Honouring Courage: How Civil Rights Impacted Disability Equity
screenshot from Getty images of Crip Camp alumni at 93rd Academy Awards
We can all be part of social justice and equity
Are you looking for a powerful, eye-opening, relevant to us all doco-movie? I watched one recently. Crip Camp. It provided compelling insight into the American civil rights movement and how it impacted disability equity. The show was powerful, humbling and inspiring, and got me thinking about how this momentous change influenced Australia’s disability equity focus, Australia’s courageous champions and how we can all play a role in achieving equity.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Martin Luther King Jr.
Crip Camp is set in the heady 60s - 70s era of social rebellion. Dylan’s times a’changing, Woodstock, Black Panthers and eye-crossingly tight jeans, the time was a bubbling hot pot of radical societal transformations. And it was the time for Judith Huemann, documentary subject, to pick up the momentum of the disability civil rights movement that she had been enacting on a personal level from a very young age.
The term “crip camp” refers to Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled teens that operated in New York between 1951-1977. It was here that Judith and Crip Camp director and narrator, Jim LeBrecht, formed tight bonds with many people who were experiencing the same discrimination and inequity. And it was here that Judith first got a taste for activism.
The story the documentary follows, was the monumental 28-day 504 Sit-in, during which hundreds of participants occupied a San Francisco federal building to push against proposed changes to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. At the time, the Rehabilitation Act was the premier disability rights legislation in the United States. Despite this, the Act was seldom followed, with ongoing failure to enforce legislation and President Nixon vetoing earlier versions. After years of Judith’s effort, including a fifty-person blockade on Madison Avenue in 1972, the 504 Sit-in finally got the results it deserved: the Act’s signing in 1973.
Judith Huemann - she remained a fierce, passionate disability advocate her whole life.
The story of the sit-in made me think about how brave those who pioneer such change are, often at their peril. Such activists face potential legal sanctions, community and family ignorance, outrage and ostracisation, considerable discomfort, financial hardship and death. All in the name of humanitarian, environmental or animal rights. In the name of making our world a better, more just place.
Despite the outreach help the protesters received, the endurance of these people to sacrifice comfort, sleep, and the ease of access to medical supplies and equipment is genuinely awe-inspiring. One participant commented that what kept them going was not the fear of police action or jail but of disappointing Judith which shows what inspiring leadership can achieve.
Conditions have been, and continue to be, disgusting for people with disabilities in many parts of the world. Society has long discriminated against the disabled, and the 1970s was guilty of abhorrent and dehumanising institutionalisation (which remains to some extent) for millions who did not exhibit the majority-held perception of ‘normality’. In fact, The Australian Human Rights Commission receives 'more complaints of disability discrimination than any other discrimination area.’
As an interesting historical note, the American Disability Rights Movement was a significant agent of change for Australia. Australia's disability movement arguably started in 1896 with the formation of The Association of The Blind*. However, our Disability Discrimination Act wasn’t established until 1993, nearly a century later. Another more recent and significant development was the 2013 National Disability Act, leading to our current National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) – a scheme I feel very privileged to be part of and a significant leap in Australia's quest for social justice.
Activists with true fire-in-the-belly, dogged-determination and an unshaken belief in their cause are those that I truly admire as inspirational change-makers. Marked by a systematic, democratic approach, many activist movements have been a collective force, scorned by the general population who do not understand the reasons for their drastic militant stance. Yet these acts of change are not all this extreme. Many passionate disability activists are effecting change in their workplaces, their interactions with policymakers, their influence in setting up advocacy organisations, and education within our community. We live in different times and there are many ways to engage in activism.
We see the expanding advocacy for awareness and change happening through the resourceful force of such organisations as Women With Disabilities Australia , Women With Disabilities Victoria and People With Disability Australia, together with multiple individual contributions using social media platforms. We see the filtration of disability-related issues and day-to-day life activities, through pictures, writing, speaking and vlogging. Such advocacy is changing attitudes and expanding society's view of what it means to be normal. However, it still needs continued impetus from us all, able-bodied and people with a disability alike. We all need to honour the challenges and sacrifices made by so many to gain an equal footing in a world that was never designed for our most significant minority group.
But we can all do our bit.
We’re all learning, and these are some things that you can do every day that could have a huge impact on normalising disability within our world:
· Accept everyone you meet as an equal
· Take the time to listen to and communicate with anyone you meet
· If you are a workplace leader employ a person with a disability (we're proportionately just as intelligent and useful)
· Follow disability advocates on your social media (I recommend Carrie-Ann Lightley, Simply Emma, and brilliantly articulate Aussie Hannah Diviney to start)
· Get newsletters from a persons-with-disability organisation and see what's going on (Disability Leadership Institute, Link – Australia’s Disability Magazine, are excellent)
· Choose a disability advocacy organisation for your next donation - such as the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations.
· Advocate for accessible bathrooms or entrances in your workplace or a favourite venue - use the services of AHC·
. Organise an accessible holiday or experience for your family and friends (reach out to Accessible Accommodation who are hugely helpful in this space)
But first – do yourself a favour and watch Crip Camp!
All the best,
*Disability & Society, Vol. 14, No. 2, 1999, pp. 217± 226, Cooper, M