Home to some 17,000 people as of 2019, according to the U.S. census, Gainesville is located around 70 miles north of Dallas.
Najera is in his final semester of college and looks forward to starting graduate school in the fall, but his ongoing legal battle has been “really distracting.”
“These aren’t things I want to be focused on,” Najera told the
Observer. “I have kids and I need to be focused on them, too, instead of this First Amendment case, but here we are.”
Najera donated to the legal fund of a local grassroots organization, PRO Gainesville, which for months has protested for the removal of the town’s Confederate statue. Three of that group’s leading members were also arrested after they walked in the street during a demonstration last summer.