Social Work

Members of Congress who believe the only successful approach to crime is through law enforcement recently have made disparaging remarks about social workers.

This may enhance their position politically, but it demeans an honorable profession.

Law-enforcement agencies have long maintained that successful crime control and prevention programs require a total community effort, including not only police but also social workers, educators, clergy, businesses, families, health-care professionals and members of the community. Joint police-social work interventions occur daily in this country.

We work with people in their own environments. Many of our clients suffer from violence and injustice -- rape, robbery, aggravated assault, alcohol-related injuries, child abuse and neglect, etc.

As social workers, we experience the frustration of our clients as we work to foster good health and maximum self-determination on their part. We fight for better social supports and alternatives to violence.

We recognize the need to develop more sophisticated systems to make communities more supportive. We know that when people get decent housing, health care, education and jobs their self-esteem rises, they become contributing members of society and crime diminishes.

We work with legislators to develop policies that ensure adequate funding is available so that people obtain basic services during every phase of the life cycle, from prenatal care through old age.

Our society pays a heavy toll in ill health, long-term suffering and financial loss from the trauma of violence and crime. We must go to the root causes and develop a multiplicity of approaches to deal with an extremely complex problem.

We need a crime bill that unites Americans through law enforcement, prevention and rehabilitation, and which uses the expertise of all professions, including police officers and social workers. We're all in this together.

Moya Atkinson

Baltimore

The writer is executive director of the Maryland chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

DiPietro and His Reputation

Following the death of former Baltimore City Council member Mimi DiPietro, Sun columnist Roger Simon wrote that Mr. DiPietro's racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic use of language was not "colorful" but part of a "poison that pollutes our society" and should be reported and remembered that way.

Sun columnist Michael Olesker responded the next day that, in effect, Mr. Simon should lighten up because Mr. DiPietro was "limited in education, but large in heart . . . given to some old, coarse language but . . . trying to make the city work for everyone."

I'm afraid that life is more complicated than Mr. Olesker would like us to believe.

The general perception, not disputed here, is that Mr. DiPietro worked effectively in response to his constituents' complaints about city services, but that he was not particularly concerned as a legislator about the future of the city as a whole. Whether Mr. DiPietro personally harbored the social prejudices of which Mr. Simon accuses him and Mr. Olesker excuses him, I can only guess. But I know that they are endemic throughout our society, Mr. DiPietro's East Baltimore not excluded. And they hurt people seriously.

The failure of so many of our community's leaders, including City Council members and columnists, to confront those prejudices legitimizes them and contributes to their persistence. Such prejudices hurt not only those against whom they are targeted but those who hold them. Mr. DiPietro's constituents have many real problems that require political solutions. But bigoted thinking sidetracks many of us from addressing those problems constructively.

The message I take from the memory of Mr. DiPietro is that elected officials should work hard for their constituents, just as so many people remember him doing. But we will all be better off when the social prejudices that his use of language reflected are widely acknowledged and repudiated.

Robert A. Seidel

Baltimore

I wish to congratulate Roger Simon on his column regarding the late Mimi DiPietro. No one else at the Sun -- including Michael Olesker -- has done anything other than make passing reference to this man's obvious disrespect for large segments of this society. Rather, they have fallen all over themselves being reverent. Mr. DiPietro's wife's comments about his loving everybody can be accepted as the right of a widow. Any reasonable person can respect that. But Mr. Simon's article reminds us that the man was quite capable of being sexist, homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic.

As Mr. Simon states in his first sentence, "Nothing enhances your reputation like dying." The Sun has as a whole done an excellent job in proving this statement. Its one act of objectivity was to print Roger Simon's column.

Thomas J. Myers

Baltimore

Malpractice reform

We have been inundated lately with news of health care reform proposals. It is curious to me that missing from many of these proposals is the need for meaningful medical malpractice reform.

The average citizen has no idea of the number of vexatious actions brought against health care providers. One important element that needs to be included in any reform plan is meaningful capitation of damages be awarded to plaintiff's in a medical malpractice actions.

