On the historic 50 year anniversary of the famed Freedom Rides (from which the company takes its name if not inspiration), we thought we would weigh in on a few ideas behind our mission statement.
It’s a rather interesting spring to be doing what we aim to achieve on several fronts. Not the least of which, we suspect, will be our focus on creating new benchmarks and opportunities for every PWD so inclined.
We think on what we believe to be the beginning of the end of the actively prosecuted “War on Terror” with the death of Bin Laden last week, that this will also mark a turning point on how this war has been perceived at home. Namely, to date there has been almost no realization of the true cost of the war in lives spent and damaged during its prosecution.
We heard one unbelievable number last week that just in Iraq alone, the U.S. now faces about 33,000 younger adults with disabilities public policy hasn’t caught up with. While we aim to break new ground and look to the future with optimism, there are some realities that we, for one, have never averted our eyes from. Vets with disabilities are clearly one of the larger “new” demographics to enter the existing fold of “PWDs.” How this country meets that challenge both for vets and civilians with disabilities is clearly front and center on our radar and we hope to spark a national debate on the same.
While we don’t mean any disrespect to those who put their lives and bodies on the line for a greater purpose, we also maintain that nobody “earns” a disability. Civilians and vets who are PWDs (for whatever reason) deserve opportunities (for one) that have largely been poorly provided since the birth of this country.
Opening opportunity in the face of new technology and laws were what the original “Freedom Riders” had as their goal. They were, after all, a bunch of unorganized students who wanted to make a point about changing policies and court decisions if not statutes by doing no more than getting on buses as everyday riders. We aim, in our first mission, to be no more than a taxi company…however clearly our larger goals are a bit more lofty (if not leafy).
But in beginning successful operations, we hope to do the same in our own way. Those original riders, now in their late sixties and early seventies, may have made their original point about race.
In the era of the first African American president, we hope that the rights and abilities of our “Green Gimp” crew makes the same arguments valid for the next great group of Americans seeking “Freedom.”
We hope that it doesn’t take another fifty years for the PWD community to finally come into its own much as the African American community has finally proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that racism is an “old-fashioned” crime against humanity. Not to mention, particularly in the shadow of the most successful if not daring military and intelligence missions in our country strategically directed by Obama, that ideas about “ability” will move that much further in America beyond stereotypes about race, gender, sexual orientation and of course “able-bodiedness.”
Freedom Riders 