Crip Camp

If you want to treat your­self to one good thing this week, let it be James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham’s inspir­ing new doc­u­men­tary, Crip Camp. It is sure­ly one of the most beau­ti­ful, impor­tant doc­u­men­taries of the year, one that gives voice to an incred­i­ble com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who remained unheard for most of the 1960s and ​’70s.

Camp Jened in upstate New York gave phys­i­cal­ly and devel­op­men­tal­ly dis­abled teens the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be just that: nor­mal teens par­tic­i­pat­ing in all aspects of ado­les­cent life, from team sports to mak­ing out in the woods after lights out. This is where these teens – includ­ing direc­tor James Lebrecht – found the con­fi­dence to fight for their rights and become the lead­ers of a revolution.

Dur­ing their sum­mers at Jened, kids like Judith Heumann, who were taught in the base­ment of ​‘main­stream’ pub­lic schools or, worse yet, insti­tu­tion­alised and liv­ing in hor­ri­ble con­di­tions of neglect, were peo­ple – not their dis­abil­i­ties, not their wheel­chairs. At Camp Jened, this wild, feisty bunch of young men and women shared their thoughts and opin­ions in group dis­cus­sions, played base­ball games and went swim­ming, and spent many a lazy after­noon jam­ming to the Grate­ful Dead and smok­ing cigarettes.

Here, they expe­ri­enced the free­dom Richie Havens sings about in the open­ing min­utes of the doc­u­men­tary. Fea­tur­ing both past and present inter­view seg­ments with for­mer camp-goers such as Lebrecht, Heumann, writer Denise Sher­er Jacob­son and dis­abil­i­ty rights activist Kit­ty Cone, Crip Camp offers an inti­mate look into the lives of many who were shaped by these idyl­lic summers.

Camp Jened allowed them to be who they were with­in a tight-knit, sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty, where they were tru­ly seen for who they were. Camp direc­tor Lar­ry Alli­son and oth­er coun­sel­lors encour­aged the young­sters to think and act inde­pen­dent­ly, giv­ing them the space to get in touch with parts of them­selves they hadn’t been able to explore before.

This is where many expe­ri­enced their first roman­tic rela­tion­ships and sex­u­al encoun­ters – two impor­tant parts of teenaged life that were dif­fi­cult for them to engage in at home or in their usu­al social envi­ron­ments. They dis­cussed these issues freely among them­selves: their over­pro­tec­tive par­ents; being denied the right to pri­va­cy; being regard­ed as sick. It was an inclu­sive space, where there was no hier­ar­chy of dis­abil­i­ty. They were all equals here, and they knew they had every right to feel the same on the out­side world.

Lebrecht, Heumann and their friends Ste­vie Hof­man and co. brought this new sense of self-worth and aware­ness home with them, pre­pared to chal­lenge the bar­ri­ers and archi­tec­tur­al inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty they faced every day. Through Heumann, who had become a key play­er in the dis­abil­i­ty rights and inde­pen­dent liv­ing move­ment, the Jened clique found them­selves reunit­ing all over the coun­try stag­ing protests, build­ing com­mu­ni­ties and rais­ing voic­es. They saw many a small tri­umph in the ear­ly sev­en­ties but, as Heumann put it: they were tired of feel­ing thank­ful for acces­si­ble toilets.

By 1977, Sec­tion 504 of the Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Act of 1973, which pro­hibits the dis­crim­i­na­tion against and exclu­sion of peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, had still not been passed. This led Heumann, her tribe of Jeneds and more than one hun­dred and fifty peo­ple with vary­ing dis­abil­i­ties to occu­py the fourth floor of a San Fran­cis­co fed­er­al build­ing where they staged the longest sit-in of the kind to date. With the sup­port of the Black Pan­thers, Gaymen’s But­ter­fly Brigade and Unit­ed Farm Work­ers, they stayed for 26 days – ulti­mate­ly to great success.

This doc­u­men­tary is a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to the ​“hol­lowed grounds” of what was once Crip Camp and the inspir­ing dis­abil­i­ty activists who have their roots here. Uplift­ing and incred­i­bly empow­er­ing, it chal­lenges mis­con­cep­tions through open dis­cus­sions on sub­jects like sex, edu­ca­tion and able-bod­ied per­cep­tions. With a killer sound­track, cap­ti­vat­ing footage and a whole gang of love­able char­ac­ters, Crip Camp doc­u­ments an impor­tant part of his­to­ry that deserves to be cel­e­brat­ed forever.