[1/18] Thread on why @CripCampFilm, just out on @Netflix, is not just one of the most powerfully uplifting and joyous movies you'll see year, it's the film you need to watch right NOW in #coronavirus hell. It's a doc about a camp for disabled kids run by hippies in the Catskills. 
[2/18] This camp was FUNKY, not some quaint heart-tugging situation. The kids had a wide range of disabilities, from cerebral palsy to epilepsy to spina bifida and more. Some came from family homes in the Bronx; some from institutions where they were warehoused like animals.
[3/18] Some came in wheelchairs; some could only speak a sentence with herculean effort. One thing all the campers shared was a life-long experience of being shunned and sidelined. No one was sidelined at Camp Jened. Everyone, kids and counselors, learned to help each other.
[4/18] The cabins weren't super clean, and the kids loved it that way; the counselors were dope-smoking longhairs. The message was: You're cool here, exactly as you are. No one will mock or shun you. At camp, you can feel joy, you can make friends, you can even fall in love.
[5/18] One of the most subversive aspects of both the camp and @CripCampFilm is how much frank talk of SEX there is. Secret: Disabled teens think about sex at least as much as their non-disabled peers, but their non-disabled caretakers often treat that as a dangerous problem.
[6/18] I once spent several days at a camp for young folks with a rare genetic condition, and it weirded me out to see men and women in their 20s being "busted" for making out with each other. @CripCampFilm puts HORNY DISABLED KIDS front and center, and that's a revelation.
[7/18] At one point the campers even have to collectively cope with an outbreak of the crabs. They deal. Mostly what they do (in footage from the time) is talk about their lives as disabled folk with their peers, which they never got to do at home. And they make a huge discovery:
[8/18] Most of their problems don't stem directly from their disabilities, but from a society that refuses to make accommodations for them. I saw this happen myself at Autreat, an autistic-run retreat I described in my book #NeuroTribes.
[9/18] Gatherings of disabled folk are dangerous for the inhumane status quo, because they learn the truth by talking (or signing) to one other about their lives - and the truth is, they don't have to live this way. They don't have to put up with being treated as subhuman.
[10/18]And the second half of @CripCampFilm is how the campers used that knowledge, and that new pride and confidence in themselves and one another, to COMPLETELY CHANGE THE WORLD for disabled people. I'm not talking about just "shifting attitudes" or "lifting stigma."
[11/18] I'm talking about GETTING LAWS PASSED, like the ACA, to make every form of public accommodation accessible so disabled people can stop facing annoying daily barriers and GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES. Former campers like @JudithHeumann became leaders of this movement.
[12/18] Instead of being a "touching" film about kids "overcoming their disabilities," @CripCampFilm is about disabled radicals challenging non-disabled people to OVERCOME THEIR PREJUDICE AND GET OUT OF THE WAY so disabled folks can finally claim the civil rights they deserve.
[13/18] So what makes @CripCampFilm so relevant this week? We have a POTUS who mocks disabled people at the podium. We have pundits calmly discussing who should be denied scarce ventilators in the #coronavirus crisis because they're insufficiently "productive."
[14/18] Virtually every one of the kids in @CripCampFilm would be denied a ventilator in "rational" triage. They wouldn't survive this pandemic. The scarcity of ventilators is not an unpredictable act of God; it's the inevitable result of the policies of this GOP administration.
[15/18] Under Trump, we're about to see the brutal result of accepting the devaluing of disabled lives as a politically tenable position. It's mass murder, just as the Reagan administration laughing on tape about "gay cancer" was mass murder in the '80s.
[16/18] I don't want to leave you with the impression that @CripCampFilm is "good for you" viewing you should take like medicine. It's joyous, hilarious, exuberant, cheeky, "pro-life" in the truest meaning of that term. It's the antidote to the pervasive toxicity of our time.
[17/18] PS - And as a Deadhead myself, like @CripCampFilm co-director @JimLeBrecht, it's full of tie-dyed Easter eggs, like the campers singing "Truckin'" on the porch, or finding out that Al Levy, a guy I saw at nearly every Bay Area Dead show for decades, was a former camper.
[18/18] If you need a thrilling escape from the #coronavirus nightmare, @CripCampFilm delivers. It earns its exuberance by facing one of the most essential questions of humanity head-on: What lives are worth living? The film's defiant answer is: ALL OF THEM.
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