Hi guys! Miggy here. So excited to have Rebekah back to share more thoughts on disability awareness and more specifically, on ableism. Rebekah was one of my all time favorite and most popular spotlightees ever–you can read her interview here. She is a phenomenal writer and even after 6 years of special needs parenting, 5...
Happy Friday everyone! I was recently checking out Rotten Tomatoes’ list of 250 best movies on Netflix right now and was so thrilled to see that CripCamp was listed at #2.
If you haven’t heard of CripCamp it’s the first film, a documentary, released from the Michelle and Barack Obama’s Higher Ground production company. CripCamp focuses on a Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled kids in the 1970’s that became an incubator for the Disability Rights movement leading to the passing of the ADA in 1990, as many of the Disability Rights leaders were these very kids from Camp Jened.
As the beginning of the film unfolded with footage from Camp Jened in the 1970’s I immediately thought back to last summer when I took Lamp to her first summer camp in Texas, a camp for kids with congenital limb differences. It is a unique experience to watch your disabled child walk into a room filled with other disabled children and know, KNOW, that this will be the first time she walks into a room full of children she doesn’t know and she won’t be stared at, won’t pointed at and won’t be whispered about. Unlike nearly every other situation in her life, she will blend in with the crowd. I watched as she rolled up to other kids and easy conversations started without double-takes or questioning each others’ bodies.
The beginning of CripCamp was a joyful peek into the past where these kids really could just be kids first and foremost. It’s funny, uncensured and a bit crazy like summer camp should be. (Also, it’s rated R, so not for little ones…although there is so much I want my children to see about this movie.) And then there are the conversations as these kids sit around the table discussing real issues–their rights. It was beautiful to see these kids from the past sit around and listen to each other, even when some of them had very delayed speech and were difficult to understand. Instinctively, they knew the importance and the necessity of waiting on bodies and minds that may not function at a typical pace, but that have important thoughts to communicate nevertheless.
[readmore title= “Click through to read more about CripCamp. And I’d love to hear your thoughts!”]
You’ve written a fantastic review for a remarkable movie. I agree with everything you’ve said and would add that watching the people drag themselves up the Capitol steps enraged me. Why? Why is everything so difficult and how, how do we all do what we do every single day? I was moved to tears several times in the movie, particularly during the scene where the teenagers were all talking at camp, and one of the guys interpreted the woman who’s language was difficult to understand, and he said that it was “privacy and governing one’s own body” or something like that — that was the most difficult thing for her. That she had never had a moment free of someone else touching and caring for her body. I have a 25 year old daughter with severe disabilities, both cognitive and physical, and that made me weep for a long time. The movie is essential, and I’m so grateful to the Obamas for helping to produce it.ReplyCancel
The same two things that stuck with you, were the moments that stuck with me as well. Watching people crawl up the steps (so symbolic) and the boy that was interpreting for the young woman at camp. I was also struck with how everyone just stopped and LISTENED to her… I wonder if she had ever had that in her life. Elizabeth, I can only imagine how you felt watching that. XOReplyCancel
I watched CripCamp a few weeks ago after you first mentioned it, and it was great. I loved that the camp was started by hippies, and staffed with all kinds of young adults from different walks of life. It was amazing to see the autonomy the campers had, the freedom and sense of personal agency was wonderful. The campers were carving out their lives, as any other “typical” young person.
Hello lovely readers! I live in an old brick bungalow in Salt Lake City, UT, with my handsome ride-or-die husband and anxious rescue dog. My husband has three grown kids, and we recently fostered a boy from Ukraine. I’m working on finishing a PhD in English Literature this year, and am itching for a regular 9-5...
Let's be friends!
I love this. I have learned so much from the special needs spotlights, but I still find it difficult on how to approach it with my kids. I think many well meaning people (myself included) end up teaching their kids what Rebekah is saying misses the point–"we are all the same." We aren't. Being different (abled, races, whatever) isn't bad, but sometimes we get so uncomfortable about saying/doing the wrong thing, that we gloss over it all in an effort not to offend–but ignoring differences in itself is offensive. There is an article on Cup of Jo this week about race that points out the same thing–teaching our kids that we are all the same implies that there are not different challenges or experiences for people based on race (or disability). Thank you to Rebekah for her brilliant article and to Miggy for opening my eyes every week.
Bravo for being willing to wrestle with the "shifty little monster" (love the phrasing). I boiled over last week at the news story about the boy in NJ. This kid was flooded with cards after his dad posted a photo & story on facebook about the boy writing "no one" was his friend (on a school worksheet). The boy sounded a lot like one of my kids…and I am here to say that cards and notes do not solve the problem of no one playing with you at recess, or ever EVER choosing to sit by you in the classroom, etc. And yet I know my friends thought I was nuts (and incredibly picky and judgmental and uncaring) when I said these things over lunch.
When will we wake up and treat people like people, not as a condition or a color or a (insert any of the zillions of descriptors here)? Everyone needs a friend. Everyone needs to belong, somewhere, to someone, to something. Everyone needs to help and be helped. Every.single.one.of.us. How the heck could anyone be anything but GRATEFUL if you held the door for them? Good grief. But I get so tired of the incredibly narrow mindsets we can't seem to escape. Oh, humanity…please let us write a new script (sorry for the rant).
Thank you for this spotlight. It is so well-written. I think it could be one of the NYTimes.com weekly essays on disability. Check out the current one. When I try to paste the link here, it becomes three lines of mumbo jumbo.
Mel in Fort Collins
Thank you so much for posting this amazing article. I found myself nodding at so many points she made. I have so far to go in dispelling my own 'abelistic' judgements and tendencies. It IS so ingrained and subversive in our culture that it is there without us knowing it! But having a child with his own disability shattered many of my illusions. I used to be uncomfortable around people with disabilities; now I see them as human beings. It's as simple as that — they are persons, each their own individual, and deserve to be treated just like that! Rebekah put into words the exact feeling and thoughts that I've been thinking since my son was diagnosed — the weird feelings of being a charity case, feeling guilty for being a burden, sensing that people are being kind because they feel sorry for us, and then feeling guilty for resenting that kindness, finding that parents are uncomfortable when their kids ask questions and then shushing them, which reinforces that stigma… Anyway, this needs to be said. Thank you to Rebekah for saying it so eloquently!
Thank you for this! It's struck me recently that "ableism" is only a small piece of a larger mindset, encapsulating meritocracy, the Prosperity Gospel, Libertarianism, and Reaganomics. The ideology goes that the truly deserving people are those who make it "on their own" without needing any "help". It's at heart a dog-eat-dog mindset, in which the "weak" are seen as contemptible.
Of course, no one ever really makes it on their own; it's just that the kind of help some people receive isn't really acknowledged as "help" in our culture. This explains how sons of privilege like Donald Trump can claim to be "self made men", and a significant segment of the public buys it.
I love love love this. This is something I think about often and I always appreciate someone expanding the dialogue and giving me more to think about. Rebekah has a beautiful way of turning ordinary words into thought-provoking magic. Thanks a million for this post and for providing a platform for meaningful discussion!
Wow, this was great! Thanks, Rebekah, for writing it and Miggy for sharing it.