going to pretend this ordeal did not happen for the reason it happened, and we’re going to try to put a legally-acceptable excuse on the legally unacceptable events that have already happened and are now ongoing. This is illegal. It is continued free speech persecution under a pretty mask.

On that basis, I move for the dismissal of the conduct report.

Third, there is a jurisdictional problem in this case. MANCI had the legal authority to open and photocopy my outgoing mail for a 21-day investigation. That means MANCI had until 10 October 2012 to investigate my outgoing mail. Charging officials allege that the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation requested that they open and photocopy my mail for the extended period giving rise to this conduct report.
I don’t know if that’s true. Neither do you. Such a written request is not mentioned in the conduct report, and if such requests did exist, they would necessarily have to be mentioned in the conduct report, pursuant to Policy 56-DSC-01 (VI)(1)(b), requesting all relevant facts. I would assert that documents establishing jurisdictional authority are relevant facts.
Having said that, even if such documentary requests exist, the charging officials are without jurisdiction to bring these charged rules violations. Assuming the FBI requested my photocopied mail that does not justify this disciplinary process. The FBI has power to investigate federal crimes. Ms Hunsinger and Mr Clark can by all means, photocopy my mail and turn it over to Special Agent in charge, C. Frank Figliuzzi can consider federal charges; the US attorney can bring an indictment. Neither of these people are Special Agent Figliuzzi. This is NOT a federal court.
Likewise, if Lt RS Chapman of the Ohio State Highway Patrol requested a mountain of my mail, he is entitled to it. He can review it for violations of state law. If he find violations of state law, he can urge the Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine to bring state charges in an indictment. But this is not an indictment with state charges.
If Special Agent Figliuzzi cannot find federal charges, then he can take my photocopied mail over which he has jurisdiction, and he can dispose of it. If Lt Chapman cannot find state charges, then he can take his copy of my photocopied mail, and he can dispose of it. But legally, neither of them, obtaining my outgoing and incoming correspondence under the justification of investigating state and federal crimes, can hand those materials to prison authorities in order to bring disciplinary charges based upon materials that prison authorities had no authority to obtain directly.

On that basis, I move that my conduct report be redacted to remove all references to any correspondence from me that was sent after the institution’s investigation expired on 10 October, 2012. And I move for dismissal of all charged rule violations that have their basis in my outgoing correspondence after 10 October 2012. To use that correspondence is to continue the lawless exceptionalism that has been the hallmark of this case from the start.

As a fourth and final matter before addressing the facts, this conduct report is beyond the time limits allowed by local policy 3D 011 (vI(J)(3)(b), requiring an RIB hearing to be held within seven business days following the date I was placed in security control for other than investigative reasons. That means that, by the mandatory timelines, you had seven business days from Oct 10, 2012. That period elapsed on 19 October, 2012. You are now [at the time of the hearing] 200 days late. Assuming an argument that this is a re-hearing, I would remind you that it is not. It is a distinct, new case number with new charges and a totally new infrastructure of fact. It is not a re-hearing of MANCI-12-007219. It is not a re-hearing of those charges. It is not a re-hearing of those charged instances of alleged misconduct. This new conduct report, stating the date of offense of 19 September, 2012 at 4:00 PM had to be heard months ago pursuant to the Ohio Administrative Code, DRC policy, and local policy.

On that basis, I move for the conduct report’s dismissal.

Should I continue with the facts of the case, or permit you to address those legal arguments first? If you want, I’ll continue w/ the facts. I’ll try to be brief and thorough.

In 2009 I came to MANCI. Model prisoner- no fights, no major misconduct, locked up since 1991. No gang activity. But right after I got here, Ms Hunsinger put me on the gang list, absent the requisite gang ticket, because a website called SeanSwain.org featured my published work.

August 2012, JPAY policy happened and I wrote an article for seanswain.org saying it’s identity theft to take 750,000 visitors information without their consent and give it to Jpay. Shortly after that, someone- not a prisoner- posted 12 Monkeys manuals on the internet. Staff printed them off. In a prison where 3A + 3B prisoners don’t mingle, staff had to be involved to get hundreds of copies to every block.

I was recommended for medium on 12 September. I had to get to Marion for programs to get a parole in 2016. I’ll have 25 years in.

According to Shawn Marshall, it was about that time he was called to Security Threat Group (STG) office. Marshall was in 3A with me. Marshall says he was given 12 Monkey Manuals to plant in my cell. He didn’t do it. When STG searched my cell for nearly 2 hours on 19 September, all they found was a rough draft of my Jpay article and my typewriter. I was one of 3 prisoners searched that day, I later learned. I had NO 12 Monkeys materials but I was removed from population and placed in a torture cell on torture cell row where two men have since died.

Les Dillon, in 1B, was found with a mountain of 12 Monkeys materials. He was left in population. Does that sound like a 12 Monkey investigation?

I was held incommunicado in conditions the CIA Kubark manual calls “the simple torture situation,” I left there sleep-deprived and hallucinating. In the last 230-some days, decades-long procedures for segregation changed to make conditions intolerable, in at least 13 ways, while I’ve lost over 50 pounds. In slow starvation.

The investigation ended 10 October, 2012 and I went to RIB 24 October, charged with rules 15, 17, and 56, based on my ideology and published work. Jpay, anarchism. Ms Hunsinger testified that I engaged in none of the 12 Monkeys promoted activities, I played no role in their materials, and I engaged in no criminal activity. I was found guilty and slated for supermax as a CREATOR of the Army of the 12 Monkeys. I was days away from transfer.

My attorney presented proof of my innocence, including the domains where 12 Monkeys materials are on the internet- where I can’t put them, evidence Ms Hunsinger conceded. He proved Ms Hunsinger misrepresented my writings. SeanSwain.org amassed a groundswell of support from Justice Watch to Amnesty International; National Religious Campaign Against Torture to claims before the OAS that may set a precedent in international law. I’m recognized as a political prisoner and as a prisoner of conscience, and I’ve now been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The DRC hates SeanSwain.org.

On passover, the day that the god of Abraham, Itzak, and Yisrael liberated slaves from Egypt, I learned this injustice was reversed. Unfortunately, a new injustice is renewed with all the legal deficiencies I raised already. Those claims notwithstanding, the new conduct report cites 8 instances of conduct I will address briefly [Sean re-iterates the arguments found here].

So, to recap, here are eight reasons you’re supposed to give the parole board justification to make me die in prison as a terrorist rather than going to medium to get programs and get a parole before my elderly parents die:

1. Dillon wrote a story investigators misrepresent in 7 ways.
2. Dzelajilija wrote a letter that doesn’t implicate me in anything.
3. Marshall believed Ms Hunsinger just like everyone else does so he sent me a coded message.
4. I discovered web addresses that destroyed the first flimsy case they brought.
5. I don’t have 12 Monkey manuals on a site I don’t own.
6. I insulted the 12 Monkeys by suggesting a friend should profiteer and sell t-shirts.
7. Other people own a site that doesn’t feature an idea I proposed, that doesn’t work like investigators describe it.
8. One of Ms Hunsinger’s personalities doesn’t know the other one already exonerated me of disseminating 12 Monkey materials on the compound.

PSALM 118:10-12.
His word does not return to him void.

Further analysis of BLAST!Blog accusations (#7) sent in a second letter, mailed May 19th…

