Uber Black Quotes

Freed slaves returned to Africa settled in a section of what was known as the “Pepper Coast” and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and established a constitution based on the political principles denoted in the United States Constitution. In doing so they established the independent Republic of Liberia. Law and Order was something the ruling class of Liberians prided themselves on. The Americo Liberians, as they called themselves, were uber-Conservatives and had a glorified picture of what the American government was like. As Conservatives they saw themselves living a privileged lifestyle, sustained by their faith in God and the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by this deity. Amongst themselves there was much talk about the subjects of freedom, liberty, democracy and independence. They felt that these idealisms were deserved because of their exceptionalism. Taking a page from the concept of American exceptionalism, they fantasied of their very own Liberian exceptionalism, completely forgetting the indigenous natives living among them. Whereas the Americo Liberians lived an affluent lifestyle reflecting the antebellum era in the Southern tier of the United States, the local blacks, for the greatest part lived in squalor. In 1980, a violent military coup shattered the way of life in Liberia. Led by army Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, the country’s ruling group of Americo-Liberians were brutally overthrown and frequently executed. Doe's term as President of Liberia led to a period of civil wars, resulting in the devastation of Liberia’s economy. Liberia became one of the most impoverished nations in the world, in which most of the population still lives below the international poverty line.

Raphael pulled out a paperback and handed it to me. The cover, done back in the time when computer-aided imagine manipulation had risen to the level of art, featured an impossibly handsome man, leaning forward, one foot in a huge black boot resting on the carcass of some monstrous sea creature. His hair flowed down to his shoulders in a mane of white gold, in stark contrast to his tanned skin and the rakish black patch hiding his left eye. His white, translucent shirt hung open, revealing abs of steel and a massive, perfectly carved chest graced by erect nipples. His muscled thighs strained the fabric of his pants, which were unbuttoned and sat loosely on his narrow hips, a touch of a strategically positioned shadow hinting at the world’s biggest boner. The cover proclaimed in loud golden letters: The Privateer’s Virgin Mistress, by Lorna Sterling. “Novel number four for Andrea’s collection?” I guessed. Raphael nodded and took the book from my hands. “I’ve got the other one Andrea wanted, too. Can you explain something to me?” Oh boy. “I can try.” He tapped the book on his leather-covered knee. “The pirate actually holds this chick’s brother for ransom, so she’ll sleep with him. These men, they aren’t real men. They’re pseudo-bad guys just waiting for the love of a ‘good’ woman.” “You actually read the books?” He gave me a chiding glance. “Of course I read the books. It’s all pirates and the women they steal, apparently so they can enjoy lots of sex and have somebody to run their lives.” Wow. He must’ve had to hide under his blanket with a flashlight so nobody would question his manliness. Either he really was in love with Andrea or he had a terminal case of lust. “These guys, they’re all bad and aggressive as shit, and everybody wets themselves when they walk by, and then they meet some girl and suddenly they’re not uber-alphas; they are just misunderstood little boys who want to talk about their feelings.” “Is there a point to this dissertation?” He faced me. “I can’t be that. If that’s what she wants, then I shouldn’t even bother.” I sighed. “Do you have a costume kink? French maid, nurse . . .” “Catholic school girl.” Bingo. “You wouldn’t mind Andrea wearing a Catholic school uniform, would you?” “No, I wouldn’t.” His eyes glazed over and he slipped off to some faraway place. I snapped my fingers. “Raphael! Focus.” He blinked at me. “I’m guessing—and this is just a wild stab in the dark—that Andrea might not mind if once in a while you dressed up as a pirate. But I wouldn’t advise holding her relatives for ransom nookie. She might shoot you in the head. Several times. With silver bullets.

The commission proposed that Uber and its drivers obtain licenses to operate in the city, which would require background checks and regular inspections. Private drivers such as for black cars or limousines would have to charge a minimum of $50 — well above Uber’s $7 base fee. The regulations would also ban the practice used by Uber called “demand response booking,’’ where drivers pick up passengers without knowing their destination in advance. After a huge outcry, the licensing board backed away from its recommendations and said it will hold more meetings before deciding on new rules.

