A Plus for Inner-City Kids

Almost lost in the uproar over the Los Angeles City Council’s vote to buy open space in the Santa Monica Mountains from city Police Commissioner Bert Boeckmann is a proposal that deserves support no matter where you come down on the purchase.

That’s to take inner-city kids to the site for nature programs.

One of the arguments against the purchase was that children in park-poor areas of the city would never get to use the already park-rich Santa Monicas. Joe Edmiston, who heads the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, promises to make sure that won’t be the case.

Edmiston aims to add to the existing recreation transit program, which buses children and senior citizens from disadvantaged parts of the city to the mountain parks. One proposal he’s considering would take inner-city kids to the Santa Monicas to ride mountain bikes. Think of it as daytime midnight basketball on wheels.

Like midnight basketball, part of the program’s goal is to take at-risk kids and challenge them, give them something to do that will keep them out of trouble. Equally important is taking kids whose idea of wilderness is an asphalt jungle and introducing them to the alternative.

“In Panorama City,” says Edmiston, “you’re 20 minutes away from a beautiful sycamore canyon, if you only knew where it was.”

Edmiston says he is “absolutely committed” to the idea that these mountains are for everyone: “We have to affirmatively reach out through these kinds of programs to make sure the use is balanced and people feel comfortable in a recreational setting.”

“Comfortable” means not just gaining familiarity with the outdoors but also seeing that other people who look like you are there too.

Taking poor kids to the parks is no substitute for putting parks in poor neighborhoods, and we are sympathetic to the argument that inner-city neighborhoods deserve their share of recreation areas. But poor kids also deserve to share in the bounties of our regional resources. The Santa Monica Mountains are just such a resource. Programs such as this help make sure they truly belong to everyone.