This is BLAST!Blog in a nutshell: I proposed a feature at SeanSwain.org which is mastered outside the US on a server OUTSIDE the US. What I wrote was a proposal. It was titled: Proposal. As I have no internet access, I CANNOT post anything anywhere nor create a feature on a site. Also, I don’t own seanswain.org. Really, I don’t even know who does.
So, before we go into the CONTENT of my BLAST!Blog proposal, let’s be clear about the process. I was ONLY writing a proposal and sending it to others who may or may not implement the proposed idea. This means what we’re dealing with in the prison disciplinary process is NOT whether or not BLAST!Blog would be a threat to security. No. What we’re dealing with is the question of whether it constitutes a threat to security if I communicate an idea for a website to my friends and my counsel in the free world. We’re ONLY dealing with MY SPEECH, my transmission of a proposed idea. When my mail left here and went to point B, did that endanger the security of the institution?
Again, before we get to CONTENT of BLAST!Blog, whatever it is, it’s the argument of fascists that I can put words on paper and if they arrive in the free world, the ODRC might fall apart. NOT if you ACT on those words. Just if YOU read them.
Yes. I have magic powers.
They can’t argue anything else. If they argue that it’s not what I wrote, but that it’s IF you act on it, then they have switched the focus- it would become YOUR conduct that is a potential threat. They can’t punish me for that. So, legally speaking, they are locked in on an arugement that MY COMMUNICATION OF WORDS ON PAPER- in the form of the BLAST!Blog proposal- THREATENED SECURITY.
Now, the CONTENT of what I wrote.
BLAST!Blog, as I proposed it, would be a feature. It would have a disclaimer against violence, property damage and harrassment. A disclaimer written and/or approved by counsel. After the disclaimer, mandated-acknowledgement disclaimer, you go to BLAST!Blog proper. BLAST!Blog would have a listing of fascists and their crimes against humanity. It would have their names- just like the DRC website. It would have their photo, just like the DRC website. It would have a description of their crimes, just like the DRC website has for 50,000 convicted felons.
By the BLAST!Blog proposal, THAT IS ALL THE INFORMATION THAT SEANSWAIN.ORG WOULD POST. Nothing more. Neither BLAST!Blog, nor seanswain.org would post ANY personal information of anyone. Period.
Hunsinger alleges that BLAST!Blog would feature home addresses, phone #s, etc of DRC employees to promote harassment, violence and property damage. Again, she MADE THAT UP. See a pattern? Where evidence does not exist, she invents it.
Now, BLAST!Blog would also feature message boards. Visitors would post comments on them. Legally, seanswain.org IS NOT responsible for the contents of anonymous visitor postings. No telling what might be posted. No telling if anything would be posted.
So the legal question is, is the content of my BLAST!Blog proposal, a proposal to create a feature that has no more information than the DRC website, with a disclaimer against violence, so fucking dangerous that MY WRITING IT and my TRANSMISSION OF IT TO FREE WORLD PEOPLE constitutes a threat to the safety and security of the DRC?
Get the fuck out of here.
For legal purposes, let’s compare. Another case. Oregon- I think. People posted a page at freepress (?) and on the page they featured HOME ADDRESSES of scumbag cops. As far as I know, no disclaimer. The federal court said their postings were PROTECTED FREE SPEECH. Now, let’s consider. In Oregon, we’re dealing with cops, not guards. We’re dealing with cops in the community among people who can visit the site. Prisoners can’t visit a site. In Oregon, we’re not dealing with a messageboard, but direct posting of home addresses. In Oregon, we’re not dealing with- as far as I know- a mandatory-acknowledgement disclaimer. So, in Oregon, the SPEECH under review by the court was, in every respect, more serious and more dangerous than anything I proposed. Also in that case, they didn’t propose doing it; they did it.
Okay, so I’m going to MAX for suggesting that you engage in PROTECTED SPEECH???
How could it be that SUGGESTING that you engage in PROTECTED SPEECH would constitute a threat to the prison’s security???
I don’t care what these fuckweasels say, but there no conceivable way anybody can legally argue that merely suggesting you do something the federal courts say you have a right to do could be a danger to prison security.
Now, check it out. Blackjack wrote a letter telling people NOT to create a website. That’s a security threat. He’s going to MAX. I wrote a letter telling people TO build a site. That’s a security threat. I’m going to MAX. So, if you say DO it, you go to max; if you say NOT to do it, you got to MAX. So, if you mention the internet, you’re a security threat???
Speaking of security threat- you recall these are the same shitheads who said Walden is a treat to security, right? We’re talking about credibility here. They have none.
Also, in the first conduct report, remember my writings were “advocating property damage and violence.” Then in my 5B Placement, no less than 4 times they assert that I advocate “property damage and violence.” Then, in a kite that conceivably says NOTHING threatening, they allege that I “threaten bodily harm”- violence. Now, the re-tread case, they again allege that I promote “property damage and potential violence.”
Property damage property damage property damage, violence violence violence. It matters not what I write or what I say, it’s advocacy of property damage and violence. Provably, that’s got nothing to do with reality. It has to do with their psychopathology. They are provably delusional. Violence violence violence property damage property damage property damage.
You do realize, in 22+ years locked up, I’ve had ZERO fights. No violence in 22+ years. I took a vow of non-violence in 1995. I was recognized personally- not making this up- by ROSA PARKS for my dedication to nonviolence. SHE nominated my placement on the Wall of Tolerance- she PERSONALLY NOMINATED ME- for my work toward a peaceful, nonviolent world.
No fights. 22+ years. In prison.
Violence violence violence. Property damage property damage property damage. Really??
I’ve been terrorized. I’m in the custody of terrorists who say a man who took and kept a vow of nonviolence is violent. I was tortured. Starved. Subjected to purposeless, mindless trauma.

