Founding Moments and Social Movements

This week, we watched the documentary Crip Camp which described a few founding events in the disability rights movement. It described not only the actual event of "Crip Camp", but many other activism events (sit-ins, protests, etc.) that also were responsible for igniting and accelerating the movement. An important point that was also mentioned is how the larger Civil Rights movement at the time helped support many other movements (because after all, civil rights are important for every single person no matter race, gender, ability, etc.) For example, many other social movements helped bring supplies to the disabled activists at one of their protests.

In my movement, I focused a lot on learning about these founding events that helped spark the movement. In the early history of almost every activism/social movement, there was some founding event (or a few of them) that helped it gain traction and gather support and media attention. After all, you need people to make up a movement. I looked a lot at the impact of Rachel Carson's novel Silent Spring. Her book put the issues of sustainability and the human impact on the environment in many people's minds. This novel also encouraged some of the first environmental legislation to be passed. Her bravery in speaking out has inspired many of the newer activists in the movement. Here is the link I posted: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring