Hello, I'm Lisa Franklin. I am the founder and president of an organization for people with disabilities, about people with disabilities called Warriors on Wheels of Metropolitan Detroit. I grew up on LaSalle Blvd. My father, James Wesley Jones, was very instrumental in rebuilding of 12th Street after the 1967 rebellion. So watching him go to meeting after meeting after meeting, I really believe this instilled in me how to give back to the community. 

In 1996, I was injured in an automobile accident by a drunk driver, in my rehabilitation... going throughout the community I noticed the inaccessibility of the City of Detroit. So in 2006, I ran for Miss Wheelchair Michigan, and at that time, some of the ladies in the pageant also decided that they wanted to do something. So we formed an organization and that's how Warriors on Wheels was born. 

One of our greatest advocacy achievements was the wheelchair challenge. And what we did is, we got wheelchairs down to the city county building, put all of the city council people in the wheelchairs for the day. We mapped out a route for them of different areas in the city that they could maneuver to that had barriers so that they could experience what we experience on a daily basis. 

I attended a disability workshop and the young lady who taught it, one of the examples that she gave of the way that people think was this; there was a school that had a mixture of children and children with special needs. They went out on recess... and while they were out on recess, it snowed really bad. So after it snowed, a recess was over. The janitor came out and he started shoveling the stairs and the child said, what about the ramp? The custodian told him that after I finished the stairs, then I’ll shovel the ramp. So the child said, well, why don't you shovel the ramp? Then we all can go inside – And so that's just the way that we think. We don't think in a way that if we make it right for people with disabilities, that it's good for everybody. And so, you know, we would love to see banks with power door openers, pharmacies, all of the public places where people go. We would like to see people with disabilities able to go in those same areas. This is rewarding... it's just really rewarding to know that you're doing something that could change someone's life.