July 26, 2020, will mark the 30^th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. Earlier this year, my teen daughters and I watched a powerful new documentary available on Netflix called Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. The film explains how the disability rights movement evolved across decades. Though Crip Camp was released before the recent Black Lives Matter protests, its themes have much to teach parents at this critical cultural moment.

The documentary focuses on Camp Jened, a 1971 summer camp for teens with disabilities. Many of the teens featured later become activists for disability rights. The film is narrated in part by Jim LeBrecht, who has spina bifida and attended the camp at age 15. The opening scenes show him as a child at home literally climbing up and down stairs with his hands and arms.

Extensive black-and-white camp footage from then documents how the multiracial campers enjoy each other’s company. While the “hippie” camp might not meet today’s safety standards, the campers frequently express how liberated they feel. At the camp, their bodies are not burdens, but simply part of who they are.

Lionel Je’Woodyard, an African-American counselor, notes similarities to the civil rights movement at the time: “Whatever obstacles that were in my way being a black man, the same thing was held true for individuals in wheelchairs.” Later that decade, the Black Panthers will help disability rights activists during their protests and sit-ins.

One of the camp counselors who later becomes a powerful activist is Judy Heumann. She narrates that as a child with polio, she did not feel different until a boy saw her wheelchair and asked if she was “sick.” In that moment, Heumann said she felt “sidelined,” and inclusion has been her passion ever since.

The later parts of Crip Camp show the development of the movement in the 1970s and ’80s. Scenes of a man in a wheelchair having to use dangerous city streets illustrate the need for the curb ramps and elevators that we now take for granted. Such images of architectural injustice culminate in “The Capitol Crawl,” a dramatic protest that occurred on March 12, 1990. On that day, dozens of people with disabilities abandoned their wheelchairs and used their hands and arms to drag their bodies up the many steps of the Capitol Building. The Americans with Disabilities Act finally became law a few months later. though the struggle for full disability rights continues.

Inspiration is not the same as action

While Crip Camp is no doubt inspiring, a recent memoir by Keah Brown, an African-American writer in her late 20s who has cerebral palsy, reminds readers that inspiration can be tricky. Regarding people with disabilities, she declares in The Pretty One (2019):  “We are human beings first, who shouldn’t have to be inspirations for our lives to matter. … I wasn’t given what I hoped and asked for because of my disability or in spite of it; I received all of it because of the person I am inside my body.”

From the start, Brown’s book purposefully emphasizes all that she is apart from her disability. She begins: “Hey, friends! My name is Keah and I’m cute as hell. I love popular culture, music, cheesecake, cheeseburgers, and pizza.” Such a playful attitude created Brown’s viral hashtag #DisabledAndCute in 2017.

While she is happy to broaden the representation of people with disabilities in popular culture, Brown warns against “able-ism” in the form of pity: “Disabled bodies are often used to make the able-bodied feel better about their own bodies; we are a reminder that ‘it could be worse.’” Instead, “as a disabled person, what I need in place of pity, which does absolutely nothing to advance the community, are my rights, respect, and opportunity.”

The themes of respect and exhaustion permeate Brown’s vantage at the intersection of race and disability: “What black people need is respect in every space. There is an exhausting process of entering public spaces never knowing how your blackness will be perceived by the people who are not black — and what the cost of that perception may be.” Much like the Capitol Crawl scenes illustrate in Crip Camp, Brown notes that “so much of disability is adaptation and discovering the sorts of tips, tricks, and work-arounds necessary to survive in public and private spaces.”

Foster inclusion, respect in your children

Significantly, both Judy Heumann and Keah Brown describe crucial moments from their childhoods when another child marked them as “different” and thus “less than.” Heumann was asked if she was sick, while Brown explains that in middle school a boy mimicked her limp, which led her to self-hatred, disordered eating and even suicidal thoughts. Granted, children often say or do things impulsively, but as Brown notes, “The things we do even in jest and naivete matter; they can change lives.”

To foster a child’s ability to respect others, parents should convey early and often that it’s OK to notice and talk about differences among people. Ideally, questions can be addressed in age-appropriate ways even before children encounter people who look different from them, whether due to disability, skin tone, cultural garb or any other reason.

While it can sometimes make parents nervous, noticing difference is actually quite natural for young children. If children are shushed or shamed when they ask questions, the message received is that differences are bad. (When my daughters were young, I benefited from reading Hate Hurts: How Children Learn and Unlearn Prejudice.)

