Maxine Waters is mad about Hospital Trauma Closure

That's not unusual for the congresswoman, whose public indignation over matters affecting her South-Central district is legion. But Waters is mad about something she had hoped to largely sit out -- the crisis at Martin Luther King Jr.--Drew Medical Center in Watts/Willowbrook that has been fulminating all year. With the exception of speaking out in support of the hospital's neonatology program, one of several departments slated for closure by accreditation officials last spring, Waters says she has deliberately not involved herself in King-Drew's racially tinged politics. "I staked my fight with King-Drew on neonatology, and that was it," she said from her Washington, D.C., office. "I stood back. I gave people room." But Tuesday's unanimous vote by the Board of Supervisors to close King-Drew's trauma center changed all that. Waters echoed many other local black figures in saying that cutting trauma services in a community that leads the county in shooting-related deaths and injuries is not the way to bring about the hospital's much-needed overhaul. "This brings me back to the fight," says Waters, who plans to challenge the closure in mandated public hearings scheduled in the coming months. "As soon as I can, I'm coming home." [more ]