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“When We Are Found” at Penumbra Is a Soul-Stirring Fable of Black Queer Love and Ancestral Memory

Schlitz, Esq

There are some stories that do more than unfold, they awaken. This past weekend, I sat in the Penumbra Theater and felt something ancient and sacred rise up through the stage, wrap itself around the audience, and whisper: remember us. That’s the power of When We Are Found, the haunting and poetic world premiere by playwright Donja R. Love, directed with stunning precision and grace by Lamar Perry.

Set against the looming shadow of the transatlantic slave trade, the play begins with an intimate portrayal of two men in love, existing in harmony on the shores of West Africa. A portrayal that feels revolutionary in its simplicity and honesty. Then, suddenly, the sky darkens. Rain pours. Lightning cracks. Screams pierce the night. One is taken. One is left behind. From there, we are swept into a journey across water, memory, and time itself, as The Seeker, played with aching depth by Halin Moss, builds a boat and rows across the Atlan

tic in search of the one he loves.

This is not a literal story. It is mythic, spiritual, a fable. But like all the best fables, it tells a truth that lives deep in the bones. Along the way, The Seeker encounters a talking fish, a mournful moon, an exhausted night, and a knowing sun. Each a personification of both nature and ancestral presence, guiding him, challenging him, revealing him to himself.

There were moments during the play when I felt breathless. The lighting and sound design created storms that rattled the seats. The voices of the ancestors, screaming from the decks of a slave ship, moaning from the sea floor, were not distant echoes but present and immediate. The audience was not just watching grief; we were being asked to hold it. And yet, this is a play about more than sorrow. It is about love, Black love, queer love, eternal love, and the ways it resists erasure. It’s about how love fuels survival, how memory becomes a form of resistance, and how imagination makes healing possible. As the playwright Donja R. Love wrote in their playbill letter, this story asks: How far will you go to find the one(s) you love? The

answer, it seems, is as far as the ocean will take you, and then beyond. By the end, time collapses. The two lovers are

On a modern beach, one is looking for a lost ring, the other offers help. They are strangers once again, or maybe not strangers at all. They decide to share cake, to spend time, to begin something. What was torn apart centuries ago begins, quietly, to mend.

Anthony Adu’s performance as Man 1 and the other shifting roles - the fish, the sun, the moon - is nothing short of masterful. His presence on stage is both commanding and tender, shifting seamlessly between humor, gravity, and divinity. The chemistry between Adu and Moss carries the emotional weight of the piece, one built not on spectacle, but on the raw, trembling faith that love endures.

Penumbra’s legacy as a home for transformative Black art is honored and expanded in this production. In a time when stories of Black and queer joy are still rare on mainstream stages, When We Are Found dares to imagine a world where those lives are not just present but central, divine, and unbreakable. This play is a call to memory and a call to the future, a prayer whispered across time. It asks us to honor the truth that Black queer people have always existed, always loved, always resisted. And it invites us, gently but insistently, to believe in a world where we are not lost to history - but found, again and

Governor Tim Walz last week signed seven bills into law.

Chapter 6, House File 1058 amends the jurisdiction of the North Koochiching sanitary sewer board.

Chapter 7, House File 124 permits certain public safety officers, state agencies, and political subdivisions to receive gifts that honor or commemorate a public safety officer related to a line of duty death. It authorizes certain local governments to expend money for a funeral or memorial and for travel and participation costs for national memorial events

for fallen public safety officers. The bill requires such entities to report any gifts to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and the legislature.

Chapter 9, House File 1792 updates terms, definitions, and notices for contracts for deed.

Chapter 10, House File 2184 exempts the Office of Ombudsperson for American Indian Families from paying court fee requirements in certain cases, such as ones related to human services matters, children and child custody matters, marriage dissolution, and

guardianship of a minor or incapacitated person.

Chapter 11, House File 747 makes several changes to Chapter 302A, the Minnesota Business Corporation Act. The bill addresses procedures in the event of an emergency, sets limitations on a board’s authority to manage a corporation, and defines several new terms.

Chapter 12, House File 129 requires the state’s Director of Child Sex Trafficking Prevention to submit a biennial report to the legislature and the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Health evaluat-

ing the Safe Harbor program. Chapter 13, House File 1346 enforces training requirements for mandated reporters to better identify signs of child abuse. The bill requires that at least half of mandated reporter training is focused on the identification of suspected maltreatment of minors. The bill also enforces that the training includes input from professionals with specialized knowledge related to maltreatment, including medical professionals, attorneys, mental health professionals, and social workers.