This would reduce the costly practice of defensive medicine that health care providers often feel is the only way to assure they will be able to successfully defend themselves in court if they are sued.

The trial lawyers' lobby has thus far been successful in keeping malpractice reform to a minimum in the bills being proposed in Congress. The public must tell its elected representatives to include real malpractice reform and not just token change.

Craig F. Rosendale

Walkersville

Losing the Mojave

For several years, the Congress has been considering legislation that would create our 52nd national park -- the Mojave National Park in California's fragile desert. The Mojave is to the desert what Yellowstone is to the Northern Rockies and what the Great Smokies are to the Appalachians. All are natural gems that Americans should protect for posterity.

Sadly, for its selfish interest in wanting to ensure trophy hunting opportunities in the desert, the National Rifle Association has recently attacked the Mojave National Park legislation and successfully advanced a devastating amendment to downgrade the park to a hunting preserve.

Maryland Reps. Roscoe Bartlett and Helen Delich Bentley joined a majority of the House of Representatives and stole this park from the public and delivered it to the NRA.

Because of the odd designation of the area as a hunting preserve, Americans will bypass the Mojave instead of stopping to see the magnificent desert. Wildlife, such as the rare bighorn sheep, will be too skittish to be seen because they will be hunted and tourists will be too wary of the year-round hunting to hike in the desert.

At a time when many of our national parks are overcrowded and the need for protected recreational lands and true wildlife sanctuaries is great, Reps. Bartlett and Bentley voted to deny the public a new national park. Even the fact that it will cost more for the federal government to manage a preserve than a national park -- approximately $500,000 a year billed to the taxpayers -- did not sway them.

While a minority of trophy hunters won this vote, it is the majority of Americans who lost.

Wayne Pacelle

Washington D.C.

The writer is the vice-president for government affairs of the Humane Society of the United States.

What Time Is It?

In newspaper headlines, I read: "Population Threatens World's Food Supply" . . . "Mitchell Offers Universal Health Coverage Bill" . . . "Republicans Intend Filibuster of Mitchell Plan" . . .

The nation should be reassured to know that the United States Senate, with deliberative wisdom, confronts the 21st century by debating a 20th century problem under 19th century rules.

Quentin D. Davis

Aberdeen

Complex Issue

Letter writer Philip R. Manger (August 14) seems to accept the pro-life definition that "unborn children" ("fetuses" to the pro-choice activists) "are people, human beings just like us with the same human rights the rest of us enjoy" and infers that abortionists commit "murder" and should pay for such a criminal act.

Mr. Manger was "sickened" by the technical paper published by the National Abortion Federation which apparently detailed a late second trimester abortion technique called "dilation and extraction" apparently involving "brains [being] sucked out of a live baby's skull" to facilitate removal of the child's body.

I would ask Mr. Manger and other pro-lifers whether they are not angered and perhaps sickened by the thought of the numbers (presumably in the tens of thousands each year) of abusive pregnancies thrust upon our society. Abuse pregnancies result from: chemically addicted parents, HIV positive parents, sexually active teen-agers, non-recovering alcoholic parents, single parents on welfare and poverty stricken parents who insist on continuing the reproductive process.

Should not most of these pregnancies be considered criminal acts particularly if permitted to go to term? Are these unborn not already abused and do they really have "the same human rights the rest of us enjoy" as pro-lifers would have us believe?

I submit that such pregnancies as described above are indeed criminal for what they perpetrate upon the unborn aside from their impact upon society. I further submit that categorizing abortionists (those who actually perform the abortion and those who support them) as "murderers" in the same context as Hitler and Stalin is an emotional utterance resulting from both ignorance and insensitivity.

In closing, I would suggest that the issue of abortion is significantly more complex than the simple definition posed by pro-life advocates. I would also suggest that protest conducted at abortion clinics (although that right should not be denied) provide for little effect other than emotional display. What does matter is that the sociological ills of today do not continue to be transposed exponentially to tomorrow's society by condoning those active reproductive processes certain critical segments of our society promote today.

Sy Steinberg

Baltimore