Best.

Interview.

Answer.

Ever.

It came from multiple US champion Justin Williams, to a question asked by Tom Davidson for the magazine and website Cycling Weekly. Williams is manager for the UCI Continental team L39ION of Los Angeles, which he co-founded in 2019 with his brother Cory Williams.

The team was developed with the mightily great goal of increasing diversity and inclusion in cycling. The “39” in the name represents 39th Street in Watts, Los Angeles, where the Williams brothers grew up. To be honest I knew just about nothing about Justin Williams til I read the CW article today, but after Googling him, I already like him.

Williams, center, winning something.

It was this, on Wikipedia, that drew me in:

‘Williams had a reputation for being ‘hard to deal with.’ The team has been involved in numerous controversies, with Justin Williams being suspended by USAC twice for fighting with opponents.’

The number of times I’ve wanted to punch people in races, I lost count. The only reason I never got thrown out for fighting is because I was too fast for them and missed my chance to smack them.

Or, something like that..!

But I digress.

The reason his response to the question grabbed me it sums up so concisely the power of the bicycle, what it can do to encourage and aid people in poverty to go about changing their circumstances by themselves.

“It’s hard for those of us in developed nations to realize what a difference a bicycle can make,” said Dave Neiswander, CEO of World Bike Relief. “It’s an important tool – it can mean a mother getting her sick child to a clinic, or a farmer getting his produce to market before it spoils. For students who have to travel 10 or 20 miles each way to school, it can change their opportunities. For girls especially, it can change their bargaining power. A bicycle will be one of the most valuable, if not the most valuable, possessions for that household.”

A WBR ‘Buffalo’ bike.

It used to be this way back in Europe too don’t forget, before the advent of the car, when the bicycle was the working person’s only mode of transport.

And this kind of aid that WBR does, getting bikes to people in poverty (by the end of 2020 they had delivered 500,000 bicycles), does in fact work.

In the book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty, authors Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo and Karen Dillon ‘explained’ how market-creating innovations are the key to lasting efforts that lift people out of poverty. Whilst I’m not convinced that market capitalism is the way to ‘solve’ poverty, supplying people in poor regions with bicycles provides a on means of empowerment, that is undeniable. Here’s some figures from WBR on some of the affects recorded in communities that have been the beneficiaries of their bicycles:

So here’s what I’m thinking.

A lot of us must have an old frame, some old parts, slightly untrue wheels that we could fix up, and go give to a program providing bikes to people in need, or take it to a hostel for community use, or give to a kid that’s into cycling who can’t afford a bike. I’m gonna do it.

I’ve been losing hope over the years, I’ll be honest, that any good can come from charities, from, well, even hope. But this, this reply from Williams, it shook something in me.

Get the kids on bikes, let them be angry when it’s justified, let them take control, and do something positive.

‘And London’s ok too…’ 🤟