Who is Dyjuan Tatro? House Dems hire ex-gangster as campaign arm's senior advisor for diversity and inclusion
The House Democrats’ campaign branch has hired an ex-gangster turned high-profile criminal-justice advocate for a top leadership position. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is led by Hudson Valley area Rep Sean Patrick Maloney, appointed Dyjuan Tatro as a senior advisor for diversity and inclusion.
Tatro grew up in a poor neighborhood of Albany, NY, amid the sound of gunshots and little or no access to education. Around 10th grade, Dyjuan dropped out and was selling drugs. A few years later, when he was 20, he was involved in a shooting and sentenced to prison for assault.
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Tatro then served time for shooting two rival gang members in 2006, receiving 73 months in prison for racketeering conspiracy from US District Court Judge Gary L Sharpe. He was among 25 members and associates of the South End-based 'downtown' gang, known as OGK, charged in a racketeering case in 2009. It followed a similar case against the "uptown" Jungle Junkies street gang in the West Hill and Arbor Hill neighborhoods in 2006.
Tatro pleaded guilty in December 2010, admitting he made at least $12,000 a month dealing drugs and conspired to traffic more than 50 grams of crack cocaine. He has also confessed to an October 5, 2002 assault on Delaware Avenue, an October 16, 2003, razor-slashing of a victim on Clinton Avenue and the double-shooting of rival gang members Dushan "Lil Du" Wilson and Andre Blakemore on Feb 16, 2006, on Washington Avenue.
In prison, he attempted to turn his life around as he was able to access the education he had missed as a teenager. He was accepted to the Bard Prison Initiative’s post-secondary education program, where he joined BPI’s debate team, which drew national attention after they defeated the group from Harvard University. By the time he got out of prison, he had finished a mathematics major and earned a bachelor’s degree from Bard College. He later started working as government affairs and advancement officer for BPI.
“I got into college in prison. That education, that experience, that degree radically changed the trajectory of my life.”#SecondChances pic.twitter.com/VUJlRElpms
— Dyjuan Tatro (@DyjuanTatro) February 15, 2021
In 2019 he appeared in Ken Burns and Lynn Novick‘s PBS documentary series 'College Behind Bars,' about a group of inmates trying to earn their degrees through New York state’s Bard Prison Initiative. “Inside the walls of a classroom, you escape the walls of a cell — and you become an individual again,” said Shawnta Montgomery, speaking at the 16th commencement of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), in the documentary.
Speaking to the Grio, Tatro had said: “I vividly remember sitting in Five Points Correctional Facility and seeing a 60-minute segment on the Bard Prison Initiative come on, and there were these amazingly-smart men who were in prison just like me, wearing green like me, embarked on this rigorous educational endeavor. At that moment I decided, that was what I was going to do.”