Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, directed by Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, tells the story of Camp Jened, a unique-for-its-time summer camp for people with disabilities of all kinds. Not only did Camp Jened, in Upstate New York, provide many campers with their first experience of a truly accessible space, it also became an accidental organizing site for the disability rights movement, since many of the movement’s leaders had become friends at Camp Jened. 

The first part of this astonishing film tracks the experience of director Jim LeBrecht, who traveled to Camp Jened for the summers during his teens. As LeBrecht explains in the film, he was told that this was a “camp for people with disabilities run by hippies.” He was attracted to the idea of Jened because of this counter-culture influence. When he got there, he found that what he had been told was the truth: the young counselors at the camp encouraged their campers to explore freedoms in various important ways, many of which they had never had access to as teens with disabilities. This may have been partly because the counselors were not much older than teenagers themselves, and because they, like the campers, they had come to Jened for freedom and exploration.

This relaxed atmosphere was combined with an ethos of radical accessibility. As Lionel Je’ Woodyard, an able-bodied counselor who came to Camp Jened from Georgia, explains, the campers at Jened were used to being left out in their lives at home. They weren’t allowed to play sports, for instance, at school, or if they were, they weren’t picked for the team by their classmates. Many of them weren't even allowed to attend regular public schools, but were placed in institutions. But at Camp Jened, as Woodyard explains, everyone was expected and encouraged to participate to the fullest extent of their capacity and interest. Counselors and other campers created accommodations for each other on a moment-to-moment basis. Accommodation was the expectation, rather than the exception to the rule. What's more, as we see in the film, decisions at the camp were made in radically democratic ways: when they had to decide what to make for dinner, for instance, campers held a long discussion and a vote. No issue was too small to be discussed and worked through together.

This might not sound so radical to those of us who were born after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Those who are a bit older, however, know better. When Camp Jened was running, there were no federal laws which protected the rights of people with disabilities. There were no federal laws which prevented discrimination against them on the basis of their disabilities. People with disabilities were barred from crucial experiences because they couldn’t count on the government to protect their rights. For instance, if you utilized a wheelchair to move through the world, what were you to do if your employer was on the second floor of a building? Unless your employer willingly added a ramp, you had no recourse. You had no right to demand that a ramp be installed, and no ability to do so with the government’s support. 

The second half of Crip Camp shows how a number of campers who had gone to Jened together became the leaders of this crucial civil rights movement, in particular a remarkable young woman named Judy Heumann. After having been a leader at Camp Jened, Heumann moved to San Francisco where she became an advocate for the rights of the disabled. Soon, with the help of her Camp Jened friends and many more organizers and activists, she was leading a civil rights movement which was demanding equal protection under the law for the disabled. 

We won’t ruin the ending, but suffice to say that the United States would be a very different place if not for the activists who began to organize at Camp Jened. 

Crip Camp shows disability in all its complexity, never failing to treat its subjects as three-dimensional characters. Unlike so many representations of disability in popular culture, it does not shy away from the radical and transgressive aspects of its subjects' lives. The campers and activists of Crip Camp are provocative, intelligent, earnest, and hilarious. They are people who have sex and get angry. In a world which rarely depicts people with disabilities as anything but asexual angels, this kind of representation could not be more welcome. 

Not only will Crip Camp inspire you to fight for the rights of all, but it will remind you that when ordinary people work together they can accomplish amazing things. 

We’re lucky to be interviewing Jim LeBrecht on Wednesday June 17th, 2020. If you have questions for Jim about the process of making the film, post them here. 

Our editor Erin recently had the pleasure of interviewing Marcela Turnage, a powerful activist for disability inclusion and a woman well-known for her solo traveling while utilizing a wheelchair. On her popular Instagram page, @thejourneyofabravewoman, Marcela teaches others how they can access the world's most amazing places as well as make their own communities more accessible. Marcela is an amazing mom, advocate, mentor, and...as you'll see in this interview, a hilarious, fun-loving person  who lives life to the fullest. In this interview, she talks about the experience of losing her ability to walk in an accident, how mentorship shaped her recovery, what is was like being undocumented and disabled in the United States, and how both the U.S. and other countries can make travel and life more accessible. Enjoy! 

At the age of 17 years old, I learned that imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery. I was born with cerebral palsy, a neuromuscular disorder that impairs the coordination of my muscles. My physical disability led me to find comfort in sitting in front of the TV, where I escaped the pain of my spastic muscles by immersing myself in the images and storylines of beloved characters. Those hours distracted me from the reality of struggling with cerebral palsy, but television’s ability to distract me ultimately wore off. While I turned to television as a means of escaping my physical difference, what I really wanted was to be acknowledged on the screen, to see someone like me represented as an ordinary person. 

