The Journey of Tony Gant: From Struggles to Advocacy

Okay Nightmare Success lifters, we are back, and man am I excited about this guest. I got a shout out from Marvin Cotton Jr. for this one. Marvin said I had to talk to Tony Gant because he’s doing big things in Michigan, advocating for formerly incarcerated people. When Marvin gives me a recommendation like that, I listen.

Tony served 20 years in the Michigan Department of Corrections, from 1995 to 2015. That’s basically growing up in prison. He’s now the director of policy and programs operations at Nation Outside, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of formerly incarcerated persons. He’s also written a book called Midnight Whispers and owns a lawn care service. But getting to where he is now wasn’t easy.

Growing Up in Albion

Tony grew up in Albion, Michigan, raised by his grandmother. “I grew up in a small town called Albion, Michigan, and my grandmother raised me, so that was my father’s mother,” Tony told me. “While we grew up poor, there was a lot of love. I had a lot of love. My grandmother was my angel.”

He was the oldest of seven kids, three boys and four girls. School was fine at first. He graduated in 1991, though he couldn’t walk because he was in county jail on a drug and gun charge. That’s when things started shifting for Tony.

The shift happened gradually. His childhood friends started dropping out of school to sell drugs. One friend told him bluntly: “I already know how to count. I don’t need school anymore.” The friend was making money, and that stood out in a community where most families didn’t have much.

The Path to Prison

Tony got accepted to Western Michigan but never went. Instead, he enrolled at a place called The Ride Institute outside Chicago. But his real focus was on dealing drugs. “I probably attended maybe two classes in total at the ride,” he said. “I had a room at every bag and talked to sorority people, but that life was not interesting at all. I was constantly on the freeway back to Michigan.”

He caught another drug case and went through Michigan’s boot camp program. That was 90 days to avoid a two-year sentence. He got out on a tether with a parole officer who knew he had no job but was still paying the weekly fees. There was an unspoken agreement as long as the money came in.

The case that led to his 20-year sentence came from “a disagreement that continued to spiral to other things and it led to a violent moment, one night.” Tony went on the run to Atlanta for a couple months, then came back to Michigan for what he thought would be a quick opportunity. He was arrested on his third day back at his sister’s house.

Twenty Years Inside

Tony was charged with assault with intent to commit murder. At his age, he couldn’t grasp what 20 years really meant. “I hadn’t been on my own long enough to understand what 20 years was. I had been on my own maybe a couple years,” he explained.

He went to Michigan Reformatory first, a prison for young people serving long sentences. The environment was intense. “You had a lot of young folks, early teens, early twenties with basketball score sentences or life without the possibility of parole,” Tony said. The saying back then was “all day, all day” because everyone was serving so much time.

Tony became a reader early on. He bought a typewriter and focused on his appeal rather than getting a TV. That led him into legal work, first as a tutor helping people get their GEDs, then as a clerk, and eventually doing law work for other prisoners. It earned him respect, though prison remained brutal. He witnessed horrific stabbings and violence that he’d never seen before.

The Reality Check

Around 2001 or 2002, Tony exhausted all his legal options. His habeas petition was denied, his appeal to the Sixth Circuit failed, and the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear his case. That was it. “I kind of accepted that. Yeah. This is pretty much it,” he said.

That’s when Tony “really embraced doing a bit.” He fell into the rhythms of prison life: legal work, exercise, sports for every season. It becomes habitual, almost comfortable in its predictability.

Family support helped. His grandmother visited until she passed away a year before his release. One visit near the end stuck with him. His grandmother, who never learned to drive, came by herself with a cane, struggling to use the vending machine to buy him snacks. Tony couldn’t get up to help her because of prison rules. It was sweet but heartbreaking.

Getting Out After Two Decades

Tony didn’t expect to get parole on his first try. His counselor looked at his disciplinary record and said it was “pretty bad” and he probably wouldn’t get parole. But he did. He’d gotten married about a year before to someone who had also changed her life around from street involvement.

The transition was brutal. “I was extremely naive as to what life was going to be post-release,” Tony said. “My naivety was based on the fact that it would be easier post-release than it really was. Just the ability to get a job was so it was just utterly impossible.”

He had to learn how to apply for jobs online. His parole officer talked about getting on “the web” like Tony should know what that meant. Staffing agencies wouldn’t take the risk on someone with a violent conviction still on parole. One interview went perfectly until the background check. The interviewer was a paralegal who hit it off with Tony about legal work, but that didn’t matter after they ran his record.

Building Something New

Now Tony works at Nation Outside advocating for formerly incarcerated people. He’s seen progress in Michigan, like when the Supreme Court hired a formerly incarcerated law school graduate as a clerk, despite pushback from other judges. “I think we’re getting closer to having some real second chances, but I think there’s still a lot of work to be done,” he said.

The disconnect is simple. Most people think you do the crime, you do the time. But Tony’s work is about showing what happens when you peel back the layers of what it’s really like to stay in a state where “you’re perpetually punished” even after serving your sentence.

Tony also wrote a fiction book called Midnight Whispers, stemming from his love of reading that started in prison. He runs a lawn care business. He’s building the life he planned during those final years inside, even though the path proved harder than he expected.