April 2024 (Kansas City, KS) On May 5, 2024, motorcyclists from throughout the United States will embark on a relay-style journey that will take them all through the U.S., carrying copies of the nation’s most sacred documents, to converge in Washington, D.C. in September 2024.
Their mission? To remind the nation and its leaders of the principles laid down by the Founding Fathers, with a nonpartisan emphasis on liberty and justice for all.
Initially the brainchild of D’Ette Peralta, a Kansas motorcyclist, in 2020, the idea is rapidly catching on within a growing portion of the motorcycling community. Peralta spent many years enjoying the camaraderie of her local riding community, helping to organize events in NE Kansas. However, when events leading up to and including the election of 2016 were accompanied by growing extremism to which she could not subscribe, she found herself a stranger in a community she thought she knew,
Never one to remain quiet in the face of what she saw as wrong, she sought to empower others to find their voice, connecting on the common ground that “We the People means everyone. Equality, Liberty and Justice being the most basic principles America was founded on, they should Unite not Divide us as a country.”
Reaching out to a larger population of motorcyclists around the country, Peralta proposed a one-time relay ride, in which participating bikers carried copies of the nation’s founding documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation—kicking off in different parts of the country, relaying across state borders and delivered to the decision makers in our Nation’s Capital.
Now in its fifth year, the Liberty Riders have grown in numbers and the event has taken on a life of its own. No longer a lone voice in the 2-wheeled wilderness, D’Ette finds herself surrounded by others around the country who feel as she does, that America is too great a country to be left to one or another body of political extremists, and that it is incumbent on them and others to seek a more unifying vision that will once again encourage Americans to work together for the good of all.
The Liberty Ride™ is dedicated to the shared vision and mission of an evolving and more perfect union in which the Constitution applies to all, regardless of where we or our ancestors were born; whom we love; the color of our skin; or how or if we worship. This year, riders seek to pay homage not just to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but to all the heroes who sacrificed and devoted their lives to civil rights and liberties, striving to enable all to be true to themselves, to worship if and how they desire, to love whom they are drawn to, and to live how they choose and pursue their own happiness. They assert that these rights and norms are not guaranteed against a coordinated attack and are only as robust as our willingness to defend them. They carry the affirmation that Civil Rights encompass not only racial justice, but also worker’s rights, women’s rights, the rights of the LGBQT community, and that a threat to the rights belonging to any one of us is a threat to the rights of all.
Contact: Eric Ginsburg
Phone: 919 428-9994
Email: MediaContact@libertyRides.org