Able-bodied comedienne Heather McDonald walked out to a microphone wearing a curly bob, high waisted jeans, brown suspenders, and a flannel shirt—all to perform as Geri Jewell. With writhing shoulders, stiff spastic hands, and an exaggerated grimace with a wide roaming mouth, McDonald imitated Jewell’s athetoid speech: “Hey Everybody, I’d like to announce that I’m out of the closet.” McDonald cheekily smiled, cocked her head, and purposefully enunciated: “Actually I was never a lipstick lesbian because I couldn’t put it on straight.” She then mimicked the act of putting on lipstick with a wide movement of the arm followed by a grin. “What can I say, when you’re gay you’re gay,” McDonald claimed with a shrug of the shoulders and stiff hands at her sides. Before the clip ended, actress Fortune Feimster appeared as the girlfriend: “Honey, I am so proud of you,” she said and grabbed McDonald for an exaggerated sloppy kiss—due to McDonald’s performed lack of balance and coordination. Feimster can be heard saying, “steady, steady” as the camera zooms in on both actresses slapping tongues while a laugh track played in the background. 

I blinked at the television set feeling as though a wave had hit me. Dread washed over me, my head felt heavy. Why is having a physical disability a joke? Is this how people see a person with cerebral palsy? Was I a joke? 

I was acutely aware of my physical difference at a very young age. As the first child with cerebral palsy to attend a private French school in New York City, I was approached by the school principal about my orthopedic braces being in violation of the dress code. Despite my physical difference, I was expected to conform to an identity I did not fit and could not relate to, that of an able-bodied person. At the same time, I was also an outsider in my community, unaware at that age of the world of physical disability outside of my personal experience. 

At the time when I first saw this particular Chelsea Lately episode I didn’t know of Geri Jewell, but the actress is a pioneer in disability representation. Jewell was the first person with cerebral palsy to act in a prime-time television series. Though Jewell had a minor role in the NBC series as Blair’s cousin, her performance was groundbreaking. Jewell’s character brought new depth to 1980s media. She utilized humor to address an ableist society’s discomfort at the presence of someone with a physical disability.  

Something changed within me that day in my childhood bedroom, as I watched Chelsea Lately. It was then that I developed an awareness that my identity as a disabled individual would not be treated with respect and authenticity. It was in the name of comedy that Chelsea Handler chose to have actress Heather McDonald imitate Geri Jewell, but this was much more than just playing pretend for laughs. 

In discussing Hollywood’s diversity issue of having able-bodied actors play people with disabilities, Huffington Post journalist Wendy Lu claims,  “Disability is an identity just like race, gender and sexuality.” The Chelsea Lately episode’s mocking of the disabled identity is akin to the practice of blackface. Just as white performers have played characters that dehumanized African Americans, McDonald’s portrayal of cerebral palsy demeaned and disrespected the disabled community. Long after the clip ended, I remember deep discomfort weighing me down on my twin bed. The seeds of embarrassment and self-hatred had been planted.  

Media plays such an important role in our lives. As much as it helps us make sense of ourselves and the world around us, it can also be damaging to the disabled community. Even though that episode aired in 2011, Hollywood still struggles in accepting disability as worthy storytelling. 

The experience of watching that particular Chelsea Lately episode will forever be etched in my memory. I will never forget the disorienting experience of being falsely represented on TV; it felt like tripping and falling, being crumpled on the ground after my body betrays me. The betrayer in this instance though wasn’t my disability, but mainstream media’s discomfort with the disabled body. 

In time, my understanding of this discomfort has lit a fire within me and led me to represent myself on my own terms. But I will not stop there. I am more than the images mainstream media imposes on me. I am an advocate for my disabled identity, and do not want other young people to have to endure what I did on that day nine years ago. 

We know that many of our community members are feeling a little bit pent up lately. It's really hard to quarantine, especially as the weather grows nicer. So today we're offering Kathryn Jenkins reading her wonderful book The Inclusion Alphabet for you and your families. This is a book for all ages and abilities, and as Kathryn explains in this video, there are different ways to read it depending on your wishes and needs. 

Follow @inclusion_project on Instagram to learn more about Kathryn's work, and stay tuned for more collaborations between Different & Able and the Inclusion Project! 

