Oof.

At some po- Yeah, it's a, it's a very overused river, um, and we just need to use it less.

The question is, how do you get to that point? And, and the reality is, about 80% of the water in the basin is used in agriculture, and most of that water is used to grow, uh, crops for cattle, cattle feed.

And so the thought is, um, while that's a fair, legitimate use of water, um, do we really need to be using that much water to grow that much cattle feed? And so the thought is, if, if, if that's not the, what we n- should be doing, then how do we transition away from that? Because, you know, that's, that's not only some, l- the livelihood of a lot of people, but that's the livelihood of a lot of rural communities.

And so you just don't wanna do these changes in a abrupt manner, but it's gonna have to happen.

Are the fights between the states now over?

[laughs] No.

Uh, and that's why I didn't call this really, really good news for Colorado, in that, um, what's been proposed requires very significant, very deep cuts to water use in Arizona.

So talk a little bit about the mentor youth events and how you work in that space.

Really started out when I was at Gary Comer Youth Center, I was the director of engagement marketing communications, and I would ride my bike around the neighborhood to meet the most active neighbors, those that are working on their lawn, those in the neighborhood clubs.

And I would be asking them, what do they need? What are they interested in? And there was always a sense of, you know, we want to help the young people in our community.

This is the root of our challenges is getting the young people to be able to have activities that they can do and feel good about and So basically, when I connected with an organization called Pigment, a black fine art magazine, they had a whole network of artists that they were working with who wanted to have an impact on young people.

So it's every artist that I meet, especially artists of color, want to help skill up and bring others to their experience.

They know that they didn't have those guides, those mentors, those opportunities.

They had to find them first.

Tell a little bit about his foundation and what you guys are doing to lift youth up.