You may not understand Sean’s hungerstrike and impending refusal of medication. “Freedom or Death” for the prison industrial complex’s monopoly equivalent of Skype might seem  a little extreme to you. Well, this post is here to explain why this struggle matters and means more than that.

For the last week, many of us have been calling various prison officials regarding Sean’s hunger strike. If annoying them enough to get them to pass the buck to someone else is any indicator, this call-in campaign is working.

Warden Forshay at OSP told supporters that he had nothing to do with pulling the video visits. He said they were pulled by DRC Investigator Paul Schumacher. You can call Warden Forshay at 330-743-0700, ext 2006, and he’ll tell you to call someone else.

Schumacher  told Sean’s lawyer a bunch of lies about how he cancelled the video visit because the automatic keyword search system used to monitor JPay correspondence flagged some of Sean’s emails. For funny stories about how we know this is a lie, see below.

Other than Sean’s lawyer, Paul Schumacher didn’t answer the phone or return calls to anyone until after an Anarchist News post invited people to call his voicemail and “say whatever you want”. Then he answered the phone and said he can’t say anything other than to tell people who ask about Sean Swain ought to call Assistant Attorney General, Thomas C Miller. Then we asked him a few more questions and he told us a few more things, things he’d just said he wasn’t supposed to say. He even slipped up and kinda admitted he was instructed to pull the visits. Which is obvious anyway. Anyway, if you wanna chat with Paul and see if he’s got anything else to say, you can call 614-728-1152, but if he answers, he’s probably just gonna tell you to call Thomas Miller. Continue reading →