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.
So, before I could even finish writing the epic tale of those wacky shenanigans, I was told to hop on a prison bus for Lucasville. When I protested that this was selective, Jay Lowdown said, “we thought you’d say that, that’s why thirty seven others are going with you. So, to disguise prison fascist’s targeting of me, they tossed thirty seven other dolphins into the tuna net as collateral damage.
The bus ride was unannounced, totally irregular, and it happened only hours after the phone call about an injunction that I had with counsel, which prison officials certainly didn’t monitor… yeah, right. The bus wasn’t gassed up. When it stopped at another prison to get gassed up, our bag lunches weren’t prepared. All indications that this happened spur of the moment.
When we rolled away from OSP, our property, packed in boxes on the pavement was still sitting there. It wouldn’t fit in the underside of the bus. Again, a total absence of planning. But the ODRC isn’t out to get me and this had nothing to do with responding repressively to anticipated legal moves by my attorney. Stop laughing.
Lucasville. The place stinks with malice, as though it’s very existence day to day is a personal revenge mission carried out against it’s captives. Built in the early seventies, it looks like a bad prison movie. The cells are roughly a quarter the size of my cell at OSP, big enough for a steel toilet, steel sink, steel bed and a steel desktop, and heated by a rusty steal radiator along the back wall, covered in forty years of colorful funk: encrusted food and unidentifiable stuff.
None of the windows close anymore. Mine has a beautiful view of the gun tower. Forty cells, two tiers of twenty on each side, facing forty cells on the other side. The cell fronts are made of bars from the waist up, painted baby poop green. There’s no privacy, but it’s like living in a community. It reminds me of tenement buildings, where poor folks built relationships across fire escapes. It’s like that.
The thirty eight as we transfers were dubbed by staff, didn’t even have hygiene given to us until Thursday. On Friday, everybody but me got changes of clothes and towels to get them through the weekend. Me, I’m still wearing the same underwear since Tuesday and there’s no telling when I’ll get my property, or if I’ll get it. I suspect this was done to make me suffer.
When I spoke to the major, DA Warren, he was sympathetic until he saw my name on the door. Then he said “oh, you’re Swain” and his demeanor changed. Clearly, the administration here has already been brainwashed to see me as an enemy and to repress accordingly. But interestingly, their selective deprivations have provoked something amazing. Other prisoners who do not even know me from a can of gray paint saw my situation. They don’t know why officials hate me, and they’ve never even heard this broadcast. First came a donation of a paper and pen, then a styrofoam cup and enough coffee to get me through the weekend. Then food: Ramen noodles, which are gold on the black market, and cheese sandwiches, along with a long john shirt, which has been a lifesaver. With just the clothes on my back and standard issue bedding, I’ve been sleeping on the floor with my mattress pressed against the raditor. Last: a pair of shoes.
Nobody asked for anything in return and told me to return what I could, when I could, if I could. One guy yelled across the range that he knew what it felt like to have nothing. Not to worry. Inspiring that in the darkest, most hideous hate factory the worst offenders show so much sympathy while the staff don’t.
I think it was Menken, maybe Lardner who said if you want to see the worst that humanity has to offer, come to a max security prison at shift change.
Welcome to Lucasville.
This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. If you’re listening, you are the resistance.