LIGHTS , CAMERA After years of doing sound for stage productions and documentary films , LeBrecht documented his and fellow campers ’ ( left ) time at a 1960s summer camp in Netflix ' s Crip Camp .
IN SUCH AN INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT where everyone had a voice , these teenagers began to question their world back home . Casual bunk talk and camp meetings turned into unflinching discussions about accessibility , equality and the right to be understood and respected as a human being . Brought together by this camp , and born from these unassuming moments , were future disability rights activists and organizers .
“ Camp enabled us to recognize that the dreams we might have been thinking about were not going to become a reality if we waited for somebody else to do something ,” says Judy Heumann , former Jened camper and counselor with a long career in disability rights thereafter . “ The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not include disabled individuals , so we saw that if we wanted change , we had to make it ourselves .”
Completely by chance , a New York filmmaking group called the People ’ s Video Theater stumbled upon Camp Jened . After running into a few campers at a gas station , they brought new handheld video technology and asked the campers to film their life at camp . Their aim was to document the
lives of marginalized people , giving them tools to create for themselves , a form of alternative video journalism . “ They gave us the agency ,” says LeBrecht , who , at age 15 , took the filmmakers on a tour of the camp . “ They didn ’ t think we were anything less than a group of teens and young adults , and we grabbed at the opportunity .”
This archival footage of the camp was essential to the documentary LeBrecht wanted to make . With Crip Camp finding support from Barack and Michelle Obama ’ s production company , Higher Ground , co-producers LeBrecht and Newnham tracked the footage down . “ We received the hard drive with all these videos , and it was like Christmas morning ,” says LeBrecht . The grainy , 40-year-old footage captured joy and smiles , first loves and best friends , along with powerful conversations about overprotective parents , personal frustrations and disappointments with society . The campers would realize that they needed each other , not just at camp or back home afterward , but well throughout their lives , if they wanted to make the changes they hoped for .
KEEP ON TRUCKIN ' From camp to campus to career , James
LeBrecht ’ 78 ( far left ) has been an audiophile . The Marshall student studied acoustics , hoping to do sound for the Grateful Dead .
BY 1972 , many campers would come back together again for protests organized by the group Disabled in Action , marching and demonstrating in the streets of New York City and Washington , D . C ., to bring attention to building and transportation accessibility and the right to work . These protests would soon expand west , to Berkeley , Calif ., and come to include disabled Vietnam War veterans , as well as non-disabled allies such as ASL interpreters , personal care attendants and parents of disabled children .
While the disabled rights movement was gaining traction by 1977 , advocates were still waiting for the government to clarify who the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 applied to , specifically Section 504 , which prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability in federally funded programs . The stalemate resulted in a landmark 25-day occupation of the San Francisco regional office of Health , Education and Welfare , the longest sit-in ever at a federal building . The demonstration was led by Heumann , and several others who attended Camp Jened were among more than 150 people who worked together to live under limited means , much like they did at camp . The protest drew nationwide media attention that would finally prompt the issuance of regulations to protect disabled persons .
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