What to watch on Netflix: Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution

Social Distance and chill with Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, a documentary about a camp that sparked a political fire in its attendants.

Whether you’re binging Netflix series as you social distance or looking for a comforting show to distract you, keeping yourself entertained and calm is a priority as we ride this pandemic out together.

But while some people are tearing through shows they love and shows they’ve never had the time to watch, others maybe looking for a documentary to fall into and learn more about a point in history they’re unfamiliar with or a social movement that’s determined to change the world. That’s where Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution comes in.

Watch the trailer below:

Executive produced by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution tells the story of Camp Jened, a summer camp in the Catskills for teens with disabilities. The camp embraced hippie culture as it bloomed and it was a place where teenagers who often did not see people like themselves, who often were not treated well by their peers, and who did not often have a voice, developed friendships and belief systems that empowered them and influenced their position on politics and the status quo.

Some Camp Jened attendants, like Judith Heumann, became politically activated. As she told co-director Nicole Newnham:

"[Judy explained that] places like Camp Jened play an enormous role in sparking activism because they were the places where people gathered together and realized that they had similar problems and those problems were because of structural oppression"

Heumann sued the New York Board of Education for discrimination because they denied her a teaching license on the grounds that she was a fire hazard. A survivor of polio, Huemann is a wheel chair user. The New York Board of Education did not believe she would be able to see her students and herself safely out of the building in the case of a fire. Their position folded under public pressure with newspapers asking how its possible that a survivor of polio like FDR can be president but not a school teacher in the state of New York. Heumann became the first wheelchair user to become a teacher in the state.

Pushed by her own fight and the outpouring of support and stories from other people with disabilities coming up against a system that would rather ignore or get rid of them, Heumann founded Disabled in Action (DIA)–“a civil rights organization committed to ending discrimination against people with disabilities – all disabilities.”

Heumann helped organize the 504 Sit-in, a 28 day protest that took place at a federal building that housed the San Franciscan office of the Department of Health Education Welfare (HEW). Depicted in Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, the sit-in was a response to HEW’s intent to gut the protections section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 were supposed to proved to disabled citizens. The section states:

"No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States, as defined in section 705 (20) of this title, shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency or by the United States Postal Service."

The sit-in’s purpose was to ensure this stipulation was not mitigated or worked around so that institutions and programs were required to adhere to what is prescribed in the law to the full letter of what was stated.

The Disability Rights Movement has a long and storied history. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is one look at that history told from differing perspectives, but as co-director, and Camp Jened attendant, Jim LeBrecht told Good Housekeeping:

"I think both of our hopes were that we could reframe how people think of disability and people with disabilities … Maybe we should be treating people [and] thinking about people that are not like us in these fresh eyes and open minds, and realize that things are really not what they seem."

And the first step in doing that is amplifying voices that are just as much a part of the fabric of the American story as any other community in this nation.

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is now streaming on Netflix. If you’ve seen it – let us know your thoughts!