The documentary “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” due Wednesday on Netflix after winning accolades at the Sundance Film Festival, drops viewers directly into the lives of disabled teenagers at Camp Jened in the Catskills in the 1970s. There were fun and games — and serious conversation that would propel the nascent disability rights movement.
One of the stars is Judy Heumann, who proved just as inspiring as a counselor rallying campers around a meal as a pioneering disability rights leader organizing activists to fight for access.
In her 20s, Heumann, who had polio as a child, battled the New York City Board of Education to become a teacher. She then led a 25-day sit-in in 1977 in San Francisco, demanding the enforcement of federal legislation that was a precursor of sorts to the Americans With Disabilities Act. After working in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Heumann released a memoir, “Being Heumann.”
Speaking by phone Friday about the documentary — directed by Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham, and produced by the Obamas — she discussed Camp Jened, what has changed since the 1950s and what needs to be done. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did this start at Camp Jened?
We were focusing on who we were and what we wanted to be and began over these years to look at what our fears and concerns were.
I had always been raised that, both because of my Jewishness and the importance of education in our family, but also this real belief that in the United States, if you worked hard and followed the rules, you would be able to achieve what you wanted. But that was becoming clearly more problematic for those of us who had disabilities.
People were working hard and doing many things. But using The New York Times as an example, The Times was not covering disability as a civil rights issue — it was covering it as a medical issue, even when we were having demonstrations in New York City in 1977. The media at large was not depicting us in a positive way. Telethons were a significant way that people were getting information, which focused on helpless people.
So camp was this playground. We were dating like you would if you didn’t have a disability, we were swimming, and playing baseball and arts and crafts, but we were also having time to gather our own voices.
It was a liberating time; we could be ourselves and it absolutely helped formulate our futures.
How did you and the movement get to Berkeley, Calif.?
I got a call from Ed Roberts in the Bay Area, a leader who had been involved in setting up the Disabled Students Program and the Center for Independent Living. He had been trying to identify people that might be interested in coming to Berkeley to study and to learn about the Center for Independent Living.
He asked if I would be interested. Nanci D’Angelo was a good friend. We moved out and then people that knew me and Nanci began moving out. Neil and Denise [Jacobson, who later married]; Ann Cupolo Freeman and Valerie [Vivona] were friends.
Myself, Nanci, Neil, Denise, Valerie, Ann — we had our disabilities at birth or when we were young. Our experience was different than most of the people in the Berkeley center — most were spinal cord injury or acquired disabilities.
At the San Francisco sit-in, were you worried about medical conditions, about asking people to stay?
No. We were all adults, and what was important was to help make sure that we were able to get people in and out of the building who could help people. I’m not wanting to be cavalier — there were some people who couldn’t stay the whole time.
We cared about each other; we came together for the same purpose. People recognized that the cause we were fighting for meant something to us individually as well as to a bigger group.
How did you rally people with different sets of experiences with disability?
In the grass-roots groups and [the Center for Independent Living] we had to recognize that discrimination against one was discrimination against all — that we needed to look at putting aside, I’m blind, I’m deaf, I had polio, whatever it may be, and focus on the fundamental changes; that ultimately brought us together and keeps us together.
What about life before the A.D.A.?
If you couldn’t walk, how would you get on a bus? You couldn’t.
When we were in elementary school, we all came home and did stuff together, but once people started going to high school things changed because we were unable to do the things that our peers were doing. Teenagers would take a bus and go visit a friend, or go to the movies. I went to high school in a completely different school, because none of the high schools my friends went to were accessible. That’s why camp also played a very important role.
Looking back, since Camp Jened, what has been heartening?
In the ’50s and ’60s, where there were no laws, there were at least one million disabled children out of school — that is no longer true. [The Education for All Handicapped Children Act was passed in 1975.] Buses and trains were not accessible, housing didn’t have accessibility standards, and there was a very weak emerging disability-rights movement, and internationally, it was similar.
What’s happened is the formation of groups like the International Disability Alliance; the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, a treaty modeled on the A.D.A. (although we were unable to get the U.S. Senate to recommend ratification). We have the emergence of a stronger disability rights movement in the U.S. Organizations like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network run by people with autism, and organizations working cross-disability. Parents in the United States have also been gaining their voice.
Tell me more about the treaty.
The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disability — it’s important. I’m married to Jorge Pineda; he is a disabled guy from Mexico, and it’s given me a deeper perspective of the issues that disabled people are facing in other countries. [In countries that have ratified the treaty] it would guarantee the right to an education, end discrimination in employment, ensure roads and transportation and housing were built accessibly. This was the result of people finally acknowledging the discrimination existed.
A committee out of Geneva does oversight. We in the U.S. have no one on that committee because we haven’t ratified it.
What has been less heartening?
We have much further to go. If you look at the media, representation of other minority groups has exploded, in advertising, for example, and on television, streaming; and there is a bump in the area of disability. But when I see someone with a disability in an ad, I’m drawn to it, it’s unusual. It is important for people to see themselves, to hear themselves.
Violence against disabled individuals — it doesn’t get discussed. Nor do we discuss people who have experienced violence acquiring disabilities.
Has politics today affected the disability rights movement? Is there still unity?
We’re talking about 56 million people in the United States — and one billion people around the world — so I don’t want to say, you know, we’re one unified group.
Ending discrimination, not just in the area of disability, but more broadly is what we’re looking at — and when you look at how the movement began, it was disabled people who were going to school together, to camps together, and that has been expanding. The voices of disabled individuals with different types of disabilities — [the movement] is looking at issues impacting disabled individuals from different racial backgrounds where discrimination is multifaceted.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