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

New Chapter in the Persecution of Sean Swain Begins

April 30th, 2013, Mansfield Correctional Institution- Investigator Angela Hunsinger and Staff Counsel Trevor Clark have started over from scratch in their efforts to persecute Sean Swain for his beliefs and protected speech following threat of legal action from Swain’s defense team. Swain has been held in local control (the hole) since Sept 19, 2012 on allegations that he founded the Army of the 12 Monkeys prison guerrilla resistance movement. Staff at Mansfield have repeatedly changed and violated rules regarding the treatment and conditions for prisoners in local control since Swain was moved there in September.

In a letter to Swain’s lawyer, Mr. Robert Fitrakis, Mr. Clark admits that these allegations relied too heavily on Swain’s beliefs and ideals. The new conduct report he helped Angela Hunsinger put together also admits that the previous effort was dismissed due to its “primary reliance on inmate Swain’s beliefs and possession of anarchist publications”. Mr Clark’s letter states that a “new ticket has been written and new disciplinary procedures will be commenced to address behaviour.” Mr Clark then enclosed a copy of the new conduct report.

This conduct report addresses only the written correspondence of Sean Swain and the recent behaviour and statements made by other prisoners, none of whom implicate Swain. It maintains the offense date of September 19th, 2012, but describes activities mainly occurring in spring of 2013. It fails to support any allegation that Swain produced, disseminated, or otherwise participated in any rules violations back in September .

Sean’s defense team believes this new conduct report is a continuation of the harassment and ideological targeting of their client, which both Hunsinger and Clark have admitted to. They will not allow staff at Mansfield Correctional to hold their client in harsh and illegal conditions indefinitely by simply manufacturing new conduct reports against him. A third frivolous conduct report, alleging that Swain used threatening language in a kite (internal prison communication) sent to another prison official has also been filed.

Sean Swain has publicly refuted all the claims of the new conduct report. He suspects that Hunsinger may have actually manufactured the Army of the 12 Monkeys herself, in an effort to silence Swain’s opposition to recent ODRC policy changes, and gain notoriety for catching prisoner terrorists.

Swain intends to fight the charges through the Rules Infraction Board (RIB) hearing process. Last time, the RIB found Swain guilty and he unsuccessfully appealed the decision all the way to the top. Even ODRC Director Gary Mohr refused Swain’s appeal of a guilty verdict which his accusers now admit was inappropriate enough to be entirely dismissed. Swain is hoping that legal action, and attention from outside supporters will hold the ODRC accountable, since its own process is uselessly corrupt.

Conduct Report Number 3

On April 23rd a correctional officer issued this frivolous conduct report against Sean. Conduct report 3

Sean’s take:

It was written by inspector Uriah L. Melton, supposedly my “advocate”. Note he wrote me up for threatening bodily harm. Note the conduct report doesn’t mention bodily harm or a threat to do anything at all.

Me: My aunt knits beautiful scarves.
URIAH L. MELTON: Don’t threaten me!
ME: Threat?
MELTON: I’m writing that up!
ME: But I didn’t SAY anything.
MELTON: How dare you threaten me again.
Yep. Lunatics.