As children get older, try to find ways they might increase their empathy. Try volunteering opportunities, social activities or analysis of popular culture. Some of these strategies might feel uncomfortable, but as Brown declares: “I believe that being uncomfortable is important in order for us to grow.”

(Author’s note: Crip Camp on Netflix is rated R for some language about sexuality but is very educational for teens when watched with a parent.)

Photo: ©  Minerva Studio / Adobe Stock.

Need a new parenting mantra? Try this: “Most things are possible when you assume problems can be solved.”

That is one of the nuggets Judith Heumann provides in her recent memoir, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist. I discovered Heumann while watching Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution this past summer with my teen daughters. The film is nominated for Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Oscars.

In the film’s Camp Jened footage from 1971, Heumann is a young wheelchair user and camp counselor who has polio. But her skills as an activist are already apparent. How did she achieve such early self-possession?

In her memoir, the Crip Camp star explains the power of her parents and friends: “I never wished I didn’t have a disability. … I’m fairly certain my parents didn’t either. I never asked them, but if I had, I don’t think they would have said that our lives would have been better if I hadn’t had a disability. That was who they were.” She adds: “Some people say that what I did changed the world. But really, I simply refused to accept what I was told about who I could be. And I was willing to make a fuss about it.”

Part of her can-do mindset came from her childhood friends: “It didn’t occur to me then to think it unusual that I joined in all the kids’ games in my wheelchair. Because there was never a question of whether or not I would play, too — we all figured out a way for me to do whatever everyone was doing. … Now I know that this was the way it was because we were kids, and kids are problem solvers. But it taught me, at a very early age, that most things are possible when you assume problems can be solved.”

When a child with a disability becomes a parent 

Another woman who appears in Crip Camp and has also written a memoir full of parenting wisdom is Denise Sherer Jacobson. The Question of David: A Disabled Mother’s Journey Through Adoption, Family, and Life chronicles the process Jacobson and her husband, Neil, both of whom have cerebral palsy, went through to become parents.

Similar to Heumann, Jacobson experienced unconditional acceptance from her parents as a child, which had a huge impact on her psychology. But her childhood was more alienating: “At four years old I already knew what I looked like in other people’s eyes: a pretty child who could hardly walk or talk, who had to be carried up and down stairs and fed and schlepped to doctors and therapists. I was viewed as a tragedy by well-meaning family and friends who pitied my mother and admired her devotion to me.”

Jacobson continues, however, in terms that parallel Heumann’s mindset: “I also knew, at four years old, that I wasn’t a tragedy at all. I’m sure it would have surprised them to know that it never occurred to me to wish I weren’t disabled.”

Significantly, Jacobson transfers this mindset to her role as a new parent of David, a baby boy who doctors suspect may also have cerebral palsy: “David would always know that, whether or not he had a disability, his life was of great value.” When someone doubts Neil and Denise’s parenting ability because of their cerebral palsy, Denise reflects: “People seem to get so caught up in what they can see that they ignore that which is invisible to them, the most important part of raising a child — the relationship between him and his parents.”

‘Crip Camp,’ teaches new generation (and its parents)

A third person who appears in Crip Camp has inspired a new children’s book.  All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything is designed for children ages 4 and up. Written by Annette Bay Pimental and illustrated by Nabi H. Ali, the book tells the story of Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy.

At age 8, Keelan-Chaffins famously participated in “The Capitol Crawl,” a protest that occurred on March 12, 1990. In that demonstration, dozens of people abandoned their wheelchairs and climbed with their hands and arms up the many steps of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The Americans with Disabilities Act finally became law a few months later.

The book illustrates through a child’s eyes the need for curb cuts, ramps and elevators with braille panels. While physical architecture is foregrounded, the book raises awareness of how our mental architecture is even more important regarding disability issues. The author declares: “While physical barriers pose challenges to people with disabilities, social attitudes can be even more frustrating. People may focus on a disability as a problem to be solved instead of paying attention to the person with the disability. Or people with disabilities may be treated with low expectations, as if having a disability means they are incapable. On the other hand, people with disabilities are sometimes treated as heroes simply for doing everyday things when they just want to live their lives.”

Redesigning mental architecture can be challenging, but all parents should constantly strive for a barrier-free, problems-can-be-solved environment for their children. As Heumann says of her childhood, “In my mind, there were no barriers to what I could learn or what I could achieve. All the barriers came from outside of me.”