Put your money where your mouth is.
Over at Secret Simon, I found a link to the South Central Farmers, a group of folk trying to save their 14 acres of garden plots the city has decided to sell out from under them. It sounds like the only way they will be able to save their garden plots is to buy the land themselves. Since most of them are rather poor and actually live off what they grow there, that's not going to happen without help.
It's not really clear how much money they need to raise. I read that the city is selling it for $5 million and some change. Five million actually sounds like a bargain for real estate in South L.A. That's about $350,000 an acre. Anyone knowledgeable in L.A. real estate to opine as the the sanity of that figure? In other places it talks about needing $10 million.
Anyway, when I got to their web site, I found a news item saying that Leonardo DiCaprio had joined in the fight.
The farm," says DiCaprio, "holds a remarkable array of biodiversity and, because of its size, functions as a carbon sink, a natural environment that stores more carbon than it releases into the atmosphere, and this helps reduce global warming. We have to start acknowledging that every action counts."1
So Leo held a news conference and has a press item on his web site. How generous of him. There is no mention of Leo actually donating to the cause. If Leo thinks it's so important to save this farm, why doesn't he just pony up? I mean, even if they need $10 million, that's probably less than he made on his last film.
Now, I'm not Leo, nor am I his accountant. Maybe Leo has already spent his millions. Maybe he's saving up for that house in Tuscany. Maybe there are financial considerations for multimillionaires that simple folk like me cannot comprehend. Why doesn't he at least offer to match contributions to the fund? It seems to me his main interest in the plight of the farm is a photo op to show everyone how environmentally conscious he is.