Tyrone

Katie D.

January 24, 2011 - 1:00 AM

On Saturday, in Graterford Prison outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I held the commutation papers for Tyron Werts in my hands, and saw in his eyes the knowledge of freedom after thirty-seven years of imprisonment.

I work in prisons regularly, and have made this a part of my life since freshman year at the University of Oregon, with my first Inside-Out class. I do not do advocacy work, and do not believe that every person I have met inside should be released tomorrow. This is a tension I hold within myself constantly: my deep connection and empathy with people who are incarcerated, and the nature of my work, which is education and not activism.

All that to preface this profound celebration: Tyrone will go free.

Tyrone was a founding member of the Think Tank for the national Inside-Out Program. He was the president of the Lifers Association for years, and has worked in a myriad of ways to advocate for a cultural shift within the prisons to move away from violence and towards education and dialogue. He was a compassionate and mentoring presence in my instructor training sessions at Greaterford, and is someone I have thought of often in the past year and a half since then.

I am far from the only one who sees tremendous strength and inspiration in Tyrone. Here's a newspaper article from the Philadelphia Weekly a couple years ago, which lays out his history in brief and explains what he's done on the inside: http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/Larger-Than-Life.html

Another example of Tyrone's influence is his presence in the book Doing Life, by Howard Zehr (Tyrone is pictured on the cover, on the bottom right-hand side) Howard Zehr is a professor of Restorative Justice at one of the most influential schools of Conflict Resolution in the country: Eastern Mennonite University.

When I met Tyrone a year and a half ago, he was a quiet man with a tremendous force and presence. But he was also somewhat worn down, somewhat resigned to the life sentence he bore every day, and the reality of his future inside the walls of Graterford and his eventual death there. Life without parole is not an easy sentence to integrate into a psychologically whole person. Somehow he managed, and created a life for himself that integrated his leadership and creative capacity in a way that transformed hundreds of lives.

But now, with commutation in hand, he is a new man. The power and hope in him were palpable at our meeting. It was almost overwhelming: his renewed determination to work for powerful positive change in the world. He will be continuing his work with Inside-Out in a new capacity on the outside. He told us that he feels it is his "sacred duty" to go to work upon his release, rather than going on vacation. He's ready to use his freedom to make the largest mark he can.

It is a wonderful but strange thing to know he will soon move from Graterford to halfway house, and then to community member. It makes me ache for the other members of the Think Tank in Graterford, who are living under their own sentences, some with no hope for release. I am also, of course, reminded again of the powerful connections with people here in Oregon, living under life sentences or long sentences. Flying back, seeing the cities of America pass beneath the wings of my plane, I considered my freedom and what this means to me now that I have seen its opposite. I thought of the men I know in Pennsylvania and here in Oregon who entered the correctional system as boys and will leave it old men. It breaks my heart again and again, and leads to such deep confusion as to who we are as a country and what our path should be. I'm not sure what the answer is. But I feel so much pain, and then so much hope when I see someone like Tyrone preparing to reenter the world after all these years.

His commutation is announced here: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/governor-rendell-announces-commutations-112679939.html. It is a document, a series of words, a single piece of paper and an official decision by a few men of power. But it is also new life. New life and a new chance. I can't imagine how the world changed before Tyrone's eyes when he received the news. But I do know that I have been profoundly changed, again. That seeing the hope when Tyrone showed us this document means the world to me. It is hope, it is a renewal. Freedom.