Tropic Sprockets / Crip Camp

By Ian Brockway

[Online recommendations for all you self-isolators.]

When I was a kid, I went to an Easter Seals camp in Kissimmee Florida with a Native American theme. It was not much fun, due to its regimented tone, playing military taps at night with a prayer song at breakfast. 

How I wish I had gone to the camp depicted in “Crip Camp,” a documentary by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham. The film is the story of Camp Jened in the Catskills, a springboard for the disability rights movement, born in the late 1960s.

Lebrecht is in the film as a young boy with Spina Bifida, happy and joyful reaching the grounds. Jened allowed kids to be themselves: they flirted, danced, kissed, voiced their opinions and were left to express themselves fully. The campers made decisions and argued with no distinction between handicapped or able. The place and its philosophy of existing as you are was an extension of the hippie movement.

Friendships were formed and by the end of the camp stay, many members worked at the Center For Independent Living in Berkeley. Central but not alone in this group was Judy Heumann who battled against Nixon for slashing safeguards against discrimination. Heumann and many others continued the fight against Secretary of Health and Human Services Joseph Califano for not signing Article 504 which among other provisions, guarantees the right of every disabled citizen to attend public school. After a sit-in for 24 days (in which the Black Panthers brought food), the article was signed.

The film is colorful and engaging, highlighting many young adults. There is one moment where a man in drag dances to Rocky Horror. Further the film underscores the reality that the disabled community has been profoundly cast aside until recently, with dismissive opinions and regressive national policies.

Heart-rending it is to see the sequence showing activists get out of their chairs and crawl up the U.S. Capitol steps to ensure article 504 during the Reagan era. In seeing this, even able-bodied hearts will cheer. As it turned out, the American Disabilities Act, guaranteeing the rights of all citizens to access, was not in place until the George H.W. Bush presidency. 

Also emotional is the film’s conclusion when the now adult campers revisit the site of summers past.

“Crip Camp” is an affecting film. Not only is it about a unique summer experience, but it also enlightens the uninformed that the Civil Rights struggle in the 1960s was about everyone including those with disabilities and that we are all in this social experience of life together.

Crip Camp is streaming on Netflix.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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