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[man 1] I'm recording now.
I want to shut it off, I got to press the trigger again.
It should start rolling again.
-[man 2] Yeah. -[man 3] All right.
Would you like to see, um, handicapped people depicted as people?
-Excuse me? -[chuckles]
[narrator] Jim LeBrecht is a sound designer
at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California.
He was born with a disability which has nothing to do with his job.
But having the job makes it possible for him to lead
an independent productive life.
[woman] ...Tom? That's nice.
Well, it's about his condition.
[LeBrecht] I was born with spina bifida.
They didn't think I was gonna live more than a couple of hours.
Apparently, I had different plans.
In the middle of first grade,
I was allowed to enter public school on a trial basis.
They were gonna see if it worked out.
I mean, at the time,
so many kids just like me were being sent to institutions.
I remember that my dad used to say to me,
"You know, Jimmy, you're gonna have to be really outgoing.
You're gonna have to go up and introduce yourself to people,
'cause they're not gonna come up to you."
My sister Lindsay was a Brownie,
but they wouldn't let me into the Cub Scouts.
The barriers were all over the place.
I loved music. I loved life.
I wanted to be part of the world,
but I didn't see anyone like me in it.
And then I hear from some people about this summer camp.
It's a summer camp for, you know, "the handicapped," run by hippies.
And somebody said,
"You'll probably smoke dope with the counselors."
[chuckles] And I'm like, "Sign me up!"
["For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield playing]
[LeBrecht] The wild thing is that this camp changed the world,
and nobody knows this story.
♪ There's something happening here ♪
♪ But what it is ain't exactly clear ♪
♪ There's a man with a gun over there ♪
♪ Telling me I got to beware ♪
♪ I think it's time we stop Children, what's that sound? ♪
♪ Everybody look What's going down? ♪
♪ There's battle lines being drawn ♪
♪ Nobody's right if everybody's wrong ♪
♪ Young people speaking their minds ♪
♪ Are getting so much resistance From behind ♪
♪ It's time we stop Hey, what's that sound? ♪
♪ Everybody look What's going down? ♪
♪ Stop Hey, what's that sound? ♪
♪ Everybody look What's going down? ♪
♪ We better stop Now, what's that sound? ♪
♪ Everybody look What's going... ♪
♪ We better stop Children, what's that sound? ♪
♪ Everybody look... ♪
[LeBrecht] So, I remember the first time I went to Camp Jened.
We take this bus trip from Manhattan up to the Catskills.
It's about a three-hour drive.
And you get into this really lovely kinda mountainous areas,
and you could smell, like, the hot land and the pines,
and you're hearing birds and stuff.
And then we pull into the parking lot,
and these people start swarming around the bus.
The place has got a bunch of hippies, and some of them look pretty freaky.
And it's like, wow.
I'm not sure who's a camper and who's a counselor.
["Freedom (Motherless Child)" by Richie Havens playing]
[Woodyard] I grew up in Mobile, Alabama.
I saw a sign that said, "Summer jobs.
Camps.
New York."
I didn't know anyone handicapped.
I was feeling a little anxious about the kids.
I had zero experience with disabled people.
I knew as many disabled people as I knew
sumo wrestlers.
So I'm at the front of the bus,
and I was not prepared for the visual of so many disabled people at one time.
And I froze. I became paralyzed with fear.
[chuckles] Then somebody behind me pushed me, because I was in the way,
and that forward momentum carried me through the summer.
♪ Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom ♪
♪ Sometimes I feel Like a motherless child ♪
[Ann Cupolo Freeman] I mean, when Woodstock was happening,
I remember being at my grandmother's, listening on the transistor radio,
and saying, "Wish I could go. Wish I could go. Wish I could go."
And then, when I went to Jened, [laughs] it was like,
there I was! I was in Woodstock.
The music and the people...
And just, you're like, "These people are crazy!" You know?
I mean, in a good way.
Come to Camp Jened and find yourself, you know?
♪ Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom ♪
♪ Sometimes I feel like I'm almost gone ♪
♪ A long way from my home, yeah ♪
♪ Singin' freedom, freedom ♪
♪ Freedom, freedom ♪
♪ Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom ♪
♪ Freedom, freedom ♪
[videographer] If you wanna stop and look at anything with the camera, you tell us.
You can do that.
[young LeBrecht] All right, there's... the adult part.
[videographer] What's that yellow building there?
[young LeBrecht] That's what I just said. The, uh...
The adult part right there.
[videographer] That's part of the adult camp.
[young LeBrecht] Yeah.
There's one of our gorgeous counselors.
[counselor laughs]
-[young LeBrecht] Say hello. -[counselor] Hi, how are you?
[young LeBrecht laughs] Okay.
Here is, uh, Girls 1.
-[counselor] A place for fun and frolic. -[young LeBrecht chuckles]
[counselor] There's one of the campers, Valerie Vivona.
[Vivona] Jimmy!
Is this necessary? I mean, is this important?
Oh, my... [laughs]
[young LeBrecht] Is that our director over there?
[counselor] Yeah, that's Larry Allison.
[campers laughing]
[videographer] I understand you're the director here?
Yeah, I'm the director of the camp, and...
I, uh...
I was just out here by the swimming pool, watching the kids swim.
I decided to dig a few holes, 'cause the kids are kind of clumsy
and I thought it'd be funny if they tripped.
[counselor laughs]
[young LeBrecht speaking]
That's right.
[Allison] Jened was an opportunity to try to do some different kinds of things.
When the camp started back in the '50s,
it was the, uh, traditional kind of camp program.
As it evolved during the '60s and into the '70s,
what we tried to do was provide the kind of environment
where teenagers could be teenagers
without all the stereotypes and the labels.
And that was a byproduct of the times. You know, of social experimentation.
We realized the problem did not exist with people with disabilities.
The problem existed with people that didn't have disabilities.
It was our problem.
So it was important for us to change.
Just to say, I like Camp Jened.
And I love Larry Olson. [kisses]
Olson?
[Sophie] Allison.
Good for you, Sophie. [laughing]
[videographer] Let's go around the circle.
What's your name?
My name is Ellie Abrashkin.
-[videographer] Where are you from? -I'm from Brooklyn, New York.
Uh...
Brooklyn.
Hello, my name is Jean Malafronte.
I, uh, got run over by a bus.
[camper 1 speaking]
-[camper 2 laughs] -I don't know exactly my handicap.
And that's all.
[Carl] My name is Carl.
And if this is ever broadcast on television,
my telephone number is area code 212-YU8-0367,
and I would love anyone who likes to talk to give me a telephone call.
And I am blind and hard of hearing.
I had too much oxygen in the incubator,
and my hearing,
because I had a fractured skull from falling out of a cab.
And I will be glad if anyone will call me who hears this.
[young LeBrecht] This is where I stay.
-[young LeBrecht] Steve's a counselor. -[man] Wanna take a picture of this cat?
[young LeBrecht] Smile, Steve.
[young LeBrecht] Oops.
Let's not bump into the campers.
[campers argue in background]
[videographer] Let's move around that way.
[young LeBrecht speaking]
[videographer] You don't have the light to roll up inside and see what it looks like?
[young LeBrecht] Um, I don't know.
[Hofmann speaking]
[Tommy] Yeah! Yeah!
[young LeBrecht] Hey, Tommy.
Yeah!
[young LeBrecht] This is Tommy Curran.
[videographer] Hi, Tommy.
Nobody uses those upper beds, right?
-[young LeBrecht] What? -[videographer] The upper beds?
-[young LeBrecht] The counselors do. -[videographer] The counselors do.
-[young LeBrecht] Hey, JJ. -[JJ] What's happening?
[young LeBrecht speaking]
[JJ chuckles]
[LeBrecht] That first night in the bunk, I was a little bit nervous.
I had just had surgery.
Up to that point, I was wearing diapers, 'cause I had no control over my bladder.
I guess you could imagine what it was like being 15
and trying to hide the fact that you had to wear diapers.
And there was that constant pressure of being found out.
I had gotten this urinary tract diversion, so now I had this bag.
It wasn't going too well.
I was having a hard time keeping it on, and it was leaking and such.
But at camp, everybody had something going on with their body.
