crip camp

The Crip Camp Revolution: Making Spaces Accessible

unsureunderwaterobotLeave a comment

The common American student has very little exposure to disability studies in public education. This lack of curriculum is unacceptable and narrows the minds of young folks across the country. Many of those who do know about disability studies are living it first-hand. Imagine what it’s like as a student who never sees their own experience taught about in the classroom; how isolating that would be. There are dozens of methods that can be used to accurately portray disability studies, but all come from a place that centers disabled voices. Crip Camp is a documentary produced by a disabled man about disabled people. It is the perfect film to introduce students to the world of disability.  

 Crip Camp retells disability through the lens of a revolution—the revolution of access. What begins with a couple of disabled kids at summer camp (Camp Jened), leads to a national headline celebrating the triumph of a 28-day sit-in in a Berkeley Federal Health, Education, and Welfare building. The documentary tells the story of how those kids went from singing songs with a bunch of hippies, to sleeping on federal grounds in protest of their federally sanctioned mistreatment in the US.  

Camp Jened, where it all started, was a revolutionary space. It was a crip space that allowed campers to be fully themselves. Keywords for Disability Studies defines “access” as “the power, opportunity, permission, or right to come near or into contact with someone or something”. Camp Jened was accessible. It provided power, opportunity, permission, and the right for the campers to be unapologetically themselves; and that is why it is revolutionary. This disability revolution was not because of pity for non-disabled people, but rather, because of impassioned, driven, and brilliant disabled folks themselves. Crip Camp is highly relatable, not just for disabled folks, but for any high schooler looking to make a difference.  

Crip Camp provides a deviant perspective of disability. It portrays disabled kids and adults in a way that is anti-normative. It successfully tells a story of disabled high schoolers as they are (which again, is revolutionary). This exposure is essential for high schoolers, as mainstream media often portrays disabled folks as inspirationporn or pity parties. The documentary accurately depicts the campers at Jened in a way that humanizes them, much unlike how they were treated outside the camp. It features segments of their patience, sexual exploration, messing up, desire for popularity, and daily needs through a disability studies lens.  

Accessibility, like that within Camp Janed (and that portrayed throughout the entirety of Crip Camp), is worth fighting for. The advocates in this film bring the audience on their journey of fighting. The revolution is not going to be handed over, Crip Camp tells a story of fighting for justice in a country that claims freedom. Several events are included in the documentary, including the month-long sit-in, the “capital crawl” in demand for ADA, and countless other protests; these events are historic markers to progress in our country. They are hopeful, encouraging, and ideally leave activists hungry for even more! Crip Camp pushes the limits; the limits of spaces, of people, of government. And I push you to use it in your classroom.  

‘Crip Camp’ Could Be a Class Success!

CloverLeave a comment

(Author’s Note: None of the 62 chapters from Keywords are titled “Law”, so I chose Chapter 52, “Rights”, by Maya Sabatello, because I’m guessing that’s what the professor meant. It’s the closest, anyway.)

Hey You, Teacher,

If it were implemented in your Social Studies II class curriculum this semester, I think Crip Camp (2020)—yes, that Oscar-nominated, Sundance premiere documentary that was produced by the Obamas—would be of substantial educational value in teaching the full history of the American civil rights movement to your classroom. 

First, let me offer that the disabled position in America remains largely unacknowledged in our humanities classrooms. The significant piece of American history covered in Crip Camp is retold colorfully by the leading rights activists for Disabled in Action, including Jim LeBrecht, Judith Heumann, Corbett O’Toole, Ann Cupolo Freeman, and Denise Sherer-Jacobsen, ALL of whom are accomplished authors in the field of disability studies as well—which is something to provide extra material for your potential unit on disability rights. It’s a fast-paced documentary about the fight for American civil rights, filmed from the ground floor of the sit-ins and the sidewalks of the protests.

The documentary follows the above cast during their youth at the disability-centered “Woodstock” (Ann Freeman) which brought them together and shaped their confidence—straight on through their fight to get Act 504 signed, a critical piece of civil rights legislation which was first vetoed by Nixon (quote: “it would be just impossible in terms of cost”), but later weakened and delayed under Secretary Joseph Califano, with all attempts to enforce the act abandoned by Reagan in a horrendously bigotted effort to deprive the largest minority group in the country of their rights to protection from discrimination in federally funded public spaces (and in organizations and businesses nationwide). Because the fight still continues, your classrooms, were they to include Crip Camp in their curriculums, might notice one term continually appearing—rights. But the fight for disability justice does not only include these adoptions into law, like Act 504. Rights is more complicated than that; which is almost exactly the message of Crip Camp going into today’s world. Perhaps it would allow your students to expand their perspectives on discrimination, society’s attitudes, and law.

