March 29, 2023
  • 12:08 pm Fall Convocation 2022: “The State of this University is Strong”
  • 9:37 pm Ogrin Brings the Thunder in Toros 12-3 rout; team plays for playoff championship tomorrow
  • 7:00 am Outstanding Professor Award Recipient’s Mic Drop Moment at Last Month’s Virtual Ceremony
  • 9:10 am Bookworms of the World Unite!
  • 7:46 pm Breaking News: All Students Living in Campus Housing Required to Receive COVID-19 Vaccine
  • 9:00 am CSUDH Esports Creates International Competition
  • 9:35 am Spring Commencement Ceremonies Get Brighter
  • 3:46 pm Breaking News: Spring Commencement Ceremonies Recieve Stadium Upgrade
  • 8:00 am Testing the Teachers (and All the Educators)
  • 9:30 am CSUDH Educators and School Employees, Vaccinated Next
  • 10:30 am For White People Only: Anti-Racism Workshop Addresses Racial Bias and Unity
  • 2:43 pm Greatness Personified: Remembering Kobe Bryant
  • 10:02 am Straight Down the Chimney and Into Your (Digital) Hands: Special Holiday Edition of The Bulletin!
  • 2:44 pm Did You Wake up Looking this Beautiful?
  • 11:43 am A Long History for University’s Newest Major
  • 5:15 pm Issue 5 of Bulletin Live! Collector’s Item! Worth its Weight in Digital Paper!
  • 4:06 pm Special Election Issue
  • 4:03 pm Three best Latinx Halloween & Horror Short Films available now on HBO Max
  • 9:49 am Issue 3 of CSUDH Bulletin Live if You Want It
  • 3:24 pm Hispanic Heritage Month Update
  • 2:00 pm South Bay Economic Forecast Goes Virtual
  • 3:52 pm BREAKING NEWS: Classes for Spring to be Online, CSU Chancellor Announces
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  • 5:47 pm Transcript of CSUDH President Parham’s Coronavirus Announcement
  • 10:46 am Cal State Long Beach Suspends Face-to-Face Classes; CSUDH Discussing Contingency Plans
  • 5:26 pm Things Black People Should be Able to Get Away with This Month
  • 10:25 am Latinx Students Need a Place to Call Home
  • 2:35 pm Will Time Run Out Before Funds for PEGS? [UPDATED]
  • 8:41 am Year of the Rat? What’s That?
  • 6:20 am Artist Who Gave Life to Death and Inspired Countless Others Gets His Due at Dominguez Hills
  • 5:16 pm Why I’m Rooting for Dr. Cornel West
  • 5:00 pm Under Fire from the Feds, Vaping’s Future is Cloudy
  • 3:28 pm We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat; Tsunami 3.0 Hits Campus, Enrollment Swells
  • 1:22 pm THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE BULLETIN IS HERE
  • 4:48 pm University Weathering a Wave of New Students
  • 9:21 pm The Bulletin’s Public Records Request Offers Springboard to Launch Gender Equity Discussion at CSUDH
  • 4:27 pm Black is the New Black: Raising the Capital on the “B” Word
  • 10:53 am Guns Up for Arrest: Student advocacy group pushes for CSU No Gun Zones–Including the Police
  • 4:09 pm Staff Editorial: Words on the First
  • 8:42 pm Carson Mayor Blasts Media, Landmark Libel Case in Keynote Address
  • 9:27 am Free Speech Week Calendar of Events Update
  • 6:02 am Food for Thought: 40% of Students are Food Insecure
  • 3:12 pm Academic Senate Rejects CSU GE Task Force & Report
  • 3:06 pm Work To Be Done
  • 5:56 pm ASI Elections: What You Need to Know
  • 8:02 pm CSUDH President Parham Announces Cancer Diagnosis
  • 9:47 am CSUDH Art Professor’s 20-Year Journey Results in First Local Showing of Film
  • 9:13 pm Free Speech or Free Hate area?
  • 9:08 pm CSUDH’s Best & Brightest Shine at Student Research Day
  • 9:05 pm Academic Senate Approves Gender Equity Task Force
  • 12:37 pm When Dr. Davis speaks, Toros Pay Close Attention
  • 3:38 pm Investing in the Future: Dr. Thomas A. Parham Reflects on the Past Eight Months and Contemplates​ the University’s Future
  • 3:24 pm Green Olive to Open By End of Feb; Starbucks Not Until Fall
  • 3:20 pm Gov. Newsom’s Proposed Budget Hailed for Extensive Funding Increases
  • 3:08 pm Out of the Classroom: Labor and Community Organizing Course Aims to Teach Students How to Organize for Social Justice
  • 2:54 pm The Other Route in Professional Sports
  • 9:02 am Hail to the New Chief, CSUDH President Thomas Parham
  • 3:36 pm Career Center Holds Major/Minor Fair
  • 5:34 pm After Unexpected Delay, Undocumented Becomes More Intimate Theatrical Production
  • 1:30 pm What to Expect When You’re Expecting New Buildings
  • 4:00 pm Perception Is Key
  • 4:00 pm Celebrating Women’s History Month Toro Style
  • 4:00 pm The Algorithms of the Internet are Biased
  • 4:00 pm Taking a Look at J. Cole’s Lyrics
  • 4:00 pm The Adventures of Pablo EscoBear

“Netflix’s documentary feature “Crip Camp” showcases the activists behind one of the longest occupational sit-ins in San Francisco’s history. Photo courtesy Netflix.

