Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature      People.  People, we are so close to the finish line.  The Oscars are tomorrow.  TOMORROW.  And I swear to God, I will get the DVR function on Hulu to work this time.  

This documentary chronicles the advancement of civil rights for the disabled, starting with the revolutionary treatment at Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled youth, that dared to treat kids with disabilities as kids, not just as their disability.  

As a child, my brother was diagnosed with a learning disability.  He and I went to the same high school, four years apart.  We went to most of the same classes with the same teachers.  He was not allowed to graduate as a full student, because he was Special Ed.  This was in the '90s.  Twenty years before that, he wouldn't have been allowed to attend at all.  He would have been institutionalized.  I am a disabled veteran.  My disabilities are mostly invisible but they are no less real.  Any and all accommodations he and I have gotten have been because of the people in this movie among countless others and the struggle they went through just to be treated as people.  It's depressing and it may be an uncomfortable watch for some, but this is one of those Important films.  

You know someone disabled.  You may not know it, but you do.  And even if you didn't, do you really have to have a personal experience to understand that people are more than their limitations?  Crip Camp is currently streaming on Netflix.