It just wasn't a big deal.
Okay, uh, my first guest, what's your name?
My name is Michael Tannenbaum.
How old are you?
-I was just 18. -[chuckles]
Uh, what do you think is the most significant part about Camp Jened?
Uh...
The staff.
How great they are. How good they relate to the campers.
-Are you lying? -No, I'm not lying.
It's just that I've been in other camps,
and at no other camp have campers treated...
Have counselors treated campers the way they do here.
They're not like babysitters.
[all laugh]
-That was a good answer. -Thank you, John.
[young Judy Heumann] It's not 100% sure,
but since the new trip is gonna be coming up Thursday,
what we're gonna try to do is get the cook to take off Wednesday,
which means that we'll cook on Wednesday.
Do you have any, um, suggestions?
I was trying to see if we could make veal parmesan,
but veal is too expensive.
[man 1] How about just, like, chow mein?
-'Cause bacon is just more expensive. -[woman] Chicken parmesan.
What do you think of lasagna?
-[campers agreeing and disagreeing] -[woman] Super-duper!
[young Heumann] Quiet!
How many people... Raise your hands.
How many people want lasagna?
[indistinct chatter]
[man 2] When do we get not to eat starch?
The only deal is we don't have to eat those starchy things,
so why eat lasagna?
[young Heumann] How many people don't want lasagna?
-[man 3] Lasagna wins! -[man 4] No lasagna wins.
[young Heumann] All right.
When you go back into... Mark.
When you go back into your groups, will you also decide...
Get some suggestions as to what you want, and when we come back in a group together,
um, we'll decide what we're going to have to eat.
Okay? If the cook is off on Wednesday.
[Heumann] I felt like it was important to be inclusive,
because I didn't really have a lot of role models,
as I was growing up, who had disabilities.
It made people feel like they were more a part of what was happening.
-[young Heumann] Very good idea. -[camper] Yeah!
[Heumann] It was more free and open
than certainly what I was experiencing in my day-to-day life at home.
♪ I love my baby My baby loves me ♪
[Heumann] I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighborhood called East Flatbush.
Growing up in the neighborhood, I didn't feel different.
I had polio.
I wasn't able to walk anymore and things like that,
but there were a lot of kids.
We played outside. Stick ball and jump rope.
It was a great neighborhood.
So, one day, I was going to the candy store with a group of friends.
My friend was pushing my wheelchair,
and we went around the block,
and these kids came over, this one boy said, "Are you sick?"
And I was really, like, taken aback,
and I recall that I meekishly said, "No, I'm not sick."
But I remember...
I wanted to cry.
I get that feeling a lot even as an adult.
I'm kind of in between being shocked by the question,
maybe being angry by it,
but having to center myself.
It was an awakening
that people saw me not as Judy,
but as somebody who was sick.
When I was five years old,
my mother took me to the local school to enroll me,
but the principal said I couldn't go to that school 'cause I couldn't walk.
I could be a fire hazard.
So basically, my mother was teaching me.
Of course, all my friends in the neighborhood were going to school,
but I was at home.
Then, one day, when I was about eight, nine years old,
my mom got a call that there was an opening
in PS 219, in the special ed classes.
[bell ringing]
[Heumann] The classes for disabled kids were in the basement.
The other classes were upstairs.
We would call the non-disabled kids "upstairs kids."
They would come down, a few of them, Fridays, help us go to assembly.
They were allowed to come,
and you know, meet us in our classroom and push our wheelchairs.
There were people that I met in those classes
who then went to Camp Jened together.
Neil Jacobson, Stevie Hofmann and Nancy Rosenblum.
We would sit together at lunch,
and I would help people put their sandwich in their sandwich holder.
And I think we respected each other,
and we all felt that what we were saying was important.
I mean, in some way, even when we were that young,
we knew that we were all being sidelined.
-[indistinct chatter] -[Rosenblum laughs]
[Heumann] We didn't wanna sideline anybody.
We wanted to hear what everybody had to say.
We were willing to listen.
[Rosenblum speaking]
-[man 1] Sounds more like... -[woman] Yeah, wow. [chuckles]
[Rosenblum] You... You... You're always... You're always talking.
You're... You're always talking.
[man 2 and 3] You're always talking.
[all laugh]
[man 3] That's 'cause he's a good public speaker.
[woman 1] Jean and I thought I was being, you know...
[woman 2] I thought so, too.
[man 4] Jack?
I think you're really great in the bunk.
When the worst things happen, you're sitting in the corner cracking up,
and nobody can get depressed when you're sitting there.
[all laugh]
[woman 3] She knows what she's doing when she's all, like, coy.
You know, I really dig you, Nance,
and there are a lot of things, you know, I'd like to get to know you better,
but, so far as I know you, I really like you.
[young LeBrecht speaking]
[counselor] Remember, you're speaking to her, not about her.
[young LeBrecht] I don't know too much about you, but you're okay.
[indistinct chatter]
[young Heumann] Um, there's some people here
who have been filming.
I told them that I would like them to please address us as a group
so they could tell us their ideas
and we could ask any questions that we wanted to.
[Gutstadt] We are People's Video Theater.
That's Ken Marsh, I'm Howie Gutstadt, and that's Ben Levine over there.
And we have been working with this equipment,
which is half-inch video tape, which is simply closed-system television.
Whatever, actually, you really wanna say about yourselves, let us know.
Let's have a lot of interaction.
-[girl 1] Tommy! -[boy] Hey, Tommy!
[girl 2] Tommy!
-[girl 1] Tommy, look! -[boy] Tommy!
-Tommy! -[girl 1] Who's on the television, Tommy?
[laughs]
[camper] What a ugly face. Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[LeBrecht] There was a period of adjustment I had to go through
for the first couple of weeks at camp.
Because I was in public school,
I wasn't around other people with disabilities.
I wasn't a shut-in. I could come and go more or less as I pleased.
And not everybody at the camp had those advantages.
[counselor] Rory.
[LeBrecht] Some of them were going to special schools.
Some of them were isolated a lot of the time.
You had people from institutions.
[campers singing] ♪ Lately it occurs to me ♪
♪ What a long, strange trip it's been ♪
[LeBrecht] Being 15, I was drawn to the people that were
smoking cigarettes and listening to music.
♪ Sometimes the light's All shining on me ♪
[LeBrecht] Outside of camp, I really didn't feel like a cool kid.
But at Jened, I was.
There were a lot of cute girls at camp, and, you know, I was friendly. [laughs]
[camper] Yeah!
[Denise speaking]
[Neil speaking]
[LeBrecht laughing] Oh, my God!
-[all laughing] -[LeBrecht] Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
["Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells playing]
[young LeBrecht] There's one of my counselors with a waitress.
Aha!
This is a little sitting corner over there.
It's kind of dark over here at night.
[videographer] So what's that mean? What goes on there?
[young LeBrecht laughing]
[counselor speaking]
[videographer] You've been going around giving me this superficial tour.
Let's have some real stuff.
[counselor speaking]
-[videographer] Who's Nanci? -[young LeBrecht] She's my girl.
["Crimson and Clover" continues playing]
[LeBrecht] Camp Jened was where I met my first girlfriend, Nanci.
[LeBrecht] She was funny. She was cute.
She was always in the middle of things and having a really, really great time.
I mean, I really loved her.
As much as you can at the age of 15, you know?
I literally remember us, like, making out in the dining hall.
It seemed like we were making out all the time.
[Heumann] There was a romance in the air if you wanted to experience it.
I never dated outside of camp.
But at Jened, you could have make-out sessions
behind the bunks and different places like that.
[Neil speaking]
[LeBrecht laughs]
[Neil speaking]
[LeBrecht laughs]
-[LeBrecht laughs] -[Neil speaking]
[campers laughing]
[D'Angelo] You want me to tell them what happened?
-[interviewer] Yes. -Oh, well...
Well, two people got crabs, and, um, they're spreading.
They form in human body in there, and I don't know... [chuckles]
And they, um... multiply!
In the beginning, when this thing started happening last night,
we found out what was going on.
We were kind of all very hyper about it.
And who the fuck knew what, you know, crabs were, or lice or anything?
