'Crip Camp' on Netflix beautifully traces a revolution back to its teen years

The grainy, black-and-white footage shows teens in the 1960s doing what teens have done since time immemorial — smoke weed, hang out, and discuss the recent outbreak of public lice among their horny, horny peers. They're also fomenting a revolution that will change the world, but right now they're talking about crabs.

Welcome to Crip Camp.

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is one of many films denied a theatrical release during the novel coronavirus outbreak. The documentary, which was partially produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company Higher Ground, premiered at Sundance to high reviews and, thanks to Netflix, is now available to stream. It's not very long, it's extraordinarily well-made, and it might be one of the most important films of the year.

Crip Camp is about Camp Jened, a summer camp for children with disabilities that existed in the 1950s and '60s (Camp Jened closed in 1971). It is also about some of the children who attended Camp Jened and internalized, summer by summer, the idea that their thoughts and experiences have value beyond the limited expectations of society. Above all, Crip Camp is exactly what it says in its full title: the story of a disability revolution.

It's vital and apparent that Crip Camp was co-directed by someone who lives with a disability. James LeBrecht, a sound designer and disability rights activist who attended Camp Jened in his teen years, also stars in the documentary as one of many first person voices who traces the roots of his activism back to his experience at camp. His warm, funny description of growing up with spina bifida in the 1950s and 60s is the narrative that introduces the audience to Camp Jened and encapsulates precisely why the camp was a formative experience for many who joined the decades-long fight to pass legislation to acknowledge the humanity of his peers.

For LeBrecht and others in the documentary, Camp Jened was his first experience being in a space almost entirely populated by people with disabilities. It allowed those who were historically (and currently) labeled "others" to come together on a scale that allowed them to become an "us." Archival footage of the camp shows adolescents with disabilities that affect their mobility and speech expressing themselves without the assumption that an able-bodied person needs to accommodate or speak for them, and the campers' dedication to supporting each other created an environment where disability was a part of, and not an exception to, everyday life.

The documentary draws a straight line from the spirit of Camp Jened to the work of disability rights activists who dedicated themselves to producing civil rights and protections for their community. It shows footage of campers who participated in the 1977 504 sit-in, a nationwide demonstration that pressured the United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to sign and enforce the country's first meaningful piece of legislation that protected disabled citizens from discrimination.

That legislation, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, was a turning point after which the United States government was forced to reassess the then-current policy of treating disability as an individual medical concern instead of a social status created by a world that excludes those individuals by design. The subjects of Crip Camp point to Camp Jened as the place they realized an inclusive world was not only possible, but the only equitable world that could exist. At Camp Jened they were not a "problem" to be solved. The problem was how the able-bodied world dismissed them.

Inspiration is a loaded word to use when discussing disability rights, as it's almost always deployed with the condescending assumption that any task a disabled person manages to accomplish is somehow extraordinary. Crip Camp is not inspiration porn, but it is inspirational for all the ground it manages to cover in a short hour and forty-five minutes. It's a case study in the power of activism, a badly needed history lesson, and an invitation for viewers to assess the impact of spaces like Camp Jened — designed from the start to include.

Crip Camp is now streaming on Netflix.