Uber had to get creative to unlock the hard side of their network, the drivers. Initially, Uber’s focus was on black car and limo services, which were licensed and relatively uncontroversial. However, a seismic shift occurred when rival app Sidecar innovated in recruiting unlicensed, normal people as drivers on their platform. This was the “peer-to-peer” model that created millions of new rideshare drivers, and was quickly copied and popularized by Lyft and then Uber. Jahan Khanna, cofounder/chief technology officer of Sidecar, spoke of its origin: It was obvious that letting anyone sign up to be a driver would be a big deal. With more drivers, rides would get cheaper and the wait times would get shorter. This came up in many brainstorms at Sidecar, but the question was always, what was the regulatory framework that allows this to operate? What were the prior examples that weren’t immediately shut down? After doing a ton of research, we came onto a model that had been active for years in San Francisco run by someone named Lynn Breedlove called Homobiles that answered our question.22 It’s a surprising fact, but the earliest version of the rideshare idea came not from an investor-backed startup, but rather from a nonprofit called Homobiles, run by a prominent member of the LGBTQ community in the Bay Area named Lynn Breedlove. The service was aimed at protecting and serving the LGBTQ community while providing them transportation—to conferences, bars and entertainment, and also to get health care—while emphasizing safety and community. Homobiles had built its own niche, and had figured out the basics: Breedlove had recruited, over time, 100 volunteer drivers, who would respond to text messages. Money would be exchanged, but in the form of donations, so that drivers could be compensated for their time. The company had operated for several years, starting in 2010—several years before Uber X—and provided the template for what would become a $100 billion+ gross revenue industry. Sidecar learned from Homobiles, implementing their offering nearly verbatim, albeit in digital form: donations based, where the rider and driver would sit together in the front, like a friend giving you a ride. With that, the rideshare market was kicked off.

Outside an airport one evening in Charlotte, as I waited by the curb for an Uber, a stranger approached me and said in a soft, conspiratorial tone: “You’re Adam Schiff, right?” The man was in his midthirties, short, and with a pronounced Southern accent. “Yes.” “You can tell me—there’s nothing to this ‘collusion’ stuff, is there?” “Let me ask you a question,” I responded. “What if I was to tell you that we had evidence in black and white that the Russians approached the Clinton campaign and offered dirt on Donald Trump, then met secretly with Chelsea Clinton, John Podesta, and Robby Mook in the Brooklyn headquarters of the campaign to deliver it. Then Hillary lied about it to cover it up. Would you call that collusion?” “I think I see where you’re going here,” he said, hesitantly. “Now, what if I also told you that after the election, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice secretly talked with the Russian ambassador in an effort to undermine U.S. sanctions on Russia after they interfered to help Hillary win. Would you call that collusion?” He paused for a moment, thinking it over, then said: “You know, I probably would.” His car arrived and he took off, leaving me at the curb. It had been one of those “eureka” moments, and I remember thinking, “Now, if I can only speak to a couple hundred million people.

Our drivers, I thought, are almost all immigrants and minorities looking to make more money than they could driving a cab or working another job. Our customers numbered plenty of millennials, but also a lot of working people who lived in the boroughs and used UberX because it was cheaper and more convenient than taking a taxi, and for black and Latino customers (much of de Blasio’s base), the experience of being passed over by an empty taxi once the driver saw the color of their skin had created decades of deep-seated resentment. No one knows the color of your finger when you summon an Uber, so to many New Yorkers, taxis were the bad guys and Uber represented real, positive change. By the time my flight reached cruising altitude, it hit me that the fight to kill de Blasio’s proposal of capping Uber’s growth at 1 percent a year would work a lot better if we ran the campaign from his left. He’d never faced that before. (No one had ever thought they could question his progressive bona fides.)

And when Kaitlin Durkosh on the Uber New York team had the brilliant idea of making “de Blasio” one of the options on the app (next to Uber Black, UberX, UberXL, etc.), we had a way to capture people and mobilize them. (If you chose the de Blasio option, you were told there was a twenty-five-minute wait time, we explained the problem, and then asked people to email and tweet at their councilmembers to tell them to oppose the bill. In a week, over 250,000 did.)