Sommer der Krüppelbewegung

...no frills, no overly-clever graphics, just a beautifully edited collection of convicting memories, capturing a completely forgotten piece of cultural history, & illuminating the immense effect this one relatively small group of hippies had on American history. It's packed with full of the kind of humanity we need: kid singing "One Time Blues", climbing Capitol steps, reuniting with other campers at campgrounds...& is it just me, or did anybody else crush hard on Judith?

Wow. What an amazing story this was documenting the struggles and lives of the disabled in America culminating with Bush number 1 signing the Americans with Dissabilities Act (ADA). Beginning with the story of a camp for the disabled which empowered and planted the seeds in the activists minds to their powerful marathons of trying to get the US government to listen to them. This documentary was so well done with beautiful, heartfelt and at times heartbreaking video footage of the lives of these warriors fighting for just the opportunity to live normal lives and contribute to society. No wonder this brought down the house at Sundance. It is an art piece dedicated to those who society shunned rising up to change the world for everyone. It was beautiful. Just sit back and let them tell the story. You will be amazed and most likely changed. Powerful.

As a doc, it covers mostly all the bases and is heartfelt without being sugary sweet. You get a feeling for the times, the various areas of civil rights and political action (before that mean PAC). Finally getting the ADA signed and enforced was a 20yr struggle I remember well. I had forgotten that some politicians you'd think would have been supportive were not and visa versa. In those days, with no social media, if you weren't voters (or not perceived as such) and didn't get news coverage, politicians generally had little interest. However, one big counter argument against few benefiting (even though those "few" were/are the biggest minority) was overlooked here, otherwise I would have given it a 10/10:

After I had my first knee surgery, I had complications. I spent a long time on crutches. I went to physical therapy daily but the restroom in that building was incredibly tiny, with two stalls you could barely get into, much less with crutches and a backpack on (forget wheelchair). And that was a medical building in one of the largest medical centers in the US! It was 1988-89. So a great argument against few benefiting was that many able bodied people would spend some time as a disabled person and I saw those people every day in PT, a lot of them. I ended up having 5 more knee surgeries so spent lots of time needing accommodations. I still use a ramp as stairs are not my friend and I'm happy for other accommodations as well, esp as I get older. It shouldn't take my experience to have empathy, but empathy is a greatly underdeveloped organ in humanity.

It's amazing to me that a country that saw the polio epidemic render millions disabled, that saw wars disable millions of young men (Vietnam in particular in those days), and on and on, had such a hard time finding empathy and a few dollars so that everyone had access and opportunity, which saves money in the long run because less institutionalization is needed and more people can work and contribute. It is amazing that many still are the heirs to the nasty undertones of the kind of thinking that delayed this legislation for so long.

While executive-produced by the Obamas, to think that the tragedy this documentary unravels--which is the everyday struggle of disabled people--is dramatized out of proportion would be a careless prejudice. This is focused strictly on the facts and the decades that these facts spawn across.

That doesn't mean that Netflix straight up ignores the details of these disabilities. The people depicted are all very candid about their various situations, but instead of finding a shoulder to cry on, they are viewed for what they actually are--heroes, paragons of success. A lot of them go into vivid stories about their sexuality--yes, of course they are sexually active!

The documentary starts with the spark which ignited a landmark movement which forever changed the US Constitution--and the entire world's for that matter--when it comes to Civil Rights for disabled people. Jened was homemade--it had people with no background into caring for the disabled, yet it contained something more powerful. It allowed them to be themselves. They were everywhere. Their own world, their own normality encapsulated by the bigger unsuspecting world. This was the key which gave birth to an idea--that this bubble should pop all over the world, that when given the opportunity to express themselves, disabled people have at least as much to offer to the world as the rest of us, that they are more human than the world ever knows.

From the existential theme at Jened, the documentary then fasts-forward over decades ensuing a historical fight. It boldly depicts leader Judith Heumann as a well-deserving comparison to Martin Luther King Jr. Yet the most iconic moments are contained in the Herculean efforts these people pulled when they spent days partaking in a hunger strike for their rights--a determination that few people--not to mention disabled--have.

The amount of time and list of US presidents this documentary burns through showed mercilessly how slow, inapt and opaque politics can get. Yet the fact that these people saw it through goes to show that not all heroes wear capes... some can't even stand up on their own two feet.

This a documentary that should be seen by everyone.To learn something about emphaty.