Editor's Note: We are working on adding closed captioning to all our videos, and hope to accomplish this in the next few weeks. If you would like a transcript of this video before then, please contact espampinato@differentandable.org. 

“Your child has the physical skills of a newborn,” is never something a parent of a 1 year old wants to hear.

Given our daughter’s many diagnoses, it perhaps would have been justifiable to give up and accept what many of the experts were describing as a life of limits. A life of can’ts. However, in our case, with a lot of work and determination from many people, 12 years later, our daughter has become a rhythmic gymnast and a dancer. Erin’s current reality would not be possible if we had accepted her original prognosis.

Erin was born 8 weeks early with Down syndrome and just about every physical complication that could come with it. She had 3 major surgeries in her first 6 months and spent almost half of her first year in the hospital. When she was cleared for Early Intervention at 6 months, we began working with Developmental, Speech, Occupational, Physical, Music, and Swim therapists along with a nutritionist. She also took a weekly inclusive music class.  We immersed ourselves in Signing Time videos, and Erin had an age appropriate vocabulary—with sign language being her first language. She used an NG tube for the first 11 months of her life. She and her team worked hard. Her siblings were also expert play therapists and creatively included Erin in every activity they could. Shortly before her third birthday, Erin transitioned to the school based Early Childhood program, and a hospital based Physical Therapy program, using a walker and crawling. She was able to first walk in swim therapy with the buoyancy support.  One week after having ear tube surgery and with a candy reward system her sister devised, Erin walked for the first time on Halloween, just before her third birthday.

Sometimes the most amazing things become life changing break throughs. Looking back, we had two of those break throughs. Erin’s Aunt and Uncle sent her a rhythmic ribbon for Christmas. Nothing fancy, but Erin would play with the ribbon for hours. She would put the song, “Let it Go,” on repeat and dance and dance. I began searching for opportunities to develop this interest and found that Special Olympics offered rhythmic gymnastics. With the help of her PT at the time and her sister the dancer, Erin began applying all she learned into an athletic framework. Having mastered crossing the midline at a younger age, we hadn’t worked on it much. That is until her ribbon routine called for a figure 8. What her sister and I thought would be easy became a complex motor planning exercise months in the making. The advantage of the Rhythmic Gymnastics framework was that, while therapy isolated and made it difficult to attend extracurricular activities, a recreational based model provided socialization, confidence building, and added a skill development. She moved from being a patient to a performer. She then became involved with Unified Sports, which is an inclusive model, gaining peer modeling and socialization. This transition to a recreational based program gave her a chance to perform with her friends at a Special Olympics Gala. Her years of PT work allowed her to overcome her physical challenges and use her grace and strength to show others the possibilities.

The second break through for us came when a service dog named Cassie joined our family. At the time, Erin was using her hard-earned physical therapy work to elope. Cassie would alert us if Erin was headed out the door. Erin really did not appreciate the sensory overload of having a dog bark at her and stopped eloping within 3 or 4 months. We also trained Cassie to track Erin. This gave us great comfort and playing hide and seek with a dog was a wonderful activity for Erin and her friends. Erin also helped train Cassie, which provided fabulous leadership and speech opportunities. Cassie was a great reinforcer of ending consonants, as in “sit,” “down,” and “shake.” Cassie was great support for 9 years, taking us for walks, playing ball, and being a loyal friend. She also taught us about saying goodbye this week, as she passed over the rainbow bridge, Erin insisting she be by her friend’s side, as Cassie has been by Erin’s side all these years.

Our other animal partners have been the horses at the Hanson Center Therapeutic Riding Program. Horse back riding is not only good for core strengthening, but it provides a valuable connection to a beautiful creature.

To continue our transition from medical based PT to life-long recreational based exercise, we have begun working with Angela Rodriguez, owner of Kines Training and Coaching. As Angela says, “Exercise gives you confidence, makes you strong mentally and physically, makes you self-sufficient, and helps you handle every day life.” These are things I strive for myself and wish for all of my children. They are also key for achieving joy regardless of ability. Erin is currently working on yoga with Angela, improving balance and strength. The two and Erin’s sister are also working on breathing to help with focus. “Breathing brings back the focus and supports regrouping and changing your reaction,” Angela said.

Life-long fitness is much more effective when people find and do what they love. For children with special needs, doing this may require a medically-based therapy program to develop skills and strength needed to move into recreational-based programs. Therapists working with Special Olympics and other programs can help their patients continue to receive benefits long after treatment has finished.