By Frank Erickson Editorial Writer

Photo by postbulletin.com

Tim Walz

Credit - Penumbra

Standoff over hourly, temporary school worker benefits could imperil education funding bill

By Brian Basham

An incomplete grade appears likely when it comes to the already late omnibus education finance bill. A proposal has been introduced more than two weeks past the committee deadline, but a single provision could derail the entire package.

The House Education Finance Committee received a walkthrough of HF1388, as amended, Monday, took public testimony and laid the bill over for future consideration.

Sponsored by Rep. Cheryl Youakim (DFL-Hopkins), the bill would provide a $44.3 million increase over February forecast base for a total budget of almost $25.77 billion in the 2026-27 biennium. It would also make cuts in several areas.

“What we were able to do with this bill is to provide some flexibility and funding streams that the districts have been asking for, while protecting the integrity of what the funding streams were intended to be used for,” said Youakim, who co-chairs the committee with Rep. Ron Kresha (R-Little Falls).

“[The bill] reflects a compromise that a dynamic of

a tied House required for us to fund our schools.”

Kresha said the bill will allow flexibility for schools to create more jobs for teachers.

“This bill is about local control, funding flexibility and relief from mandates,” he said. “I believe that we still need a strong position for our workers, and putting the money in the basic supplemental aid and giving the districts the ability to extend those jobs and enhance those jobs and find ways for recruitment retention is very valuable.”

Unemployment insurance

A main sticking point between the parties remains: summer unemployment insurance for hourly and temporary school employees.

The bill would fund the program with a one-time $30 million emergency appropriation in fiscal year 2026. School districts would need to provide the funding one year later before the program is eliminated for the 2028-29 school year.

Estimated unemployment aid disbursements for fiscal years 2024 and 2025 are $102 million of the original $135 million allocated for the program. That leaves $33 million in the fund for fiscal year

Champion stated. “That work ended on October 7, 2022.”

2026 when estimates for summer-term unemployment insurance costs are $63 million.

Proponents said school districts can’t afford the cost of unemployment insurance without state aid or making cuts elsewhere.

Cathy Briggs, a bus driver for the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district, told the committee, “We fought for more than 20 years to win the same basic economic security that every other worker in the state has. The repeal of unemployment in this bill is a betrayal of low-wage workers across the state.” An amendment that

more than $47 million in the 2028-29 biennium. Dollars are used to fund media specialist salaries; electronic, computer and audio-visual equipment; IT infrastructure and digital tools; electronic and material resources; and furniture, equipment and supplies.

concluded months before either Senate File 2970 in 2023 or its 2025 successor were introduced.

“I never received any funds at any time for my representation and had no expectation of receiving any money,”

Zoll reinforced the distinction: “There were no outstanding bills, no financial interest. Where there is no financial interest, there can be no conflict.” He cited Minnesota Statute 10A.07, which governs conflicts of interest for public officials.

Still, some critics outside the hearing room argue that the situation warranted greater trans-

parency. As reported by the Star Tribune, concerns have surfaced over Champion’s decision not to disclose his previous legal ties to Reverend McAfee when carrying legislation that directly benefited 21 Days of Peace. While the legal work was unpaid and completed before the bills were introduced, the ongoing funding tied to McAfee’s initiative has fueled debate over where to draw ethical lines for public officials who remain active in

would continue the unemployment insurance for hourly workers failed along party lines. DFLers said they aren’t supportive of an omnibus bill with the cut to unemployment insurance.

“The hourly workers in our schools play a pivotal role in our students’ education and deserve the same benefits as other hourly workers across the state,” Youakim said. “It is my hope that we can find a way to retain that unemployment aid going forward.”

School library aid

School library aid would be cut $44.96 million in the 2026-27 biennium and

their communities. The hearing highlighted a broader issue: How can part-time lawmakers with professional backgrounds serve their communities without fear of ethical scrutiny?

“If there’s a nonprofit, especially a church, that asks me a legal question and I can answer, I do,” Champion said. “That’s what being a member of the community is all about.”

Senator Eric Matthews acknowledged the challenge, noting, “There’s always room for improvement” in how Minnesota’s ethics rules are applied.

