I created WANDA as a means to maximize my visibility to nearby vehicles when walking the streets, particularly in areas devoid of sidewalks and in areas where pedestrians aren’t typically encountered. Borrowing from the safety culture of the electrical/construction industry in which I work, the idea is to be seen by operators of the heavy machinery working alongside me, well prior to any opportunity for collision to occur. The need to be easily seen grows more imperative when on today’s roads, where the attentiveness of the average driver falls far short of that of a skilled construction worker.

I am tired of the absurd number of times in which I meet someone who’s been struck by a vehicle in Columbus. I am tired of reading in the local paper this week’s pedestrian fatality - most often, a low-income Black person simply trying to cross the street. Most galling of all is how, long after the driver speeds away unidentified and scot-free, the victim will often get blamed for the incident - as if it was their fault for having the audacity to “jaywalk” across a road despite its lack of anything resembling a sidewalk, crosswalk, or “walk” signal. I’m tired of the condescending assumptions associated with the choice not to own a vehicle.

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” - US President Theodore Roosevelt

Over time, WANDA has evolved for me into a sort of political creed - a firm rejection of our nation’s stubborn addiction to its cars.

In American consumer lore, the automobile has always been a “freedom machine” and liberty lies on the open road. “Americans are a race of independent people” whose “ancestors came to this country for the sake of freedom and adventure,” the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce’s soon-to-be-president, Roy Chapin, declared in 1924. “The automobile satisfies these instincts.” During the Cold War, vehicles with baroque tail fins and oodles of surplus chrome rolled off the assembly line, with Native American names like Pontiac, Apache, Dakota, Cherokee, Thunderbird and Winnebago — the ultimate expressions of capitalist triumph and Manifest Destiny.

But for many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots.

In the consumer arena, cars have become tightly sprung debt traps. The average monthly auto loan payment crossed $700 for the first time this year, which does not include insurance or maintenance costs. Subprime lending and longer loan terms of up to 84 months have resulted in a doubling of auto loan debt over the last decade and a notable surge in the number of drivers who are “upside down”— owing more money than their cars are worth. But, again, the pain is not evenly distributed. Auto financing companies often charge nonwhite consumers higher interest rates than white consumers, as do insurers.

The pathway that leads from a simple traffic fine to financial insolvency or detention is increasingly crowded because of the spread of revenue policing intended to generate income from traffic tickets, court fees and asset forfeiture. Fiscally squeezed by austerity policies, officials extract the funds from those least able to pay. This is not only an awful way to fund governments; it is also a form of backdoor, regressive taxation that circumvents voters’ input.

Deadly traffic stops, racially biased predatory lending and revenue policing have all come under public scrutiny of late, but typically they are viewed as distinct realms of injustice, rather than as the interlocking systems that they are. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it: A traffic stop can result in fines or arrest; time behind bars can result in repossession or a low credit score; a low score results in more debt and less ability to pay fines, fees and surcharges. Championed as a kind of liberation, car ownership — all but mandatory in most parts of the country — has for many become a vehicle of capture and control.