I wanna go over there. [chuckles]
[interviewer] What's over there?
[chuckling] My girl.
[interviewer] Have you seen her today?
Just from over here.
[interviewer] Have you talked to her?
Not really. Just from across here.
[man] We're all quarantined.
Yeah.
It's our first-week anniversary today. [chuckles]
It's your first-week anniversary, and you can't even talk to her.
That's right.
-Why I'm mad? -[woman] Your boyfriend.
Oh, yeah.
I'm mad because I can't see Jimmy, and today is our first-week anniversary.
[all laugh]
[camper singing] ♪ I got those poor old crab blues, yeah ♪
[counselor] Haven't had so much fun since Grandma caught her tit in the wringer!
We're thinking of collecting all the crabs and having a bake.
[all laughing]
[counselor] We may have to burn the bastards out.
[camper singing] ♪ Oh, yeah I got the... ♪
Just the most asinine, stupid thing I have ever heard.
When thinking about it rationally, I realized that I don't itch,
so there's no need for me to disinfect.
My wheelchair doesn't itch, and neither does my bed,
my mattress or my roommate, Bruce.
Yet we're all in the process of dehumanization.
Got a match?
We got crab power!
Whoopi-doo!
It's the best activity yet.
-I do so declare, y'all. -[woman] Tell them, Jean.
It's spreadable!
You know, how would you like to have somebody wash your balls?
-[man 1] That's the part... -[man 2] It depends who.
Right, I can do it myself for me. So, you know, I don't really care.
But there are other people who can't.
You know, and they have to have it done for them.
You know, people around here feel small enough most of the time,
and when somebody has to scrub their balls,
they'll probably feel even smaller.
I think, actually, what happened was that people were having fun.
We were working together as a whole unit, washing and cleaning and showering,
and doing things that we've never done before.
And it's really a very different kind of a thing.
And I have to go shower some people.
[chuckles] I'll see you later.
[Heumann] At Camp Jened,
personal assistance was built into all of our lives, who needed help.
There were people there that would help me get dressed and undressed,
and go to the bathroom and shower, and get in and out of the pool.
In some way, it was also the beginning of my experiencing
what it would be like to have someone other than my mother or my father
have to do all those things.
[campers chattering and shouting indistinctly]
[Woodyard] At the camp,
you could do anything that you thought you wanted to try to do.
You wouldn't be picked to be on a team back home.
But at Jened, you had to go up to bat.
And if you didn't hit the ball, hell, you were out.
["Like a Ship" by Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir playing]
When we were at Jened, the Disability Act had not been passed.
So, when we would take the campers on a trip into town for ice cream,
we couldn't get you in the door.
And then deal with the staring,
or deal with, "We don't want them here
because they make our other customers feel uncomfortable."
Whatever obstacles that were in my way being a black man,
the same thing was held true for individuals in wheelchairs.
Back home, I had to be careful who I said things to,
because that was a way of surviving.
They were survival skills that you had.
I had to be very, very, very careful not to be disrespectful.
Not to look a white man in his eye.
You had to do those things. You had to be mindful of that.
[camper singing] ♪ I got the one-time blues ♪
♪ You get them only once ♪
♪ I got the one-time blues ♪
♪ You get them only once ♪
♪ When you're alone with me ♪
♪ You know you can't get enough ♪
♪ My eyes get red ♪
♪ I don't know what to do ♪
♪ My eyes get red ♪
♪ I don't know what to do ♪
♪ I've got so much pain ♪
♪ I don't know if I'm really blue ♪
♪ 'Cause I got The one-time, one-time blues ♪
Hooray.
Are you ready?
-[videographer] You're on now. -All right.
We're here now. We're gonna talk about parents.
You know, and what kind of...
How they bug us, or how you lie to them, whatever it is.
Maybe we should start off with, uh...
overprotectiveness, which I really hate.
Does anybody wanna start it up?
My parents are great, but sometimes I hate them,
'cause they're too great, and they're too protective of me.
And things that I want to do, and I would love to do,
they say, "No, you can't do it. You're handicapped."
And they keep reminding me of the fact that I'm in a chair.
They don't seem to realize that there's so much I could do.
And, um...
[young LeBrecht] I depend on my mother for some things
and so I can't really fight her as hard as I wish I could.
[interviewer] What kind of things do you depend on her for?
Well...
Some of the things everybody else depends on their parents for,
like laundry and stuff, but, like...
Like, she's the person that orders special supplies
when I'll need it and stuff, and...
If I'm in a position where I'm not able to do something, you know,
she's gonna have to do it.
If you keep on bugging your mother, saying, you know...
Fighting her constantly,
then there's gonna be a time when she's gonna be very reluctant.
Does everybody think... Everybody here think that their parents are,
you know, stricter with us?
Or, you know, do they hit us the same as your sister or brother,
or they think you have to be careful?
I have two brothers and, um, they got a lot more freedom than I did.
[man] There goes your argument. Those are brothers.
That's a universal argument.
-Brothers... -[woman] We're basically the same age.
It's her responsibility to do that.
And as long as she keeps on accepting things being done for her,
it will always be done.
[Rosenblum speaking]
-[interviewer] Is that it? -Yeah.
[interviewer] Did someone understand it?
Did anybody get part of it?
["Tomorrow is a Long Time" by Bob Dylan playing]
How many other people have those kinds of problems?
[LeBrecht] What we saw at that camp was that our lives could be better.
♪ If today was not a crooked highway ♪
[LeBrecht] The fact of the matter is,
you don't have anything to strive for if you don't know that it exists.
[Heumann] We kept having these discussions.
It was allowing us to recognize
we needed to look at ways of doing things together.
Not just at camp but after camp.
♪ I can't see my reflection In the water ♪
♪ I can't speak the sounds To show no pain ♪
[LeBrecht] When it was time to leave camp,
some of us vowed to stay in touch and write or call.
♪ Or remember the sound of my own name ♪
[LeBrecht] There was always a chance that
some campers weren't gonna come back next year.
♪ Yes, and only If my own true love was waitin' ♪
[all cheering]
[counselor] The night before the end of camp,
everybody'd be hanging out almost all night.
Nobody wanted to go to bed.
♪ If today was not a crooked highway ♪
[Woodyard] It was a very happy night,
but you knew the next morning, there would be tears.
♪ If tonight was not a crooked trail ♪
♪ If tomorrow wasn't such a long time ♪
[Woodyard] We were going back, almost in time.
♪ Then lonesome would mean Nothing to you at all ♪
[O'Conor] We were brothers and sisters there.
[Woodyard] I took ideas back home
that my community was unfamiliar with.
I wore tie-dye shirts. My afro had grown really, really...
It was out like this.
I burned incense.
Between the revolution that was going on, the peace movement,
the desire to stop the war, I became very involved in that.
Jened had exposed me to the world outside of Alabama.
[LeBrecht] At camp, I was in a whole other world.
My first girlfriend, and I'm popular, and I'm...
And I'm going back to this world in which it's hard to get around.
Sometimes I would just, like, go home after high school
and go to bed for a few hours and just get away from the world.
I have friends, but I'm the only person with a disability.
I had to try to adapt.
I had to fit into this world that wasn't built for me.
It never dawned on me that the world was ever going to change.
Most disabled people, like myself, are unable to use public transportation
because it discriminates against the disabled
due to the fact that it's architecturally inaccessible.
[man 1 speaking]
[interviewer] So, you have to stay on the street here--
[man] I have to stay on the street and go around the block.
[TV show host] Most animal species abandon or destroy
members of the group which are maimed or deformed.
Some human societies have been equally harsh.
Down through the centuries, our literature, and recently, our movies,
are full of monstrous, misunderstood creatures.
Through this conditioning, we come to think of the handicapped
as objects of fear or pity or loathing.
Tonight we look at them as human beings with problems.
Judy Heumann is the president of Disabled in Action,
a political organization of the handicapped.
I think one of the real problems is that, when you grow up being disabled,
um, it's the fact that you're not considered either a man or a woman
and even the beginning of any kind of a relationship,
you know, beginning at all because you're just thought of as a disabled person.
-You know, person being-- -[woman] Asexual.
