The EXPOnentially Correcting the Narrative 2026 gala at the Madison Concourse Hotel was a joint event by EXPO, an organization of formerly incarcerated people, and The Community, a statewide group that assists people inside prisons and after release. Both groups were founded in 2014 and marked their sixth anniversary with the combined celebration.

Evers, a Democrat, was the final honoree of the evening, recognized for restoring the state’s pardon advisory board, issuing more than 2,400 pardons, granting commutations and pursuing criminal justice reforms. He told the crowd that his administration has expanded the earned release program and provided the highest level of funding ever for treatment and diversion programs aimed at reducing recidivism.

“We also expanded the popular Windows to Work program, enabling more folks to participate in programming that increases general work skills, financial literacy, and work search abilities that will help them to be successful after they’re released,” Evers said.

The governor pointed to the recent opening of the Type One Southeast Regional Care System for Youth in Milwaukee, which he said represents nearly a decade of work to transform a failed juvenile correction system. He also renewed his call for a corrections reform plan he introduced last year to modernize deteriorating prisons, stabilize the incarcerated population and expand evidence-based programming.

“Unfortunately, Republicans have rejected these common-sense proposals without offering any comprehensive alternatives of their own; my plan is still the safest, fastest, and cheapest option to overhaul the state’s dated correctional system,” Evers said. “Every day of delay or inaction makes projects costlier and the goalposts that much harder to reach.”

He urged the audience to keep pressure on state leaders to pursue reforms that “keep our communities safe while giving folks the second chance that they deserve.”

The event also featured a phone tree where attendees could listen to recorded conversations between incarcerated people and their families, artwork by artists who had been incarcerated, and a large display of framed posters of people still on parole or extended supervision after serving prison time. Organizers said the exhibit questioned supervision lasting more than five years.

Shannon Ross, executive director and founder of The Community, said bringing the two organizations together was not easy but reflected the collaboration needed to push for systemic change.

“We all have our own practices and our own traditions and our own ideas, but if we can’t come together on things that are large and difficult like this, how can we ask the system and ask society for criminal legal system change?” Ross said.

Ross also criticized how the criminal justice system treats crime survivors, saying it is built to be adversarial and leans on “fear-based mannerisms” rather than healing.

Melissa Lundin, a crime survivor who also caused harm, shared her story. She said that at age 19 she attempted suicide after the grief of losing her father and drove her car into an intersection, causing devastating harm to other people and families. She received a 25-year sentence and said she would soon finish 20 years of supervision.

“Over those years, I’ve made amends, including with the person I harmed, and I’ve worked to become someone that my children can look up to and depend on,” Lundin said. “Then I found myself on the other side of violence.”

She recounted the death of Chad Wilson, a criminal justice advocate with whom she had a child, who was killed on Dec. 21, 2021, when he was intentionally run over by a woman he had known for only 24 hours. Lundin said she struggled with wanting the woman to face justice and also to suffer.

“Justice meant she needed to answer for what she had done,” she said. “Vengeance was part of me that wanted her to hurt because we were hurting, and I felt both.”

Later, while speaking at the Wisconsin Resource Center, Lundin realized the woman who killed Wilson was in the audience. She ultimately asked to shake the hand of every woman in attendance, including Wilson’s killer.

“I don’t know her full story, but people who cause harm can also have been victims themselves, and I know what it is to carry pain without knowing what to do with it,” Lundin said. “Understanding that matters if we want to prevent harm and accountability matters, too.”

Marriane Oleson, co-executive director of EXPO, thanked Evers for restoring commutations, which reduce or modify a criminal sentence under the state’s constitutional authority.

“Thank you for the hope of being seen for who a person has become,” Oleson said. “Shannon and I, with others in this room, hear every day from people holding that hope very carefully, people who have spent years understanding the harm they cause, who are preparing to come home.”

Oleson noted that she began as an EXPO fellow less than two years after coming home from prison and now serves as co-executive director. “It’s given my life purpose,” she said.

Tamra Oman received the Ramiah Whiteside Changemaker Award. She recalled first meeting Jerome Dillard, former executive director of EXPO, in 2003 in a basement with 30 people where they raised $35 for a group called Voices Beyond Bars. She contrasted that with Saturday’s gathering of about 450 people.

“We have formerly incarcerated leaders. We have Department of Corrections leaders. We have the governor of the state of Wisconsin. We have family members,” Oman said.

Dillard, introducing Oman, said she had touched thousands of lives. Oman said she met Ramiah Whiteside, the award’s namesake, while he was still in prison and was impressed that he advocated for others without knowing if he would ever gain his freedom.

“When I think about what it means to be a change maker, I don’t think about grand gestures,” Oman said. “What I think about is someone who refuses to accept the world as it is because it can be better.”

The family of Alejandro Silva, who is incarcerated, received an award for their support of him. Delilah Franklin, wife of EXPO co-executive director Dennis Franklin and a member of the Silva family, spoke about the burden carried by families.

“When someone is sentenced, their family serves a sentence, too,” Franklin said. “They may not be behind those walls, but they carry the heartache, the worry, the sleepless nights, and the silent pain.”

Former Assembly representatives Michael Schraa, R-Oshkosh, and Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke, a former Democratic state representative, were honored for bipartisan work on criminal justice legislation, including making vocational training part of the state’s earned release program. Both said they became friends despite being on opposite political sides.

Goyke celebrated recent midterm election victories by Democrats but cautioned that legislation passed without bipartisan support can be repealed. He cited a package of criminal justice reform bills known as justice reinvestment passed between 2006 and 2010 by a Democratic Legislature and governor, only to be rescinded under Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Marty Dunmore, founder of the Dunmore Project, was honored for creating an organization that collaborates with others to promote safety and healing. Dunmore lost a daughter to cancer in 2019 just before her 18th birthday, then two other daughters were injured in an accident caused by a fifth-time drunk driver, one fatally, and a year later the daughter who survived the vehicle injury died by gun violence.

“At the end of the day, I am just a mother who has lost three children, two of which were so preventable,” Dunmore said in a video. “So we have to go back to the preventive measures, restorative justice, to meeting people, meeting the youth where they are.”

Marian Wasierski of the citizen’s group Enough is Enough, which addresses reckless driving, said Dunmore was an inspiration.

“Marty refuses to remain frozen in the moment of shock to be seen only as that mother broken by cruel death and immobilized by profound grief,” Wasierski said.

Ronald Watson, nominated by the Dane County gun violence prevention group Focused Interruption, was also honored. In a video, Watson recounted his reintegration after leaving prison in 1993, including work in the restaurant industry, community connections, marriage and family.

“I just want to continue to do the work and help other people, no matter how small it be,” Watson said.

Anthony Cooper, CEO and founder of Focused Interruption, called Watson “a man of integrity” who “continues to want to do the right thing for the right reason, and not just sometimes, but all the time.”

Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy and Mel Barnes, Evers’s chief legal counsel and chair of the newly created Commutation Advisory Board, were also in attendance.