Melton wrote Sean up after meeting with Deputy Warden Scott Basquin, who has been going out of his way and violating many rules to make life difficult for Sean. Sean says “the plan is to just use the disciplinary process to beat me up over and over again. Been through it. Not doing it again.”

Sean also says “They’ll get tired of killing me before i get tired of dying. Or they’ll wish they hadn’t killed me.”

Word from Sean

We received this JPay from Sean today, it was written on the 24th. It appears as though the Army of the 12 Monkeys is still active at Mansfield Correctional. A “handful of guys” just got transferred to the hole, accused of being members of the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

We also heard rumors that at least one of these prisoners is being tortured in a “suicide cell” just like Sean was initially. The guy’s name is Shawn Marshall. His number is 461-448. Word is Marshall went to this torture cell on Tuesday Jan 15th. He doesn’t have friends or family on the outside, so there’s no one to stop them from keeping him in torture cell for a long time.

Sean has not had his final security reveiw or been transferred yet. ManCI staff are depriving Sean and others accused of 12 Monkeys activity of food and sleep. Read the JPay for details.

Please call ManCI at 419-526-2000 demand that they stop torturing Shawn Marshall (461-448) and that they adequately feed prisoners in seg and allow them to sleep.

Please call Director Gary Mohr at Central Office, 614-752-1150, demand that ManCI staff be sanctioned until this treatment changes.

Alleged Anarchist Prison Saboteur Sean Swain is MIA

On Friday January 11th Sean Swain wrote a JPay email notifying outside supporters that his security status review was scheduled for the following Monday. We didn’t receive this email until Tuesday and haven’t heard anything since. On December 26th, Sean sent a fat envelope with instructions for his lawyer on how to pressure officials, threatening a civil suit if they go ahead with the transfer. This envelope didn’t arrive until Thursday January 10th. Intentional delays of communication by ManCI staff prevented us from helping Sean fight this transfer.

This is but one example of the kind of treatment Sean has received since first being accused of leading the Army of the 12 Monkeys’ sabotage campaign back in September. ManCI staff have made special exceptions to almost every rule regulating how they’re supposed to treat someone in ad seg facing these kind of charges. Of course, this is not unexpected. Prison guards at ManCI seem to enthusiastically embrace the reputation that COs are hateful, small minded and trifling.

Calls to the prison and officials in central office contradict Sean’s information and each other. These people are either jerking us around, or they are totally inept. We cannot get trustworthy information on whether the security review occurred, it’s decision, or Sean’s current status.

Sean Swain needs our help standing up to these people. The last communication we’ve received from him was the above-mentioned JPay dated Jan 11th. He needs mail. He needs donations to his legal fund. He needs things to read. ManCI staff deny books sent to him on the slightest pretense, but some zines and articles seem to have gotten through.

He needs the phones at ManCI and ODRC central office to ring off the hook. Sean was scheduled for a status reduction that would have sent him to lower security at Marion when the 12 Monkeys events occurred. Please call the prison and demand that Sean be transferred to Marion, as planned. If you want to be polite or reasonable, you can describe how the Rules Infraction Board presented no evidence, how the investigator admitted that the accusation is based on Sean’s ideology, how these charges are a trumped up retaliation against Sean’s anti-prison privitization essays. You can remind them that the supreme court has ruled that prisons have no legitimate interest in controlling the speech or ideology of their captives. We doubt that Sean cares very much about us being reasonable or polite with these people anymore, though.

Please call ManCI at 419-526-2000 ask for the Warden’s office and demand all this nonsense be dropped and Sean sent to Marion as planned. You can also ask to speak to the Local Control unit manager, Lt Lynch, if you wanna listen to the phone ring while he ignores it.

Please call Director Gary Mohr at Central Office, 614-752-1150 . Let him know that we won’t tolerate the COs and officials in Mansfield trampling on the basic rights of prisoners. Ask to talk to Lotte Sanders in legal services if you want to argue the facts of Sean’s case with a talkative and friendly fascist bureaucrat.

It goes without saying that Sean (like every prisoner) also needs a lot of things that we can’t publically condone or openly speak about.