Self-styled 'Deafie' Gets His Hearing
CC courtesy of Maryland General Assembly
By Rachel Stewart
Howard Gorrell has an admirably low tolerance for foolishness. Born deaf, he rejects the term “hearing-impaired” as too p.c., and does not allow this handicap to limit his activities—or his activism.
Gorrell’s most recent cause: redistricting in his native Maryland. Over six weeks this past fall, he attended not one, not two, but all 12 redistricting hearings across the state, determined to end partisan gerrymandering. In fact, the self-styled “deafie” was the first speaker at the hearings to use the word “gerrymander,” but hardly the first to think it.
Congressional districts, Gorrell testified, should be based on population, natural geographic boundaries and good sense. Counties, for example should be kept intact. Districts should have reasonable shapes.
And in October, the 67-year-old Washington County resident filed a lawsuit against the map submitted by Gov. Martin O’Malley, which, Gorrell argued, would unnecessarily weaken the influence of farmers in the western part of the state.
Some Headway
Politicians are notorious for using redistricting to protect their party’s incumbents, and Gorrell is making impressive progress in his efforts to put an end to the practice, at least in Maryland. He says the latest maps for the western part of the state, anyway, meet with his approval. The successful outcome, he speculates, could have resulted from committee members being “tired from being hammered” by speakers like him.
Success means Gorrell can now get back to what he loves even more than keeping politicians’ feet to the fire—working with deaf athletes. For years, he organized and directed Team USA in the world Deaflympics, at which he has been a competitor himself. In the 1969 World Games in Belgrade, he threw the javelin and hammer.
He was in training, you might say, for political contests to come.
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