By Destiny Jackson, Arts & Entertainment Editor

Though the 2021 Oscar-nominated documentary “Crip Camp” was robbed of a well-deserved award—to a film about a man who befriends an Octopus— this documentary still has tons of merit. 

Netflix’s documentary “Crip Camp” directed and produced by filmmakers Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht (who also provides most of the narration throughout the film) strips down the able-bodied view of disabled citizens; and builds up what an impactful, empowering narrative looks like. By having disabled people behind and in front of the camera, centered and in control of their own narrative, audiences are able to unflinchingly see the struggles and triumphs that can occur without able-bodied oppression and interference. 

Divided into two halves (narratively speaking) the 108-minute documentary spends the first half documenting the New York crippled safe haven—a.k.a “crip camp”—Camp Jened in the summer of 1971. Here at Camp Jened, disabled children, teens and adults can experience the joy of roaming wild and free during the peak of the hippie age. 

Along with their camp counselors and aids, the campers are able to do things like making lasagna, have pow-pows, play sports, and even have sexual experiences. One camper, inflicted with spina bifida, jokingly explains that his first kiss and trouser hand-touch  “was the best physical therapy” he had ever had. 

Though Camp Jened existed as a place where disabilities didn’t quite matter, there was still a societal hierarchy that applied within the confines of the camp. 

“The polios were on top because they looked more normal and the [people with cerebral palsy] were at the bottom,” camper-activist Denise Jacobson said. 

This is used to parallel the societal views of the real world that the campers had to return to after camp was over; a world that lacked accommodations for those in wheelchairs and other ranges of handicaps. 

Jacobson’s husband, Neil Jacobson, also admits in the documentary that his own mother reflected systems of hierarchy when he proposed marriage to Denise after meeting at Camp Jened one summer:

“My mother said, ‘I know why you want to marry a handicapped girl,” considering that both Neil and Denise have cerebral palsy. “But why couldn’t you marry a polio?’” 

The second half of the film focuses heavily on the 1977 Disability Rights Movement in San Francisco, also known as the 504 sit-in. There’s too much ground to cover about the movement in one article, but essentially what you need to know is: Judith Heumann and Kitty Cone (both featured in the documentary) organized 150 people to rally for better access to federally funded buildings across the country. This meant ramps, public transportation lifts, accessible public bathrooms, housing accommodations, and barring discriminatory practices against the disable bodied people. To this day, it remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in United States history at approximately 28 days (depending on which source you speak to). 

The most notable highlight in this documentary for me was the brief spotlight placed on the Black Panther Party, who seems to be an underlying and overlying subject of two other Oscar-nominated films of the 2020/2021 era. 

 “The Trial of the Chicago 7” portrays BPP co-founder Bobby Seale as just a blip on the radar of the localized 1968 riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (a portrayal that Seale mentioned he did not like on a visit to our school, by the way). “Judas and the Black Messiah” a whole film about the BPP and the untimely death of the Illinois leader, Fred Hampton, orchestrated by the FBI; demonstrated that while the Panthers were heavy in fighting back against large governmental systems of racial oppression, they also gave back to their local communities via food pantries. And “Crip Camp” makes a brief, but powerful note that the Oakland chapter was the primary reason as to why the occupation lasted for as long as it did, thanks to disabled member Brad Lomax, who was beautifully profiled in the New York Times  for his sole involvement with bringing the Panthers and the disabled movement together. 

Lomax could hardly speak due to complications of a sudden onset of multiple sclerosis in his young adult years, but managed to finesse both worlds of being a BPP member and a member of the disabled community by tapping into the intersectionality of being discriminated against for  being Black and disabled. 

The BPP took notice during the occupation. Having 150 people spend days occupying a building is tough, but what the documentary wants to show you is that having 150 people on a wide spectrum of disabilities is even harder. Access to medicine, toothpaste, showers, catheters, clean water and food was hard to come by and lead to other similar occupations for the movement to fizzle out in less than two weeks. But thanks to the BPP involvement and care for Lomax, the party immediately mobilized and kept everyone fed for all 28 days of the occupation for free. 

When questioned by one of the occupiers, activist Corbett O’Toole as to why the BPP, who already had limited resources and faced their own struggles with unfair laws. An unnamed Panther replied: “You are trying to make the world a better place, and that’s what we are about. We are about that for everybody.” 

“Crip Camp” is a wholesome eye-opening documentary that should not be missed; as it details the liberation, oppression, and fight for equality through the eyes of people that are often normally overlooked or pitied by what hindrances they might face. “Crip Camp” is instead a story about what hope and persistence can get you despite what the world thinks you can do. 

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