While the state school librarian won’t be eliminated, the $260,000 state funding for the position in the 2026-27 and 2028-29 biennia would be cut, leaving the Department of Education to pay for the position. Going against the governor In his education finance proposal, Gov. Tim Walz has called for cutting both nonpublic pupil transportation aid and nonpublic pupil aid funding for an estimated savings of about $110 million in the 202627 biennium and $119 million in the 2028-29 biennium. Both programs remain funded in the proposed omnibus education finance bill. Anita Davis, principal at Holy Trinity Catholic School, said 68% of her students rely on

ition assistance, making trans

portation and pupil aid funding essential. “It sends a clear mes

sage that all Minnesota students matter regardless of their school choice,” she said. “This funding

Still, Champion remained resolute. “My financial position did not change. I didn’t expect it to. Because what I do is respond to my community, like other senators, like other part-timers.”

Some subcommittee members questioned whether the advisory opinion, requested after the bill passed had met procedural standards. Senate counsel clarified that previous opinions, such as a 2008 request from Senator Julianne Ortman, were also retrospective in nature.

“This committee ex-

ists to guide us,” Champion emphasized. “If lawyers are encouraged to do pro bono work, and we are, we need clarity that doing the right thing doesn’t put us at risk.” A supporter agreed saying the Champion’s well prepared defense, framed with transparency and community focus, stands as a reminder of what public service can look like when rooted in care, not personal gain.

community development mortgage loan officer at Old National Bank, helps first-time homeowners, especially those in underserved communities, secure financing and build longterm equity.

“We have to break the cycle of generational renting,” Bland asserted. “With our grant program, buyers can access up to $15,000 toward a down payment in certain areas. We also accept credit scores as low as 600 and offer loans without private mortgage insurance.”

She emphasized that wealth, like legacy, is not onedimensional. “It’s not just about money. Wealth is freedom, health, stability. It’s owning something you can pass down, whether it’s a home or a story.” The synergy between Nyaluza’s cultural craftsmanship and Bland’s practical community investment was electric. “We’re both working to build futures,” Bland said. “One bag, one home, one

family at a time.” Their conversation reached poetic resonance when Nyaluza reflected on how African spirituality influences his dreams and design choices.

“This isn’t just fashion; it’s healing. I design for my ancestors, and for those who will come after me.” The episode closed with reflections on innovation, identity, and collective power. Ewart reminded listeners, “We’ve always banked, through community, through trust. We just need to remember who we are and that we have everything we need already.”

The GO# for this incident is 25-112008

Anyone with information is

you have to get your facts so that you’re not focusing on personality, but policy and the real problems. And second of all, you have to make sure, as we did on Ash Wednesday, that your adversary actually knows what’s bothering you. You don’t just start doing things,” Rev. Barber said as he spoke after his protest in the U.S. Capitol. Members of the U.S. Capitol Police closed

encouraged email policetips@ minneapolismn.gov or leave a voicemail at 612-673-5845. Individuals who wish to provide information anonymously are encouraged to call CrimeStoppers at 1-800222-TIPS (8477). Tips may be submitted electronically at

off the Capitol Rotunda and hurriedly told associates with him to exit as Barber and others read scripture and prayed in the Rotunda near a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Their effort to stop over one trillion in cuts in the budget is likely to be unsuccessful. “You actually have to have the kind of redemptive hope that you believe if you show the folk the fact they would change, and you can’t be frivolous about that they may not but you have to believe in that possibility, because if you give up on humanity, then you’re

www.CrimeStoppesMN.org. All Tips provided to CrimeStoppers are anonymous and persons providing information leading to an arrest and conviction may be eligible for a financial reward.

doing the same thing they’re doing, part of what It means to be in a nonviolent movement is that if I didn’t believe in the possibility of my worst enemy becoming my best friend, I’d stop preaching. I wouldn’t put on robes and crosses and stuff. Wouldn’t be any need. And you say you’re naive,” Rev. Barber added. T Congress is in markups and budget talks as the details on the final proposals of what will be defunded slowly emerge.

Photo by Andrew VonBank

The House Education Finance Committee listens April 28 as nonpartisan fiscal staff walk through the omnibus education budget bill

Black WWII Battalion finally honored

Seventy-nine years after their unprecedented service in World War II, the Black women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion — the only all-Black Women’s Army Corps unit to serve overseas during the war — have finally received one of the nation’s highest honors two years after then-President Joe Biden signed a proclamation clearing the way for the award. The heroes will receive the Congressional Gold Medal. “These heroes deserve their dues,” Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin said.

