In his bib overalls & mineral stained teeth, Gary Gardner looks right out of the movie Deliverance. But beneath the cliched exterior of a backwoods redneck, is the heart of a man who believes in the kind of justice which is blind to color and oblivious to manipulation.
As I wrote about last year, there was a great injustice done in Gardner’s hometown of Tulia, Texas, when on nothing more than the word of a shady sheriff’s deputy, 46 people wound up serving terms of up to 90 years in prison. Due in large part to Gardner’s persistence in bringing this dangerous farce to the attention of national media and national associations like the ACLU, 35 of the defendants will soon be pardoned.
Gardner is no angel: his speech is peppered with the kind of racial epithets one doesn’t hear in polite company. The words are wrong, but in this case, Gardner’s deeds go a long way towards excusing him.
[via Electrolite]