-Yeah, second and asexual... -[woman] Asexual. Right.
...and "Can you do this?" and "Can you do that?"
[Pat Figueroa] Let me give you an indication of that.
We have an elevator operator in school
that whenever he stops on a floor and there are a couple wheelchairs,
people in wheelchairs waiting, he starts yelling,
"All right, get these wheelchairs in here."
And he doesn't take into consideration the people in...
You know, the... the...
[woman] The people in the wheelchairs.
Yeah, the person there. It's just wheelchairs to him.
[Heumann] I don't think I felt, really, shame about my disability.
What I felt more was exclusion.
For me, the camp experience really was empowering,
because we helped empower each other
that the status quo is not what it needed to be.
Disabled in Action was started as a result of a lawsuit
that I had brought against the Board of Education in New York City.
There was publicity going on and we set up all these different committees.
One of the first things that Disabled in Action worked on
was on deinstitutionalization.
[narrator] There are some aspects of life which society has hidden from public view.
The following program will remind you that they exist
and that we all bear a responsibility to humanity.
[LeBrecht] I remember watching TV one evening before dinner
and on comes this exposé about this state hospital in New York
called Willowbrook.
[Rivera] The early morning mist gave the place an eerie feeling
like a set from a horror movie.
And once inside, that feeling became suddenly appropriate.
The doctor had warned me that it would be bad.
It was horrible.
There was one attendant for perhaps 50 severely and profoundly retarded children.
Lying on the floor naked and smeared with their own feces,
they were making a pitiful sound.
The kind of mournful wail that it's impossible for me to forget.
[LeBrecht] It was really shocking. It was just, like, how could this be?
[staff member] The kids can't feed themselves.
There are so few attendants that there's only an average of, in time,
three minutes per child for feeding.
[Rivera] How much time would be needed to do a job adequately?
[staff member] The same amount of time that your children and my children
would wanna have to eat breakfast.
[LeBrecht] I suddenly remembered one summer,
there had been a camper at Camp Jened from Willowbrook.
I remember being in the dining hall and this guy comes in.
He was basically just eating as much as he could.
He was just...
Kept on shoveling it in until the point where he threw up.
It was kind of like somebody coming in from the wild.
[Rivera] What's the consequence of three minutes per meal per child?
[staff member] The consequence is death from pneumonia.
[Heumann] I had never seen the inside of an institution like this.
The chaos that existed was frightening to me
because I recognized that myself and other friends
could have easily been in this institution.
At the time, people still were not thinking of
what was wrong with the Willowbrooks of the country.
The civil rights movement was going on around us
and that was an opportunity to talk about why were we excluded,
and what did we need to do?
There weren't anti-discrimination laws at the federal level.
But members in the Senate and House
were looking for avenues to make that happen.
The Rehabilitation Act in 1972 was a perfect vehicle.
Buried at the end of the bill was Section 504,
an anti-discrimination provision.
The language was drawn from civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
It was gonna mean that anybody who got federal money,
hospitals, education, transportation, on and on,
was gonna have to not discriminate.
It was like a "yahoo" wonderful moment.
And Nixon vetoed it.
The President has vetoed a bill setting up a vocational rehabilitation program
because he said it would cost too much.
[William Ronan] It would be just impossible in terms of its financial cost
to put in elevators or ramps in all these stations.
Just costs would be horrendous in terms of their total.
The problem here is, as with all of this question,
how many people would really be served by it?
[Heumann] Disabled in Action decided to have a demonstration in New York City
in front of Nixon headquarters.
[young Heumann] We decided that we were gonna sit down in the street
and we were gonna stop traffic.
So at 4:30 in the afternoon, we formed this huge circle.
We cut off four streets.
[horns honking]
[Freeman] You get the call to action.
"To the barricades!" You know, Judy would call it.
I remember being on the ground with these big trucks coming at you,
going, "Whoa."
[Bronston] It was a very unusual demonstration.
People were not used to seeing a whole lot of folks in wheelchairs.
And you had to back up.
I mean, you had to back up
if you were on the wrong side in front of that young woman.
[announcer on TV] The newswatch never stops. This is WINS...
[young Heumann] They were announcing,
"Paraplegics stop traffic in Manhattan."
[Heumann] There were only 50 of us.
But basically, with the one street, we were able to shut the city down.
[Bronston] Those DIA demonstrations were the first time
a real, serious, radical agenda was mobilized.
[LeBrecht] When I heard about DIA, I really wanted to join,
but I often couldn't go 'cause I was stuck in high school.
Judy would put out the call that we're gonna show up to this event
or we're going to demonstrate about this or that,
and when this call came out
to go to this Martin Luther King birthday gathering, I had to go.
So I took the train down from Hartsdale to Grand Central Station.
And going to Grand Central Station, it's so freaking huge.
That day, I couldn't find a ramp or an elevator.
I had to climb out of my chair, pull the wheelchair up behind me,
so step by step, pull it up, push my...
Put myself up, pull it up, push myself up.
But I made it.
And I was there with Pat Figueroa, one of the counselors from Camp Jened.
[all chanting]
[Heumann] In the spring of 1973,
we decided we were gonna have another demonstration.
The bottom line was, we were a small group of disabled people.
We were getting very little coverage from the media at the national level
because we didn't have any disabled veterans.
And that was, you know, the time of the Vietnam War.
["Volunteers" by Jefferson Airplane playing]
They lied about the war in Vietnam.
They've lied about every damn thing in the world.
They lied about Watergate, and about how they're treating us.
They're lying about how they're treating the physically disabled
and mentally retarded in this country.
We wanted to be able to mobilize disabled individuals in D.C.
to express the feelings of the disabled community around the United States,
and that in unity we do have strength,
and that we must expand the pie that we're fighting from
so that we don't have to fight each other,
but that we can all get our adequate services.
That's really what this is getting into.
[reporter] There's a minority in America
that has only recently begun to speak up and be heard.
They face problems of discrimination and prejudice in employment,
education, transportation and in just about every other aspect
of what society considers everyday life.
Until the last few years, they suffered mostly in silence, but that's changing.
They have begun to organize and to get politically active.
-[man] What do we want? -[all] Civil rights!
-[man] When do we want it? -[all] Now!
-[man] What do we want? -[all] Civil rights!
-[man] When do we want it? -[all] Now!
[LeBrecht] Eventually, Nixon caved in to all the political pressure
and he signs the rehab bill.
But they do nothing to enforce Section 504.
[Denise speaking]
[laughing]
[LeBrecht] In 1974, I finally graduated high school
and wound up going to UC San Diego 3,000 miles away.
♪ Truckin', got my chips cashed in Keep truckin' ♪
[LeBrecht] My plan was that I was gonna study acoustics
so I could do sound for the Grateful Dead.
When I got to California, my whole life opened up.
I wanted to take advantage of everything.
I tried to learn how to surf.
One night, I even convinced my friend Doug I could drive his motorcycle.
[motorcycle crashes]
As absurd as it sounds, I really felt like I had overcome my disability.
During my first year in college,
I heard that a bunch of people from Camp Jened had moved out to Berkeley.
♪ Sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime If you don't lay 'em down ♪
[LeBrecht] I'd drive up and go to Dead concerts
and it seemed like I'd always bump into Al Levy.
Al was like the Dead Head.
♪ Sometimes the light's All shinin' on me ♪
[LeBrecht] The Bay Area was a wild scene.
You didn't have to worry about fitting in like you did in San Diego.
There was this whole movement brewing where a group of radical disabled people
were, like, making this new world for themselves.
♪ What a long, strange trip it's been ♪
[narrator] The Center for Independent Living is unique
because it is run by the handicapped for the handicapped,
a model for the rest of the nation.
A center where the severely disabled help themselves.
It's the first time I think that a group of severely disabled individuals
have really gotten together to solve some mutual problems.
[Heumann] Ed Roberts contacted me to see
if I'd be interested in coming out to Berkeley.
I didn't want to go out there by myself.
And I said to D'Angelo,
"What do you think about moving out to Berkeley?"
And we were roommates.
[young Heumann] I wanna see a feisty group of disabled people all around the world.
I mean, a group of people who, um, will not accept no,
um, without asking why.
