Foster Care Needs Our Active Support

I did as you requested and called my county supervisor to demand a complete overhaul of the L.A. County foster care system (“It Happened in Los Angeles,” editorial, Nov. 12). I doubt my phone call will make a difference. Of course, if hundreds of thousands of Angelenos did what I did, then we might see an actual shift.

It isn’t that the supervisors lack the passion for our children’s welfare. It’s that we, as a community, lack passion for it. We read of Danzel Bailey’s death under the supervision of the county, we shake our heads, we might even weep. Yet our supervisors are held to such little account for their actions--or inactions. They are assured reelection term after term.

If Sept. 11 is to have any meaning we must begin to act collectively against the outrages that affect our children all day, every day, in Greater Los Angeles and other U.S. cities. While we focus on homeland security, perhaps we could spend some time pondering the terror-filled lives of so many of our children in the mean streets of poverty. Until then, our efforts to secure children from terror overseas carry a dismal lack of moral authority.

Sydney Weisman

Los Angeles