Nine receive honor for their positive impact
Correcting the Narrative highlights stories, struggles, successes of formerly incarcerated
Dwayne Mack never imagined standing on a stage before a packed audience accepting an award for a talent he honed while in the Wisconsin state prison system.
He spent some 20 years collectively in the state’s correctional system, cycling in and out since he was 9. Mack looks back on that time in his life and called it “habitual foolishness and aggravated stupidity.”
But it was within the walls of the House of Corrections where Mack’s love for performing got him involved in the theater arts.
With no formal training, he secured roles in several play productions. He even wrote one himself while at the Wisconsin Resource Center, a treatment center in Winnebago. It was a comedy about the travails befallen friends when one decides to confront his girlfriend’s boss for using the N-word.
“Everywhere I went I was always writing something,” Mack said, noting if there was no theater, the prison chapel would do. “They would just let me get involved.”
Mack turned his gift of performing into a means to inspire others. He started his own production company that puts on one-man plays and theatrical dances infused with inspirational messages. He often performs in schools and for community groups.
Mack’s effort to give back landed him on that stage at Turner Hall early last month. It was there that he was recognized by criminal justice reform organizations for his accomplishments.
“Ain’t that something for a guy like me,” he said. Mack was one of nine recipients of a newly created award to honor formerly incarcerated men and women who succeeded against the odds to have a positive impact on their communities and within their own lives.
The inaugural Correcting the Narrative awards ceremony is the brainchild of Shannon Ross, executive director of The Community, a prison newsletter that morphed into a nonprofit organization missioned to uplift people with criminal records.
“When I was incarcerated, I always felt that we did a terrible job of how we hold up success stories,”
Ross said. “We would celebrate those who are more charismatic, who have businesses or who are connected. Those are not most people.”
They were more like Brianna Nelson, who turned a brush with the law as a teenager into advocacy for more restorative justice services for youth. Or Jordan Berg and Dominique Gulley, both of whom have shined a light on incarceration’s impact on the LGBTQ+ community. Or Gene Echols, whose work ethic and volunteerism allowed him to provide for his family, becoming an example of having a successful life after incarceration.
Success for those leaving prison is more measured, said Ross, who spent 17 years incarcerated. Success is measured by simpler things like getting a job, having a family, improving one’s credit score, helping out in their community or just finding peace of mind, he said.
These stories are not heralded, Ross added. “This population, in particular, is very powerful to emphasize that just having a job, having a family and having peace in your life is absolute success,” he said. “We need to hold that up, hold those quieter success stories up.”
Ross created an awards ceremony to do just that. The inaugural Correcting the Narrative awards was held in November to a packed crowd at Turner Hall Ballroom. Project RETURN and the Milwaukee Turners co-sponsored the event.
Ross wanted to recognize the life-affirming successes of system-involved individuals who are doing what’s right as examples for those on the inside.
“We want to be able to hold up stories that are going to resonate with those who are inside and are encouraged, so they do not feel that they are not living their best life because they’re not getting awards,” Ross said.
The honorees were selected by 10 community groups involved in re-entry, criminal justice reform, or decarceration work. The organizations selected the honorees that best represent the work they do to effect change in the lives of those impacted by the criminal justice system.
But Ross went a step further to highlight the successes of system impacted individuals. He wanted every aspect of the ceremony to be touched by someone impacted by the criminal justice system down to the servers and live entertainment.
The award itself — a pendant fashioned to resemble a fingerprint — was conceived and designed by system-impacted persons. It was presented to honorees in a wood and glass frame. But the pendant’s design was significant. A person’s fingerprint is the first thing that is taken when arrested. Ross wanted the fingerprint to have a different meaning.
“The pendant is really cool,” he said. “It is the first thing that they take from you as evidence that you are part of the problem. It is a way of us taking it back [and] saying now you are fingerprinted on the solution.”
That’s how Nelson sees herself. She caught a case for fraud at age 17 but was charged as an adult. She was unable to get her record expunged, making finding a job difficult, especially for someone just embarking on life.
“I had to settle for jobs that didn’t pay a lot or like under-the-table jobs and different things like that…. So now I help people with those same traumas,” she said.
Nelson felt honored to be recognized for her activism and organizing work. She has worked with several community groups including Common Ground and MICAH. She currently works with Sister’s Keepers, an arm of All of Us or None, which selected Nelson for the Correcting the Narrative award.
Her activism focuses on re-entry services, decriminalizing mental illness, and ending the school-to-prison pipeline. And coming from a family of philanthropists, Nelson has always been involved in community organizing.
“I was always taught to fight for what we need in our community and give back,” she said.
Mack was selected for the award by the Wisconsin Community Services, which works with disenfranchised and highest risk residents. He works there as a peer support specialist, a job he landed after performing his one-man play about escaped slave, Joshua Glover, who was busted out of a Milwaukee jail after being apprehended in Wisconsin under the Fugitive Slave Act.
Mack knew as a kid he wanted to be on the stage from watching Garret Morris on “Saturday Night Live.” He got his acting chops thanks to his mother. He and his older brother would entertain guests when she hosted house parties. The two would recreate the dances of the Jackson Five that they saw on American Band Stand and Soul Train.
“That’s when I really started creating my own little skits,” said Mack, owner of Mack Production LLC. “I knew theater was where my calling was.”
Mack called being recognized for the award inspiring and invigorating.
“This is our Oscars for formerly incarcerated people,” he said. “The streets acknowledged us. The state of Wisconsin acknowledged us when we did wrong. So for us to acknowledge one another when we are doing right, that’s a great irony. Let’s get used to going after our dreams.”
Honoree Jason O’Malley agreed. “So often the media and everybody focuses on negative stories — people going back (to prison), people committing crimes and not highlighting or showcasing the stories that people are doing well. I am very thanks for that,” he said.
O’Malley was selected for the Correcting the Narrative award by the founder of the Wisconsin-based re-entry support program Fair Shake. He has worked with the founder on developing a better metric to determine how well returning citizens integrate back into society over the standard recidivism rate.
Not bad for someone who has always been good with numbers. O’Malley could be labeled as a math prodigy. But bad choices early in life landed him inside a federal prison in Pennsylvania for drug possession.
But he didn’t let his math skills go to waste. In prison, O’Malley tutored others in algebra and calculus. That didn’t stop once released. He continued to tutor formerly incarcerated individuals helping them prepare for their GED.
“I’ve been tutoring and helping people all my life,” O’Malley said, adding that the first person he tutored growing up in a low-income housing development in Warren, Ohio was his mother. He helped her study for the GED.
“So when I went to prison, the job that I wanted to get is tutoring. I was just going to do it just to get the money until I found out this is what I am supposed to be doing,” said O’Malley, an Ohio native who lives in Pittsburgh.
Now O’Malley is part of a burgeoning movement to push STEM education in conjunction with vocational education for the incarcerated and the formerly incarcerated. Individuals impacted by the criminal justice system should not be just limited to vocational training, he said.
He’s finishing his bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Youngstown State University and plans to get a master’s.
“I’m thankful to be recognized because I worked really hard at helping people all my life. So, it felt good to be validated,” O’Malley said.
He applauded Ross for highlighting the lives of returning citizens who are “still trying to work hard to change things.”