“And I am so glad their story is being told.”

Formed in 1944 as pressure grew to include Black women in overseas military operations, the 6888th was tasked with solving a massive wartime mail crisis. More than 7 million U.S. troops, Red Cross workers, and government personnel stationed in Europe were relying on mail to stay connected with loved ones back home. By early 1945, the Army estimated a backlog of roughly 17 million pieces of undelivered mail— some dating back years. The Army’s solution was a newly created battalion of about 850 Black women led by Maj. Charity Adams, who would later become the highest-ranking Black woman in the Army during the war. The unit deployed to England in February 1945 and immediately went to work in

Birmingham, sorting an estimated 65,000 pieces of mail per shift around the clock, using a system of locator cards to track service members and their units.

“They expected we were gonna be there about two or three months trying to get it straightened out,” recalled retired Maj. Fannie Griffin McClendon is one of only two surviving members. “Well, I think in about a month, month and a half, we had it all straightened out and going in the right direction.”

By the time they finished the job in half the projected time, they had cleared the backlog and restored morale to soldiers desperate for word from home. The women then deployed to Rouen, France, and later to Paris, where they continued their mission while also investigating widespread mail theft and dealing with racism, sexism, and the trauma of burying fellow soldiers killed in a tragic vehicle accident — funerals they paid for themselves when the War Department refused.

Despite their success and high praise from fellow service members, the women of the 6888th returned to a country still unwilling to properly acknowledge their service. They received standard medals issued to most who served, but no special commendation. That began to change in the 1980s as their story slowly resurfaced through reunions, books, museum exhibits, and documentaries. A monu-

ment was erected in their honor in 2018 at Fort Leavenworth, and they received the Meritorious Unit Commendation in 2019. In 2022, Congress voted unanimously — 422-0 — to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the unit. Biden signed the bipartisan bill the following year. “That really shows how long this recognition took,” said Kim Guise, senior curator at the National WWII Museum. “It is really important to recognize the accomplishments of these women and what they went through to serve their country in wartime.”

The medal is a posthumous tribute for most of the battalion’s 855 members. Only two are still alive today, including McClendon, who later joined the Air Force after military integration and became the first woman to command an all-male Strategic Air Command squadron. In addition to the medal and previous honors, their story is now part of popular culture. Netflix has a feature film titled The Six Triple Eight, directed by Tyler Perry and starring Kerry Washington. “They kept hollering about wanting us to go overseas,” McClendon said. “So I guess they found something for us to do: take care of the mail. And there was an awful lot of mail.” “It’s overwhelming,” she added. “It’s something I never even thought about.”

In the memory of George Floyd, we stand united in support of black and local community businesses impacted by the aftermath. We're dedicated to fostering dialogue and action.

Join us as we uplift and empower those affected, advocating for lasting change and resilience. Together, we amplify strength, resilience, and unity.

Date: May 19-23, 2025

Photo by Wikimedia Commons / Photo by United States Army Signal Corps

Second Lt. Freda le Beau serving Major Charity Adams a soda at the opening of the battalion’s snack bar in Rouen, France.

Kandis Williams explores topics of race through a multitude of mediums at Walker exhibit

By Sheila Regan, MINNPOST

With collage, sculptural and video installations, Kandis Williams interrogates systems of power in an exhibition now on view at the Walker Art Center – the artist’s first solo museum show.

“A Surface,” curated by Walker assistant curator Taylor Jasper with curatorial fellow Laurel Rand-Lewis, travels through American filmmaking, dance and theater history, Greek mythology and racialized violence, documenting control in visual forms and exploring pathways toward liberation.

For her mixed-media collage work, Williams works by hand – as opposed to digital – in meticulous layers. In some works she adds watercolor or ink. Others seem to move depending on the viewer’s position because they are made with stickers on mirror glass. Some of her collages are densely packed, while others employ white space to allow her formations to breathe.

Often, she’s wrestling with images from pop culture, as well as the more obscure and marginal references that create the work of art.

“I think about the accumulation of images and iconicity and symbolism and how they’re never just one image,” Williams told me when I met her in the museum. “I think a lot about what images go into what we consider to be exemplar or ideal – how we situate the collected image into one iconographic expression.”

