THE FLASHMOTO MANIFESTO

Who we are

Riders. The hands that build, repair, maintain, tow, and teach. The independent shops and the parts counters. The builders. The dealers who fix what they sell. And the organizations that have carried this fight in Washington for four decades, with the state groups behind them, usually outnumbered.

Everyone has a place here, and nobody is a customer first. Where our interests differ, and they will, two things settle it: the rider's choice, and the independent's right to compete.

What was taken

It was not taken all at once. Nobody announced it. You still buy the machine. You just no longer get all of it. The manual moves behind a login. The port gets encrypted. A part that fits will not work until the manufacturer gives permission. Ownership has been narrowed one model year at a time while everyone keeps using the word as though it still means what it used to mean.

The same thing happened to the rules. When the automobile industry reached a national right-to-repair agreement, motorcycles were excluded by name. Not defeated. Not debated. Written out, because nobody in the room was there for us.

In May 2026 it happened again. A committee of Congress took the bill that would have fixed it, took out the parts with teeth, and replaced them with that same 2014 handshake agreement, the one that excludes motorcycles in its own words. The bill defines us in. The deal leaves us out. Written out by a handshake once. Written out by a committee twice.

That is the larger problem. Institutions answer to the people who show up. Riders have numbers, skill, organizations, and a long history of standing their ground. What we have not had is one place where all of that strength stands together.

So decisions are made about our machines, our roads, our safety, our privacy, and our freedom, and we hear about them after the room has emptied.

What we believe

RIDE. Freedom is not an idea we admire from a distance. It is something we practice every time we choose the road and accept responsibility for the ride.

BUILD. We value the hands that make, repair, maintain, tow, teach, and keep things moving. Knowledge is earned, and it is not a permission granted by a manufacturer.

FIGHT. Rights do not preserve themselves. They remain real because ordinary people show up when it would be easier not to.

INDEPENDENT. FREE. UNFILTERED. These are not decorations. They are the promise that we will think for ourselves, speak for ourselves, and never confuse standing together with falling into line.

Ownership should mean ownership. If you paid for the machine, you should have the manual, the codes, the port, the parts, the tools, and the right to choose who works on it.

PROVE IT. We do not ask for trust. We ask for the chance to earn it, one phase at a time, and the people wearing the patch say when it has been earned.

What we demand

That ownership includes access to the information, tools, diagnostics, software, and parts required to repair the motorcycle we bought.

That motorcycles never again be written out of laws and agreements made in the name of ownership, repair, safety, or mobility.

That riders and the organizations that represent them have a place in the room before decisions are made, not after.

That Congress put motorcycles in the law the same way they are in the definition, restore the REPAIR Act, and do it in this Congress. This is the first fight. It will not be the last.

What we will do, in three phases

Nothing here is a promise of a product. It is an order of operations, and the order is the promise. We do not move to the next phase until the last one is proven, and the people wearing the patch, through the committees described below, say when it is proven.

How we work with the organizations

Built with the motorcycle community, not delivered to it. The organizations that carry this fight have a voice before the architecture is decided, not a briefing after.

Members first, not members only. The garage is open to everyone who rides, wrenches, builds, or sells. A current member of a participating organization gets it at a heavy discount, verified against the organization's own records, which the organization owns. Anyone who is not a member is offered one at the door, and the patch program covers it for those who cannot pay.

Their members grow, and they are paid for it. Two streams back to the organizations, both unrestricted: founding shares on every service, and a share on every new member the platform brings them. What "brought" means is written down, recorded per member, and auditable by the organization at any time.

Two committees, with their seats. An Oversight Committee that can stop us. A Trust and Information Committee that owns the standard for anything built on the community's knowledge or on legislation: a source on every claim, commercial content labeled, no paid path to "verified," and a machine's analysis labeled as analysis, never presented as fact.

Their names are theirs. An organization's name and mark appear only with its written approval, every time.

Funded in the open. A public campaign for the garage with founding-supporter tiers, so riders own the launch and not just investors. No equity, no data, and no political money runs through it. Money for the fight is raised by the organizations, in their names, on their platforms. We send the traffic and take nothing.

What we will never do

• We will never sell your data. Not to anyone. Not ever.
• We will never share it with insurance companies.
• We will never hand it to the government without a court making us.
• We will never put the fight behind a paywall. The home stays free.
• We will never touch a dollar raised for the fight. That money belongs to the organizations, in their names.
• We will never present a machine's guess as a fact.
• We will never use an organization's name without asking.
• We will never skip a phase.
• We will not speak for you without asking you first.
• We will not tell you who to vote for.
• We will not trade the fight for access, status, or a seat at somebody else's table.
• We will not ask you to become anything other than what you already are.

What becomes possible

A constituency that gets asked before the rule is written.

Riders who arrive with a record, not just a story.

Organizations that no longer fight outnumbered.

A country reminded that ordinary people do not need permission to matter. They need to stand together long enough to be counted.

The call

Your club is still your club. Your colors are still your colors. This goes beside what you already wear.

Nobody is coming to do this for us.

That has never bothered us before.

Put your name down. Get counted. We ride. We decide.