The TEDx at Green Rock featured about 30 speakers – many of them prisoners with compelling stories to tell.
“My life has been nothing but struggle – for me and for my family. Both of my parents were addicted to crack cocaine," Armando Sosa explained during his presentation. "My two brothers and sister – we never had a stable home: love, guidance or discipline.”
For a time they lived with a grandmother, but one day their uncle showed up and put them on a bus to Dallas where their mother was living.
“When we got to Dallas around 1 o’clock AM, we got off the bus, and there was no one waiting for us. We didn’t have a number to contact anyone, so we just started walking the streets – waving at every taxi driver to stop.”
They knew their mother lived in East Dallas, on Carroll Avenue, and somehow a compassionate cabby found her. She and the kids moved from her aunt’s home into a crack house, but they were quickly displaced by a bulldozer. For many years Armando lived on the street, and eventually ended up in prison where he learned to read and began studying for his GED.
“Now I’m only one subject away from receiving my diploma!” Sosa said proudly.
The gathering was organized by Delia Cohen, a former employee of the TED organization who knew talks had been given at prisons in Texas and Ohio.
“I was completely amazed to find there were so many articulate, creative, thoughtful people in the prison. It was nothing like I had expected from the media,” Cohen said.
She selected a group of prisoners to work with her on the program and held try-outs for inmates. Most of those chosen to present told dramatic stories of transformation. Others who spoke were in law enforcement. And one – the prison’s former warden – left the audience laughing. In his spare time, Mike Seville performs stand-up comedy.
“Anyone have children in here? Me too. I have six. That’s what I said. What? You have to remember I didn’t have cable.”
About 75 people from outside the prison were invited to attend – including two from the TED organization.
“One flew from Seattle. One flew from Texas. The parole board member drove 3 and a half hours each way just to get there.”
Another 75 were inmates like David Annarelli.
“I was pretty impressed," Annarelli admitted. "I am never kind to the DOC or its staff, but I was forced out of objectivity and truth to speak highly of some of the things I saw there.”
That said, he was disappointed that due to limited performance space others could not be there.
“Approximately 950 other people spent the entire day locked down while that event took place,” Annarelli said.
And he noted that scripts had to be approved by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Delia Cohen says they made no changes, and she hopes the audience left with a new understanding of prison inmates.
“Real incarcerated people stories are so different from what you hear portrayed in the media, but there are a lot of commonalities – like people coming from broken families and from a lot of poverty and poor to no education -- committing their crime as a teenager and then having decades to serve in prison. I hope people come away with seeing the incarcerated as humans, not monsters, and stop thinking of people as good or bad people, because I think we’re all both.”
Also in attendance, the Director of the Department of Corrections. Chadwick Dotson was so pleased that he’s working with Cohen on the next TEDx event at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for women sometime next year.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
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