That's really what's so critical about CIL
is that, you know, it's not a card that you get handed at the door,
but it is kind of a demand that is expected of people in this community
and that is, if you don't respect yourself
and if you don't demand what you believe in for yourself,
you're not gonna get it.
[Corbett O'Toole] My first experience of finding home
was coming to Berkeley and hanging out at CIL.
I had always kind of pretended like I wasn't disabled.
You know, I could walk. I would stick the cane under the couch,
but the whole time I'm worrying about the minute I have to get up
and everybody's gonna see me limp around.
So I didn't realize how heavy that burden was
until I was with people where I didn't have to pretend.
[reporter] The repair shop has just about everything.
Even electronic equipment to fine-tune the battery-powered wheelchairs.
And the center also provides transportation.
Relying on state, local and federal money,
the goal is to make the handicapped self-sufficient.
[phone rings]
Nanci D'Angelo, may I help you?
Uh-huh.
Um... Let's see. It shouldn't be any problem finding you an attendant.
What I'll do is I'll give you a list of people
who wanna work in the hours that you need somebody,
and their phone numbers, okay?
-[woman] Okay, it sounds good. -And anything you need, we're here.
-[phone rings] -Excuse me.
[young Heumann] You wanna live in a house, then that's your right.
You want a two-bedroom apartment,
we'll try to help you find a two-bedroom apartment.
And here is how you can apply for money to get attendants paid for.
[attendant] Want me to get anything while I'm out?
-Yes. -[attendant] What?
Ice cream.
[attendant] Ice cream? What else?
Candy.
[attendant] And candy.
When that whole gang of the Camp Jened kids started to come,
they were like this.
Like, so... If you socialized with one,
like, "Oh, hey, you wanna hang out on Friday night?" "Yes."
But it always meant one of those people, if not five of those people,
were always gonna be there.
You know, camp kind of traveled with them.
There was like the traveling Camp Jened show.
How did I first hear about it?
Well, obviously, I heard about it from Steve, who was out here.
Neil had the computer training program.
[Neil speaking]
[Denise speaking]
[women exclaiming and laughing]
[Freeman] They took me to a Halloween party at CIL.
I remember that day, it was...
Oh, my God!
They were all drunk and carrying on. [laughs]
And these people, all these cripples, were dressed in costumes.
And...
I don't know. I always felt you had to kinda hide yourself.
You didn't want to draw attention.
And there they were, like, all proud.
It really struck me. Like this is... This is different.
This is really different.
[announcer] Next we have Steven Hofmann, 28.
He's a transvestite by trade.
He likes to work with handicapped children and other animals.
His ambition is to be a headless amoeba
with a lot of large, thickly-endowed boyfriends.
-["Sweet Transvestite" playing] -[audience cheering]
♪ How'd you do? I... ♪
♪ See you've met my faithful handyman ♪
♪ He's just a little brought down Because when you knocked... ♪
[Hofmann speaking]
♪ Don't get strung out by the way I look ♪
♪ Don't judge a book by its cover ♪
♪ I'm not much of a man By the light of day ♪
♪ But by night I'm one hell of a lover ♪
♪ I'm just a sweet transvestite ♪
♪ From Transsexual, Transylvania ♪
[reporter] Good evening, Judy. Good to see you again.
How has the situation changed since 1973?
Are you still as upset and angry as you were then?
I think that what I've tried to do in part,
is to turn some of that anger around and put it into, um, positive action.
And outside the fact that legislation has been passed,
there's been very little actual enforcement.
[reporter] Federal law prohibits
discrimination against handicapped persons.
An organization of the handicapped claims that law has been ignored.
Today there were demonstrations at 11 regional offices
of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare across the nation.
[Heumann] Carter had been elected.
They had said that the regulations would be adopted,
but when Secretary Califano
became head of Health, Education and Welfare, he began to do a review.
[reporter] Handicapped citizens demonstrated
at Health, Education and Welfare today.
They accuse Secretary Califano of weakening and delaying regulations
to implement the 1973 law to protect the rights of the handicapped.
We have maintained this position
for almost three years now,
but, apparently, when Mr. Califano became secretary,
he said, "This is a whole new ball game."
To us, it is not. We're still in the same game.
[cheering]
[all chanting] 504! 504! 504!
I have reviewed those regulations.
There are some difficult questions.
The last administration
took two and a half years and decided not to move.
I've had two and a half months.
[protester 1] Why can't you move now? What are you waiting for?
Because I wanna make sure I understand them--
-[protester 1] No! It's one law! -I will do the--
-[protester 2] Boo! -[protester 1] Not in May, now!
[crowd clamoring]
[Heumann] What we were hearing is that lobbyists were coming in,
wanting to make changes in the regulations.
Schools and universities, and even hospitals,
didn't want to have to spend the money to make their buildings accessible.
So, we believed that there was, like, an imperative.
That we had to act quickly.
We were told, today, you heard it here, that because of their failures,
we are not to have...
our civil rights.
[crowd clamoring]
[all protesters] Sign or resign! Sign or resign!
[reporter] Some of the protesters vowed to stay outside of Califano's office
until he signs the regulations.
[woman] This coalition is a part of a national movement
and we're going to stick together and continue to fight for our civil rights.
[crowd cheering]
[HolLynn D'Lil] I didn't even know there was a national movement.
And I didn't know what a 504 was.
I was a girl from Texas.
When I was 22, just right out of college,
and I was on my way home one day and a truck ran me off the road
and so I became a paraplegic.
I had all the assumptions and prejudices
that people have about people with disabilities and about disabilities,
and suddenly I was one.
I'd never been around so many people with disabilities
and so many different kinds of disabilities, all in one place
and all chanting about rights. [chuckles]
I'd never really thought about it as applying to me.
And I called Ms. Magazine, and they gave me an assignment.
So I went back there with my camera.
[man over PA] We people who are here in the Bay must stay together.
We are the strongest political force in this country.
We are young, we are sensitive, and we are intelligent.
Let's stay together.
[Dennis Billups] I was asked to go to the demonstration by my sister.
And I said, "Okay. I'll give it a shot."
And then all of a sudden, someone said,
"Well, let's go in the building. You know, what are we gonna do, stand outside?"
So I headed toward the building.
[D'Lil] The speeches were over
and I followed this group of people into the building.
There must have been 300 people and they went up to the fourth floor
and they went into the office of the regional director.
Now, what's he gonna do with all these people in wheelchairs?
[protesters chanting] 504! 504! 504!
[young Heumann] We are not asking anything unreasonable.
We are asking you to request a telephone call
to talk to Joseph Califano.
Mr. Lebossi, the general counsel for HEW, has been designated as the person
that I should discuss these matters with, and if you...
[young Heumann] The more I sat in this room
and got these absolute non-answers,
the angrier I got,
and that's when people started really feeling like we couldn't leave,
because no one knew what we were talking about,
but we knew that they were trying to rescind the regulations.
♪ We shall not be moved ♪
[Billups] Five or six o'clock came and nobody was leavin'.
So, I figured, "Okay, we're gonna have to spend the night." [laughs]
[Heumann] Kitty and I and a few others, we just kind of took a vote
and said, "How many people wanna stay overnight?"
And that's how it started.
[protesters chanting] 504! 504! 504!
Judy said, "Bring a toothbrush."
And I was like, "Okay."
[chanting continues]
I said, "Well, Judy, I didn't come prepared." [chuckles]
She said, "You gotta stay here, Ron. You gotta stay here."
♪ Solidarity forever ♪
♪ The truth goes marching on ♪
[all cheering]
This is for tonight. Okay?
How many people in the room cannot sleep on the floor?
[Heumann] Bay Area was the most well-organized.
We had the expertise to not only have demonstrations but to sustain them.
♪ I, I, I I am somebody ♪
[reporter] The sit-in at San Francisco's HEW headquarters
now is in its third day.
Hot water has been turned off on the fourth floor,
where the occupation army of cripples has taken over.
[O'Toole] The FBI cut off the phones.
They said we couldn't have any communication.
So, we're like, "Okay, what do we do?"
And the deaf people went...
"We know what to do."
Someone would sign out the window.
