Watching Crip Camp honestly had me sitting there like… wow. I had no idea any of this even happened. I didn’t know a place like Crip Camp existed, and I definitely didn’t know how much the disability community had to fight just to have basic rights. The camp itself was actually beautiful to me having kids and adults come from all over, with different disabilities finally getting to to be able to just live life. No overprotective parents hovering, no being treated like they were made of glass, no feeling like they were “different” in a bad way. They finally got to have what everyone else calls a “normal” experience, which is crazy because it shouldn’t have taken a whole camp for that to happen.
And honestly, it kind of bothers me that I had never heard about this before. In school we always learned about the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, all these big historical moments happening around the same time but the disability movement is it really talked about. It’s like because so many other movements were happening, theirs just got pushed to the back sort of being pushed as not important as the other movements. Fact that it’s not true they were fighting for their rights, equality, and accessibility just like everyone else. And that just leads me to the question of why they don’t talk about this movement.
What hit me the hardest is how far they had to go. Some of them were starving themselves, camping out in a government building for weeks even though some of them needed home aides or medical help. But you know what the government still ignored them. All they wanted were things like being able to enter a building or ride public transportation things that can be simply resolved yet they didn’t want to spend extra money to have all these changes made. It just goes to really show how trashy our government is how are you supposed to be for the people when you’re not really for the people.
The wildest part is these are recent changes that took longer to happen in the women’s movement and the civil rights movement the ADA was passed not to long ago it makes me mad to think a powerful movement like this is being ignored and it just reminds me of the quote that I wrote down which is” You can pass a law but until you change society’s attitudes that law won’t mean anything” and I really like this quote because I feel like it it sort of means what is still happening today yeah they have these laws but society’s attitude hasn’t changed. I feel like since these laws have happened it still feels as though they try to shut people with disabilities out.
But this documentary opened my eyes. I feel like more people need to see it this should be shown in high school, in history classes. Because this isn’t some small side story it’s real history that deserves attention. I really enjoyed the documentary, and it made me think a lot about how we still don’t talk about it enough. It really made me feel like why did they have to fight this hard for rights they should’ve had from the beginning? And why did I have to wait until now to learn about it?
Unruly Bodies 
I agree this is not something you learn about in primary school I only knew of this because I love history so I educate myself on my own outside of class, but this should not be the case it should be taught in general I barely got information on civil rights movement and I don’t remember learning about women right movement until I went to college. I am happy to hear that it seems school system is doing better with teaching things but still is not telling all the stories that need to be told.
The knowledge that there has been so much effort put into erasing disabled people, as well as other groups or communities, from our society can provoke such an intense feeling that, at least for myself, distinctly contains confusion. Like you mentioned, it is almost as if the women’s movement and the civil rights movement were accepted in our society while still being pushed toward the outskirts. Although this term is a significant underrepresentation of the weight of these movements, it has been allowed into the ‘mainstream’ in a way that the disabled rights movement has not been permitted to. As Eli Clare writes about in “Brilliant Imperfection,” disability is still seen as a form of embodiment that needs to be fixed, an outlet for pity, and a state of being that should be hidden as much as possible. We are so conditioned to view disability quietly and from afar, as many have repeatedly attempted to somehow separate the issues disabled people face from other movements, as if it is not inherently connected to all oppression. Great post!