Maya Sabatello’s chapter “Rights” from Keywords for Disability Studies offers that “basing disability claims for justice merely in terms of legal rights, without a concept of moral rights, is inadequate”, because if the legal rights were boiled down to their core, it would be exposed how “Traditional Western liberal theory assumes that rights are private, individualized, and autonomous”. Contrary to this, the interest of disability activists, including those in Crip Camp, has always been on “group rights”, which “focus on collectives that have shared interests and aim at protecting cultures, ways of life and practices that are presumably not sufficiently protected by the assertion of individual interests” (page 159). So, as Crip Camp’s core activists (along with machinist unions, Black Panthers and supporters) persist through three weeks of hunger striking, months of government sit-ins, and a generation of “really serious, radical action” (Jimmy LeBrecht), they fight for their rights in the law, but also for their rights to exist together as an identity without friction or hardship. Sometimes this can be as plain as the right to not be “sidelined” (Judy Heumann) in a public space with your presence, but other times these rights are less obvious to the nondisabled, like the right to privacy. As one Camp Jened camper, Nick, put it: “I think what Nancy is talking about is that everyone in their life sometimes wants to be alone. I think that’s one of the major rights.” The story really only begins with Act 504, but Crip Camp teaches students to fight for the full extent of their rights, the way Sabatello describes.

 So, Sabatello’s understanding of legal rights and group rights, together, helps encapsulate Disability in Action’s goals and expectations for the implementation of Act 504. And although the world has come a long way from the incomprehensible atrocity of the institution-era, you may still be tempted to avoid showcasing this film to your classroom because of its graphic depictions of abuse in institutions like Willowbrook—I urge you not to. Though uncomfortable for students, that scene provides additional understanding of the stakes of this fight for civil rights by the disabled in America. It was not very long ago.

Of the above reasoning, might I add—aren’t these EXACTLY the kinds of topics you’d want to use to stimulate class discussion? What does Social Studies in American classrooms concern at its heart, if not the rights and freedoms of the country? As the famous clause “all men are created equal” has taken nearly 250 years to prove effected, much of that catch-up is contained already in your Social Studies curricula—and here is one more opportunity for learning. The relevance in humanities classrooms is abundant, across the board, but this is magnified by the under-evaluation of the disabled position in history as a minority group. As Corbett O’Toole said in Crip Camp, “There are moments when history shifts”. This film is an artful reliving of one of the most important ones of the last century. I hope that your Social Studies curriculum this year does not overlook a highly educational piece of American literature which could be supplemental to your classroom’s emergent concept of rights and freedoms.

Sincerely, 

Clover

A Future High-School Teacher

Camp and Politics

turtleLeave a comment

Crip Camp is a very insightful and informational documentary. I think this movie should be seen by students for multiple reasons, a large one being the understanding of activism. Activism is the taking of action, specifically in a political or social setting. The film highlights the ins and outs of a disability activist group and how they went about advocating and fighting for their rights and the changes they wanted to see in the world. I think this is important because all of their actions as a group were nonviolent. They relied on sit-ins, hunger strikes, and information to change the minds of politicians and citizens in America. Not only that, but the film also shows how different groups of people come together for common causes. To support and learn from each other, an example of this is the Black Panthers group providing meals for the disabled who were protesting inside a political building for over twenty days, “A broad array of nondisabled ally groups supported the twenty-five-day occupation by disability activists of the HEW regional headquarters in San Francisco.” (23).

I think this is important for students to learn because it not only gives them the inspiration to fight for what they believe is right in a nonviolent way but how to advocate and help the community around them in order to improve the lives of others. The film shows a sense of community and comradery throughout the film that is a valuable thing for a child to learn and understand, find happiness in a community, relate to others, and be able to learn from them. I think this documentary will also teach high school students about disability and what it is to be disabled. It’s an accurate representation of the experience of those with disabilities and widens children’s minds to how to incorporate them into their lives, to look at their peers and the people in their community as people first, not defined by their disability the way society often phrases it.