That's how we communicated back and forth to the people outside the building.
Uh, one fellow, who's right behind me and asleep right now,
built us a refrigerator.
He attached some plastic to an air conditioner
and built it out of cardboard and stuff that was around.
So, we've been able to keep a lot of stuff cold.
[Billups] There were just so many people
trying to figure out how to eat, how to wash.
"Where are we gonna get food? Where are we gonna get blankets?"
Brad Lomax was the one who had the idea to call the Black Panthers.
Brad could hardly speak,
but he could gesture [laughs] and he got his point across.
[O'Toole] The Panthers would bring a hot meal for dinner
and then they would leave food for breakfast and lunch.
For nothing. No money, no nothing.
I ended up, you know, after the meeting I said to this guy, "I don't get it.
You're the Black Panther Party and you don't have a ton of resources."
You know, they had a food kitchen in Oakland.
"Why are you choosing to feed us?"
He said to me, you know,
"You are trying to make the world a better place
and that's what we are about.
We are about making the world a better place for everybody.
So, if you're gonna go to the trouble to stay here and sleep on this floor,
we're gonna make sure you get fed."
You know, that's how we survived.
[man] We have a cafeteria. We have a conference room.
We have beds all over the place, mattresses, food.
It's incredible.
[Heumann] Our support was much broader than just within the disability community.
Union members and other civil rights organizations.
We had relationships with local government.
The mayor was clearly in support.
One of the secretaries in Sacramento sent down mattresses.
Glide Memorial Church, which was run by a progressive minister.
We are a people who believe in liberation!
[crowd applauding]
[Heumann] It was the right place, the right time.
[O'Toole] One of the women who ran the big lesbian bar in the East Bay
came and said, "What do you guys need?"
And we said, "We're so tired of being dirty."
And, so, her partner was a nurse
and they went out and bought a gallon of shampoo and a gallon of cream rinse.
And, one night, just showed up.
And for three hours, anybody that wanted their hair washed got their hair washed.
[woman] Oh, my lord. It feels good.
♪ Yay for gay children ♪
And teenagers!
♪ We shall not be moved ♪
[singing continues]
[O'Toole] You can't imagine what the 504 sit-in was like.
It was camp.
Everything we learned at crip camp was what we did there.
[LeBrecht] So many people from Camp Jened,
campers, counselors, disabled, non-disabled
found their way into the building.
♪ We shall have our rights ♪
♪ We shall have our We shall have our rights ♪
...do right now, is to read off the list
of the names of people who are going to be speaking tomorrow.
[Heumann] There were many different committees that were working on media
and food and medical issues and different things like that.
...the regulations that we agreed to at the January 21st meeting,
and he is trying to obscure that...
[D'Lil] Judy made sure everybody gets a chance to speak.
...the hunger strike. Anyone here who wants to...
[D'Lil] We could not begin a meeting until there was a sign interpreter there.
The meetings would go until three o'clock in the morning.
[Heumann] People have to be engaged and feeling like they made a difference.
Otherwise, people weren't gonna stay there all that time.
[all singing] ♪ Ain't gonna let nobody ♪
♪ Turn me around Turn me around ♪
-♪ I said ♪ -♪ Turn me around ♪
♪ Lemme hear you ♪
[young Billups] It is evolving into a coalition.
The more we talk, the more we discuss, the more we change and regroup,
and the more we learn about our own handicap inside of our own coalition.
Learning sign language, learning Braille,
learning about hidden disabilities like epilepsy, arthritis,
and learning about all of our disabilities,
we will become a tighter and firmer group.
[reporter] The demonstration here is now in its fourth day.
It is by far the largest and longest protest
ever organized by disabled people in this area.
But the problem is still the same as it was on Tuesday.
Trying to get the attention of Washington.
[LeBrecht] I'm amazed at how many people stayed.
And what these people had to endure.
Not having a back-up ventilator.
Not having your usual personal care attendant.
Not having access to catheters.
It's hard enough for me to take care of my body.
Here we're talking about quadriplegics who can't turn themselves
during the middle of the night to prevent body sores.
And to be sleeping on the floor? I mean, that's a recipe for disaster.
[O'Toole] It's like the world always wants us dead.
Disabled people know that every day of our lives.
The world doesn't want us around and wants us dead.
We live with that reality, so there's always gonna be, uh,
"Am I gonna survive? Am I gonna push back?
Am I gonna fight to be here?" That's always true.
So, if you wanna call that anger, I call it kind of drive.
You know, you have to be willing to thrive or you're not gonna make it.
I can work.
My mind functions, my hands function.
Many of us can work. That's all we're saying.
Remove the architectural barriers.
[Heumann] For a number of days, a number of us went on a hunger strike.
We were drinking, like, two or three glasses of liquid a day.
[D'Lil] I know the pressure on Judy had to be very harsh.
It's a lot of responsibility, and it was Judy who was saying often,
one individual at a time,
"Can you stay? Can you stay just one more day?
Can you stay one more day?"
And that's how they did it, day by day.
[reporter] This building's been occupied for 11 days
by a small army of the handicapped.
-Support outside has increased each day. -[protesters chanting]
[reporter] The sounds of that support carry inside
to the offices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
[Evan White] I was at Channel 7, which was on Golden Gate Avenue
just around the corner from the Federal Building.
The local media damn near ignored the entire event,
and I was virtually the only one covering it the entire time.
[O'Toole] Evan White essentially embedded with us.
He did footage of us from beginning to end.
[White] I had the immense privilege
of being allowed to sit in during the nightly sessions of strategy.
I was in heaven on that kind of story. I just...
I like people who make trouble.
[O'Toole] We were trying to push the agenda forward,
and so one of the thoughts was,
"Let's get Congress to come to the building
and actually have congressional hearings in the building."
'Cause we couldn't leave.
[reporter] The handicapped demand
that section 504 of the Civil Rights Act be signed.
Today their demand for action is heard by two congressmen,
Phillip Burton and George Miller.
My statement is one of militancy. My statement is one of
support from disabled individuals from around the country.
This is the beginning of a civil rights movement
and we are proud that you are here to help us launch this civil rights movement,
which is so long overdue.
[D'Lil] Califano, the Director of HEW,
sent this poor man named Eidenberg to represent him at this ad hoc hearing
held by Congressmen Miller and Burton.
Right now, a searching analysis is going on in Washington
with all deliberate speed, tackling such diverse questions as:
Should drug addicts and alcoholics be covered?
To what extent would every school and hospital in this country
be required to remodel?
[D'Lil] And he had come in with 20-something changes,
including instituting the shameful doctrine of separate but equal.
A school district was allowed to designate one school...
as the school that children with disabilities
and students with disabilities could go to.
Well, what's that? That's separate but equal.
We knew it was Califano's little dog and pony show.
He sends this poor guy in to read these words,
because he's gonna put us back in our place.
And then, he left the room.
And Congressman Burton said, "Oh, no, no, no."
Mr. Eidenberg had locked himself into an office,
and Burton kicked at the door and finally Eidenberg came out.
And Burton dragged Eidenberg back into the room.
Made him sit at the front table facing everybody in the audience,
so he could listen to our testimony.
[Miller] Somebody's gonna have to pour concrete.
Somebody's gonna have to knock down some walls,
and somebody's gonna have to make school teachers and classrooms available.
But that is a price that we have said that we've been willing to pay for 200 years,
to make people accessible to the mainstream.
[voice breaking] Whether there was a Section 504,
there was a Brown versus Board of Education...
the... [exhales heavily] the harassment...
the, um, lack of equity that has been provided for disabled individuals,
and that now is even being discussed by the administration,
is so intolerable that I can't quite put it into words.
I can tell you that every time you raise issues of separate but equal,
the outrage of disabled individuals across this country...
is going to continue, it is going to be ignited.
There will be more takeovers of buildings...
until finally maybe you begin to understand our position.
We will no longer allow the government to opp... oppress disabled individuals.
We want the law enforced.
We want no more segregation.
We will accept no more discussion of segregation.
And I would appreciate it if you would stop shaking your head in agreement
when I don't think you understand what we are talking about.
[O'Toole] There are moments... like, where history shifts.