In “Atomic Karen,” (2021) Williams juxtaposes images of atomic bombs with different iterations of the goddess Columbia, who, before she became the poster girl for Columbia pictures, was often portrayed as Indigenous in the early engravings from the 17th century.

The piece reflects a kind of visual history of the iconography as it layers different historic images that, when layered together, become recognizable as a symbol that today we see as a white woman.

The earlier representations reflected the figure of Columbia as a darker-skinned woman with dress emblematic of a fictional idea of indigeneity. Williams takes a deconstructionist approach, tracking the history of a particular language vocabulary as a way to reveal both its nuances and its hidden sharp edges.

The piece grapples with whiteness as a visual language – one that’s not necessarily static but that has shifted and changed over time and in so doing, become codified and internalized.

In her essay about the piece in the exhibition catalog, Jasper writes about the collage’s play on the notion of “Karen,” a word that references white female entitlement, and Williams’ fusion of that with images of destruction.

“Through this juxtaposition, (Williams) critiques how systemic structures of whiteness can act as an overwhelming force, often unseen but omnipresent, with far-reaching consequences,” Jasper writes.

Williams also explores the pervasiveness of whiteness in “Mothers and Sisters …” (2017). The collage juxtaposes images of anorexia porn with modern-day philanthropists like Bill Gates and Richard Branson as well as American industrials that engaged in the slave economy. She also layers in images of the First Bank of

Philadelphia, an institution that helped expand the institution of slavery, as well as white su-

They also contrast different styles as a way to illuminate ways that white su-

A Surface” travels through American filmmaking, dance and theater history, Greek mythology and racialized violence.

premacists marching in Charlottesville, Va. at the bottom of the collage.

Williams told me she became horrified when she learned about anorexic porn when she was in college. Hailing from Baltimore, Williams didn’t have thinness so much in her culture growing up. In the pornographic images she encountered, she saw how models would show markers of losing weight by the bulge or their spine or how much space lay between their two fingers as they wrapped around their wrist.

“It’s about watching them disintegrate,” she said. Williams taps into the irony of how the white female ideal –when taken to its furthest extreme – is like those images of extreme poverty.

“You create the world that creates this problem, and then figure out the language of solution that stabilizes the problem,” Williams said. “The true love object of these men is just a kind of unchecked growth.”

In the second gallery of the exhibition, Williams turns her eye toward movement.

Williams told me that while not a dancer herself, she’s long been interested in the form. Growning up in Baltimore, which has its own specific cultural and regional dances, dance became a way to communicate and move through the world.

“I feel like it’s always been a language I think around and in and through,” she said.

Williams’ dance collage works layer in photographs from books and magazines and delve into questions of control, appropriation, and racism in western dance forms.

premacy has lived inside dance traditions for centuries. In “A Lift and a Kick Conflated” (2021), Williams creates a kind of diagram with cut-out bodies. At the top, she places two white balletic figures with the female figure’s pelvis perfectly straight, her leg kicked up and her arm in a salute. Below that are several images of a Black dancer in different poses. The Black dancer’s hips and core employ a much freer range of motion than the ballet figures.

Then in the center of the diagram, a timid-seeming Mary Wigman – the German expressionist dancer who operated her school and company under the Nazi regime – stands with her hands clasped together.

Williams pieces the figures together in such a way that they create a kind of dancing body as a group. In creating the motion of dance with her collage, she articulates ways western forms of dance have used a highly regimented form as a way to express a narrative of both class and race.

Williams also employs faux plants as a point of inquiry. Creating sculptural plants with images of Black laborers, chain gangs, vintage porn and Uruguayan tango, the work looks to the history of exploitation of Black bodies as well as the ways humans have manipulated and even personified plants.

Central to this section is a video called “Annexation Tango” (2020), where a Black dancer performs a movement mixing tango, voguing and other contemporary forms of dance that have often been appropriated and then erased their

African roots. Juxtaposed with the dancer are historical images of slavery and footage of prison farms, linking appropriation to America’s most violent past.

In the last section of the exhibition, Williams takes a kind of collage approach to her video installation. For “The Death of A,” she draws on Ar-

thur Miller’s play, “Death of a Salesman.”

“Death of A” re-centers the play around a Black man portrayed by actor Jerod Haynes. Haynes performs a soliloquy in the piece, which is layered with text and archival