Tag Archives: lucasville

The Hunger Conspiracy

[editor’s note: Sean wrote this a few weeks ago, but didn’t want to go public with it until he confirmed some facts, and made sure the guys who were put in the hole wanted it published. We made some calls to the CIIC and waited for word from Sean. One of the last messages before Sean’s access to email and phones was cut off said it was time to go public with this story. All but one of the guys is out of the hole. Updates will be forthcoming.]

In a perfect world, just by sending this, prison officials would straighten the situation out before this had to be published. Let’s hope… Freedom, Sean.

17:04, 20April. I’m typing, coughing and sneezing.

It started at shift change. Second shift officers came on shift and decided that they wished they had stayed in school longer so they could have gotten jobs as janitors at the library, rather than getting stuck in a prison job. Unlucky for all of us held in L5, tenth grade was way too hard for these specimens. So here they are. Continue reading →

Prison Bus to Shitville

PRISON BUS TO SHITVILLE: THE EMERGENCY, UNPLANNED TRANSFER FROM OSP TO SOCF THAT WASN’T DESIGNED IN ANY WAY TO FUCK MY LIFE

Words, filtered through a couple weeks of low-intensity trauma:
Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I awoke at 3:45, disoriented, pulling earplugs out of my ears. Dazed, I staggered to the door. Warden Jay Lowdown was there, speaking. “Words words words, something something words.” When I said, “Huh?,” he repeated:
“Today you’re being transferred to the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.”
Me: “Uh, why am I being selectively punished?”
“You’re not,” answered Jay Lowdown. He looked a lot taller in his pictures. I also noticed he had the beginnings of a moustache. I remember thinking he needed to quit it. “You’re going from one Level 4 institution to another one.”
Me: “Yeah. Okay. But it still sucks. And it feels pretty selective.”
“We thought you might say that,” Jay replied. “That’s why 37 others are going with you.”

Behind him, I saw deputy wardens, unit staff, and Special Response Teams (SRTs). The SRTs wear black fatigues and hats, paramilitary style. They are also sometimes called STAR, “Special Tactical something Response.” I think the “A” stands for “Asshole.” They typically prefer STAR to SRT, because it feels more glamorous when they have STAR on their hats. They go shopping or walk into bars or wait for pedicures at their favorite beauty shops and their hats announce them as STARs.
A couple of them came to my cell and within moments, everything I owned was crammed in boxes, the last time I would ever see half of my property. Within minutes, I was standing in my cell with a half a roll of toilet paper and a lot of empty space. The STAR assholes moved on to the next cell like a biblical swarm of locusts dispatched by a loving, murderous god. I stood there, confused.
I was going to Lucasville. Continue reading →

Updates…

Call in Day…

On Monday we had a call in day to let the Southeast Regional Office of the ODRC know that SOCF staff were already messing with Sean and that we’d be keeping an eye on things. When supporters didn’t just get voicemail, we were told that they’re getting lots of calls and are having a meeting with people from legal services (trainwreck Trevor’s office) about the issue. This means any fuckweaselry that occurs in the near future was either approved and coordinated from the top, or that the ODRC does not have control of its prisons. Both things seem equally possible. They do have a rather atrocious (deadly even) record of keeping SOCF orderly.

Thank you to everyone who made the calls, we think they’ve made a positive difference.

Speaking of evidence for the lawsuit…

During Sean’s recent hunger strike his lawyer filed a restraining order demanding that the ODRC stop interferring with Sean’s access to communication. The judge appointed to Sean’s lawsuit scheduled a hearing on this motion for this Friday, but Beer Bong Tommy is sick with the flu (or maybe he just partied a little too hardy) and they requested a delay til Fri March 6th. So, now we get to see if the fuckweasels can contain their fascistic impulses for even a week, or if they do something really stupid and embarassing even with a hearing scheduled.

Property…

We’re not hearing from Sean as often because phone calls from SOCF are five times as expensive as from OSP. But we haven’t heard that he (or any of the 4A transfers) got his property back yet. We hope to hear more from him soon.

SUPPORT SEAN RESISTING HARASSMENT AT SOCF

Sean has been transferred to SOCF in Lucasville. We believe this is a response to an injunction filed by his lawyer to unblock video visits and other communication restrictions. We believe this because the Warden at OSP basically admitted it.

His new address is:

Sean Swain
243-205
P. O. Box 45699
1724 St. Rt. 728
Lucasville, Ohio 45699

He likely won’t get any mail that was sent to OSP in the last week.

At Lucasville, Sean has already been singled out and deprived of basic amenities, like clean clothes, hygiene and heat. Continue reading →

Welcome to Lucasville

From The Final Straw Radio

[NOTE: if you want to support Sean, please send him a letter, or call these people and demand they give him his property and cease all harassment.]

I’ve been wearing the same pair of underwear since Tuesday. That night at three in the morning the warden at the super duper max, Jay “Lowdown” Forshay informed me that I was being transferred to Lucasville. Lucasville, home of the 1993 prisoner uprising, is a psychological September Eleventh for the Ohio prison system. It’s also the prison where ODRC officials attempted to put former prisoner writer Timothy “Little Rock” Reed in order to engineer his death until he gained asylum from Ohio in New Mexico, proving conclusively that Ohio prison officials attempted to murder him.

In the lead up to this transfer prison officials tried several times unsuccessfully to silence me. Blocking phone communication for eight weeks to keep me off the radio, intercepting intercepting postings for SeanSwain.org and communications with counsel who filed a civil action against prison officials on my behalf, and then blocking my video visits to stop me from generating video on the site, which is illegal, not that the laws matter to fascists.

In response I undertook a hunger strike until I was threatened with being tossed in the hole, which is illegal, not that laws matter to fascists. So I began a med strike, and then OSP physician James Kline held me incommunicado with medical isolation, in a torture cell, until I agreed to take blood pressure medication I had refused, which is illegal, not that they care. Continue reading →

The Empire Strikes Back!

Within 48 hours of returning from his forced isolation in the medical wing of OSP, Sean was transferred out to SOCF in Lucasville. Any mail sent to Sean in the last few days is going to be coming back to you. Please re-send it to his new address:

Sean Swain
243-205
P. O. Box 45699
1724 St. Rt. 728
Lucasville, Ohio 45699

Sean called this morning with some information, which we’ve reconstructed here as well as possible. We won’t be getting more solid word from Sean until next week, because they’re holding his property until at least Monday. He’s been wearing the same socks and underwear since they transferred him on Tuesday.

Sean is no longer on hunger strike, he’s taking his pills, he had to to get out of the medical wing and back to general population Sunday night.If he wouldn’t have, he thinks they would have transferred him directly from the medical wing, and none of his outside supporters would have gotten any information about where he went or how to find him.

So, instead they transferred him and the rest of 4A, did a rush job, and gave Sean “special treatment” like failing to give him the same clothes as the other prisoners, putting him in a cell with gaps in the window so freezing wind was whistling in all night, and then turning off the heater when he moved his mattress to lie next to it.
Continue reading →