Judy's interaction with that man
is the moment when things shifted for so many people.
[D'Lil] What was Califano thinking with this?
Well, he was thinking he didn't have to pay attention to us.
That was instrumental in making the leaders decide,
"We've gotta go to D.C. We've gotta go get in his face."
[reporter] Today, a delegation of 25 left San Francisco,
heading for the nation's capital
where they hope to present their demands directly to the President.
We are hopeful that the President will see us.
We have gotten a lot of support from organizations within the community
who are paying our way to go to Washington.
And we are really hopeful that we will come back
with success and the regulations signed as we want them.
[White] At the San Francisco Airport, leaving on this journey of determination,
Evan White, Channel 7 News Scene.
[Billups] I thought it was important to let them know right off the plane
we were not playing.
So, I said, "Well, what are we gonna do now?"
They says, "Well, we could sleep until tomorrow."
I says, "Oh, no, we're not.
We're gonna go out there
and we're gonna sit in front of Califano's house
and we're gonna let him know that this is 504 and we're here."
[D'Lil] There was no accessible transportation at the time,
so the machinist union very ingeniously rented a U-Haul truck,
plastered their sign on the side of it, and that's how we got around in D.C.
And we would sit in darkness as we traveled around,
and we wouldn't know where we were until we got there,
and they opened up the back, and we could see out again.
We went straight to Califano's house
and held a candlelight vigil outside of it.
[White] The cops came immediately, police cars all around,
but they saw a bunch of people in wheelchairs and on crutches
and they didn't wanna fuck with them.
So they didn't. They just parked across the way and watched, all night.
[D'Lil] That morning, when the sun was up,
Judy and Evan White and his cameramen were knocking on Califano's door.
And he never came out.
And somebody said he took off out the back door.
The First Family used the side door today
to leave Washington's First Baptist Church.
The Carters avoided about 20 handicapped persons
demonstrating across the street from the door the President normally uses.
[reporter] In Washington today,
more than 100 people marched in front of the White House.
But it doesn't look as if Carter will see the demonstrators personally,
even though they've traveled there from San Francisco for that very purpose.
[O'Toole] When the group of 22 left,
there's still, like, a ton of us in San Francisco.
You know, then the FBI really ratcheted it up.
There was, like, 3:00 a.m. fire alarms and these bomb scares.
And our only job... [chuckles] This was, like... You know Judy.
Our only job was, like,
[imitating Heumann] "You don't leave until I call you."
"Yes. We won't leave until you call us." [laughs]
We were more scared of disappointing Judy Heumann
than we ever were of the FBI or the police department arresting us.
[D'Lil] People in D.C. were very stressed.
It should have been a big finale, a big climax.
It should have made something happen, shook something loose, and it didn't.
We didn't know what was gonna happen.
Three times that week we went 36 hours without sleep.
The leaders just held strong and said, "How can you give up?
It has to be done, and if not now, when?"
[woman 1] Does anyone know where Dennis' cane is?
[woman 2] No.
[woman 3] Does anybody know where Dennis' cane is?
[man 1] No smoking inside.
[Heumann] All right, we gotta go, 'cause we're not gonna--
[woman 4] Not supposed to sit on the guitar.
[woman 5] There's room on the floor here for somebody.
Judy, sing a song.
-[man 2] Ellen, is Bob Perkins up there? -[Heumann singing "Amazing Grace"]
[woman 7] I think Nicky went for it.
[man 2] Ask him if he wants to ride in here with us.
[Heumann continues singing]
[man 2] Okay.
[truck door rolls closed and engine starts]
[all singing] ♪ That saved a wretch ♪
♪ Like me ♪
-[woman 8] Wait a second. -[man 3] I don't like that one.
[woman 9] I'm sure you've been noticing it...
[Heumann] ♪ I once was lost ♪
♪ But now I'm found ♪
♪ Was blind ♪
♪ But now I see ♪
[protesters] One, two, three, four! We're gonna get the 504!
One, two, three, four! We're gonna get the 504!
[White] I know this may be against protocol, sir--
-It is. -But I've come 3,000 miles.
Can I ask why you did not meet with the demonstrators this week?
Well, there's an illegal demonstration going on in San Francisco.
And I just, uh, don't think it's appropriate to do that.
I understand you agreed to meet with them and canceled that. Is that true?
Thank you.
He said he never made such an agreement,
this being an illegal contingent of an illegal sit-in.
[D'Lil] Evan White was ready to send all his materials back to San Francisco,
to Channel 7, and there was a technician strike.
[imperceptible audio]
[White] ABC stations all over the country were not getting very much news,
so the guys at ABC, the strike-breakers,
put it to every ABC station in the country.
Evan White in Washington, D.C.
[protesters] One, two, three, four! We're gonna get the 504!
[White] Well, they started getting a little blowback.
People like Joe Califano
didn't give a shit if it was on in San Francisco,
but it's everywhere.
-[man] Thank you. -Yep.
[man] Watch your shadow.
[D'Lil] As it happened, without any fanfare,
without letting the press know, or we didn't even know,
Califano suddenly signed the regulations the way we wanted 'em.
[laughs]
I think that this... this calls for a revolution of attitudes
and thinking and activities
on behalf of millions of American citizens.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
[reporter 1] When it was over,
Dusty Irvine shared bread with her friends.
She had been on a hunger strike.
This was the first food she had eaten in 23 days.
[reporter 2] In Washington, spokesmen for the handicapped were pleased.
The Congress, the press, the American public
has seen that we have stamina, strength, intelligence, um,
as anyone else does.
That disabled individuals, because they're disabled,
are not, by definition, sick.
[reporter 3] The new laws say every handicapped child in the country
has a right to be educated in public schools,
something the handicapped have been waiting for for a long time.
It should have been implemented 20 years ago. [chuckles]
[reporter 4] Are you happy though, or apprehensive or what?
Uh, I am very happy. Yes.
This shows that the country is waking up.
Finally, after all the pressure and after all the agonizing,
and after the humiliating treatment--
People were treated in Washington, D.C. and in San Francisco.
[cheers and applause]
[O'Toole] We literally believed we could beat the US government.
Not only did we believe it...
but we fucking did it.
You know? [chuckles] I mean, we did it, and it's like...
And we did it together.
And what the 504 sit-in did is it took all these people,
deaf people and people with intellectual disabilities
and learning disabilities and blind people...
I mean, there was this really wide range of people.
And we were all going,
"Well, I never heard that story before, but I believe you
that that's your experience of being locked up in a mental ward.
I believe you that that's your experience in special ed. I believe you."
We were witnessing each other's truths.
[cheering continues]
We were giving each other, like,
"I see you, and I believe you."
[D'Lil] I didn't have a lot of self-esteem when I became disabled,
so you can see why... [chuckles and sniffles]
when 504 told me I had value...
it hit home.
[Freeman] I felt very, very proud to be part of this community.
Very proud.
[Cone] We won! We won!
We showed strength and courage and power and commitment!
That we the shut-ins or the shut-outs,
we the hidden, supposedly the frail and the weak,
that we could wage a struggle at the highest level of government
and win!
[protesters cheering]
[crowd applauding and cheering]
[LeBrecht] A year after the 504 sit-in, I graduated college.
I finally got to join my Camp Jened friends up in Berkeley.
I had gotten my dream job
as the resident sound designer at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
But the first two years I worked there,
there was no wheelchair access to the sound booth.
There were these outdoor steps I had to climb.
By the end of winter, there were, like, mushrooms growing out of the carpet.
But because of the regulations being signed,
the physical world around me began to become more accessible.
-[woman] Hi, Judy. -Hi, how are you?
[reporter] Funding from Section 504 has led to sweeping changes
in transportation, health care, education and job opportunities.
Universities must now make their buildings and facilities accessible to the disabled
and provide interpreters and readers for the deaf and the blind.
All housing projects and public buildings using federal money
must be made accessible to people in wheelchairs.
It's really out in the streets of Berkeley
that you see the results of the disabled civil rights movement.
Curb ramps designed by wheelchair users allow travel almost anywhere in the city.
The implications are enormous.
[LeBrecht] In 1980, Berkeley Rep opened a new, larger theater.
Because of 504, that new building had to be accessible.
As the barriers around me started to disappear,
I realized that this bar I had set for myself,
that I had to overcome my disability, it had taken a toll on me.
It was denying a part of who I am.
Ready, sound. Three, four.
I would like to say that, um, I'm glad to be here tonight, but, um...
[exhales heavily]
-[crowd member 1] It's all right. -[crowd member 2] We're behind you.
[crowd member 1] It's all right.
You know, on the one hand I'm feeling like I should say everything is wonderful,
[voice breaking] and I don't feel, um, that's at all what we talked about.
And I'm very tired of being thankful for accessible toilets.
[crowd laughs]
I... I really am tired of feeling that way,
when... I basically feel that, um...
if I have to feel thankful about an accessible bathroom,
when am I ever gonna be equal in the community?
[crowd applauds]
For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit,
mortgaging our future and our children's future
for the temporary convenience of the present.
[reporter 1] On May the 7th, Congress was due to vote on budget proposals.
[reporter 2] The future for disabled programs looked bleak.
Not only money, but the hard-won legislation's at stake.
It wasn't too long ago we made this trek so we could implement the laws.
And now you're here three years later trying to say don't repeal them.
It's, uh... It's amazing how it works in this system.
[reporter 3] Disabled protestors closed down a street
in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday.
[LeBrecht] It was just a continual struggle
to make sure that the 504 regulations were enforced.
And on top of that, 504 only covered organizations
that were receiving federal money.
[officer over megaphone] If you do not stop, you will be arrested.
[LeBrecht] Most public transportation was not accessible,
employers could still discriminate,
and private businesses didn't have to do anything at all.
We needed a civil rights law of our own.
[reporter] It is the latest struggle for civil rights
and integration into the mainstream of American life.
For more than 40 million Americans
who are physically or mentally disabled, a new era is dawning.
A bill nearing passage in Congress
would mandate equal access for the disabled
to employment, transportation, and public places.
This legislation is a bill of rights for the disabled,
and America will be a better and fairer nation because of it.
[protesters] ADA!
-[woman] When do we want it? -[protesters] Now!
-[woman] What do we want? -[protesters] ADA!
-[woman] When do we want it? -[protesters] Now!
[Jennifer Keelan] I'm gonna get there.
-Gonna get there! -[man 2] Take your time.
[protester 1 chanting] ADA now!
[Keelan] I'll take all night if I have to.
[woman] Whoo!
[crowd cheering and encouraging]
-[protester 1] ADA now! -[grunts]
[protester 2] All right!
[Heumann] We, as disabled persons, are here today
to ensure for the class of disabled Americans,
the ordinary daily life
that non-disabled Americans too often take for granted:
the right to ride a bus or a train,
the right to any job for which we are qualified,
the right to enter any theater, restaurant, or public accommodation.
The passage of this monumental legislation will make it clear
that our government will no longer allow
the largest minority group in the United States
to be denied equal opportunity.
To do any less is immoral.
Mr. President.
[reporter] This morning, Senator Tom Harkin, whose brother is deaf,
delivered a speech in sign language, urging passage of this bill.
But in the end, it was the disabled themselves who made it happen.
[crowd cheering and encouraging]
Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.
God bless you all.
[Denise speaking]
-[Neil] Hey, Angel. -[Angel] Hey, Neil.
[Neil] How are you?
Can we have three mochas?
A mocha?
[Neil] Three.
[Denise speaking]
["Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young playing]
♪ Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain ♪
♪ With the barkers And the colored balloons ♪
♪ You can't be 20 on Sugar Mountain ♪
♪ Though you're thinking that You're leavin' there too soon ♪
♪ You're leavin' there too soon ♪
This whole perimeter...
was where the bunks were.
♪ It's so noisy at the fair But all your friends are there ♪
[Heumann] Oh, my God. I don't recognize this at all.
♪ And your mother and your dad ♪
Where is the camp?
Is it all gone?
[music playing]
♪ Though you're thinking that You're leavin' there too soon ♪
♪ You're leavin' there too soon ♪
[LeBrecht] Coming back to this place as if it was hallowed ground.
And you almost kinda wanna say, just, you know, "Thank you."
[Denise laughs]
[both laugh]
[Woodyard] Is that Denise? Denise, Denise?
-Oh, wow! Lionel! -[Emily laughing]
[Woodyard kisses loudly]
♪ You can hear the words she wrote As you read the hidden note ♪
This was an open field of grass.
And our baseball diamond was here.
[Denise speaking]
-[David] Go! -[Neil] Go!
[narrator] The Jacobsons live in Oakland, California.
Neil is a bank vice president.
Denise is a writer.
[Denise speaking]
-How about... About five kisses? -Oh!
[interviewer] All your life, did you want to be a daddy?
[Neil speaking]
[Denise speaking]
No way.
[Emily] The freedom that this camp provided
definitely influenced the rest of my dad's life.
I mean, him being my dad, I...
He didn't really wanna expose too much of his rebellious,
kind of punk, hippy attitude and everything,
but to connect with that side of him was just really incredible.
["Sugar Mountain" continues playing]
[Denise speaking]
[Allison] I am very proud of everybody.
There needed to be, like, a moment in time
when a spark started the thing to change,
and that's why the Judy Heumanns of the world are so important.
Judy, you were a total pain in the ass,
but I loved you anyway.
[interviewer] Judy, what is the most important
that has happened to you within the last 20 years?
[young Heumann] The most important thing for me has been
the creation of the disabled rights movement,
that I feel we can call an international rights movement.
["Sugar Mountain" continues playing]
-[LeBrecht] Can I give you a hug? -[Heumann] Yes.
[LeBrecht] This was...
This was always the best way for me to hug Nanci.
[Heumann laughs]
-I love you. -I love you, too.
[D'Angelo] Oh, yeah.
I'm mad because I can't see Jimmy, and today is our first-week anniversary.
[all laughing]
["Like a Ship" by Pastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir playing]
[choir] ♪ Just like a ship ♪
[pastor] ♪ Mmm, without a sail ♪
[choir] ♪ Without a sail ♪
[pastor] ♪ Just like a ship ♪
[choir] ♪ Just like a ship ♪
[pastor] ♪ Mmm-hmm, without a sail ♪
[choir] ♪ Without a sail ♪
[pastor] ♪ But I'm not worried Because I know ♪
[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪
[pastor] ♪ I know ♪
[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪
[pastor] ♪ I know we can shake it ♪
[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪
[pastor] ♪ I know we can take it ♪
[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪
[pastor] ♪ I sailed for pleasure ♪
[choir] ♪ I sailed for pleasure ♪
[pastor] ♪ But I found pain ♪
[choir] ♪ But I found pain ♪
[pastor] ♪ I looked for sunshine ♪
-[choir] ♪ I looked for sunshine ♪ -[pastor] ♪ Yes, I did ♪
♪ But I found rain ♪
[choir] ♪ But I found rain ♪
[pastor] ♪ And then I looked For my friends ♪
[choir] ♪ I looked for my friends ♪
[pastor] ♪ They all walked away ♪
[choir] ♪ But they walked away ♪
[pastor] ♪ Through all the sorrows ♪
[choir] ♪ Through all of my sorrows ♪
[pastor] ♪ You can hear me say ♪
[choir] ♪ You can hear me say ♪
[pastor] ♪ Hey, hey, hey, I know ♪
[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪
[pastor] ♪ Just to know one thing But I know ♪
-[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪ -[pastor] ♪ Sure gonna make it ♪
♪ I know we can shake it ♪
-[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪ -[pastor] ♪ 'Cause we are proud people ♪
♪ I know we can take it ♪
[choir] ♪ But I know we can take it ♪
♪ Just like a ship ♪
♪ Without a sail ♪
♪ We did our work today ♪
♪ Just like a ship ♪
♪ Without a sail ♪
♪ We did our work today ♪
♪ Just like a ship ♪
-[pastor] ♪ Without a sail ♪ -[choir] ♪ Without a sail ♪
[pastor] ♪ Just like a ship ♪
[choir] ♪ Just like a ship ♪
[pastor] ♪ Lord knows I don't have a sail ♪