Empowering the local workforce

We’ve invested nearly $100 million in workforce development. Alongside hundreds of other employers and community partners, we’re increasing the talent pipeline by helping our neighbors get the skills and experience to build careers that support families and fuel our economy.

Here in the Twin Cities, we’re investing in our community by investing in people’s futures. I’m proud of the work we’re doing to help train and identify talent for in-demand careers by contributing to local initiatives through employer and academic partners.

Lucas Giambelluca President, Bank of America Twin Cities

Learn more at bankofamerica.com/twincities

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Obituary: “Queen Mother” Maxine Sykes McFarlane

Love in action speaks louder than words - Pass it on! -

”Queen Mother” Maxine Sykes McFarlane, 97, joined the Ancestors on Thursday, June 22, 2023, while in hospice care at Allina Mercy Hospital in Fridley, MN. She was preceded by her husband, Alvin A. McFarlane Sr., and two daughters, Kathleen McFarlaneDavis and Julitta McFarlaneShanklin. She is also preceded by 4 sisters and 2 brothers, and her parents and grandparents.

Queen Mother McFarlane was born on March 23, 1926 to Allen Sykes, and Martha Harrison Sykes in Sunflower, Mississippi. She married Cuban-Jamaican immigrant Alvin McFarlane in Kansas City, Missouri, at the end of WWII.

Mother of 12 biological children, but motherfigure to hundreds more, Queen Mother McFarlane delivered a distinguished career of service based in faith traditions that guided leadership in community and civic engagement, entrepreneurship, and social action.

She was an Evangelist Missionary in the Church of God in Christ, working under jurisdictional leaders including Bishop V.M. Barker, pastor of Barker Temple COGIC, and his successors, Bishop E. Harris Moore, and Bishop John Mark Johnson, pastor of Barker Memorial Cathedral of Praise, COGIC.

Early in her career, she and her husband owned and operated a neighborhood grocery store in the 28th & Brooklyn neighborhood in Kansas City. The family moved to Worthington, MN in 1965 due to Al McFarlane’s job relocation at Armour’s Meat Packing Company. In Worthington, Queen Mother McFarlane became active in Minnesota’s Human Rights Commission and the Minnesota Association for Mental Health beginning a phase of civic engagement that characterized her life work as a human rights activist and advocate. In 1969 she founded the Action Committee for Social Change (ACSC). When job opportunities brought the family back to Kansas City in 1975, ACSC partnered with Harvesters to deliver food supplies and hold necessities to families and churches throughout the Kansas City Metropolitan area. The organization created and operated a food pantry at Barker Temple, 1709 Highland in Kansas City. ACSC echoed the ground-breaking communitybuilding work of her nephew, Bernard Powell, and his work in a pioneering agency and collaborative, Social Action Committee of 20 (SAC-20). SAC-20 launched business and workforce development programs as well as neighborhood safety and beautification initiatives. Powell was assassinated in 1979.

Queen Mother McFarlane and ACSC pivoted to undertake the mission of preserving the public memory of Bernard Powell and launched a multi-year campaign to build a life-size statue of the slain leader, centered in a fountain, symbolizing the eternal, regenerative work Powell and our community at large have undertaken to advance the cause of freedom and promise of democracy in this country and the world.

Queen Mother McFarlane’s signature song of praise was the instructional hymn, “Pass It On”. Her performance of the song in churches, community events and gatherings, and even on Reggae and Gospel music stages, reminded audiences of the obligation to be community and to build community by sharing “the experience” of community by passing it on, one person at a

Episcopalians of color assemble at ‘Why Serve’ to learn about vocational opportunities, build relationships

By Shireen Korkzan

Dozens of Episcopalians of color gathered June 22-25 at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, to learn about ministry opportunities at various levels in The Episcopal Church and how to lead congregations in a tech-forward future.

The Episcopal Church’s department of Ethnic Ministries hosted Why Serve, which was attended by lay Asian, Black, Indigenous and Latino Episcopalians who are currently discerning whether to pursue lay or ordained leadership roles. The event consisted of various workshops and presentations by missioners of African Descent, Asiamerica, Indigenous and Latino/Hispanic ministries addressing what the discernment process entails and the differences between lay and ordained ministries.

The Rev. Ronald Byrd, missioner for African Descent Ministries and a member of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s staff, told Episcopal News Service that Why Serve changes its curriculum every year based on which missioner is selected to run the program.

“People of color have been marginalized in The Episcopal Church and have not had opportunities for access to leadership positions in the church,” he said.

“Why Serve was designed to provide a pathway for learning for discernment and about opportunities to serve God and God’s people.”

The Rev. Anthony Guillen, missioner for Latino/ Hispanic Ministries, told ENS he believes The Episcopal Church needs to pay attention to the lack of ethnic vocations currently available to persons of color.

“There are few vocations overall, and I think The Episcopal Church needs to ask itself why and to have conversations with [Episcopalians of color] so that we can do something about it together,” he said. “Why Serve provides the opportunity for individuals from different backgrounds to come together in this community and to explore their sense of calling.”

People of color make up 10% of The Episcopal Church’s total membership, according to data from the Pew Research Center, and many of them have openly expressed experiences of racism and microaggressions by white Episcopalians despite the church’s ongoing strides toward systemic racial reconciliation.

Several Why Serve attendees shared their experiences of microaggressions by white Episcopalians during workshops — for example, Guillen shared a story of when he was ignored by white clergy at a parish he was visiting until they saw his senior title listed in a guest registry he signed.

The University of the South, established in 1857 with the intent to support a slaveholding society, is actively reconciling with its racist history. Those efforts include the removal of Confederate memorials on campus and granting generous financial aid packages to students of color. A portion of the Trail of Tears — a network of routes where tens of thousands of members of Indigenous Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole tribes were violently

The moment when state Senator Bobby Joe Champion was sworn in as president of the Minnesota Senate on January 3, 2023 was historic, as he became the first Black person to assume the role in the state senate’s 165-year history.

The Minnesota Senate is the largest upper house of any state legislature in the country. His election as president came at a time of great prosperity for the state with a record budget surplus. It is common for Black people to be given opportunities to lead hallowed institutions when those institutions are in crisis or facing a severe downturn, a situation referred to as “glass cliff,” but rare for them to be given leadership

His ascendancy also came when the DFL controlled both houses at the legislature and the governorship (trifecta) for the first time since 2012. All constitutional offices (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state auditor, and secretary of state), are also held by Democrats.

Sen. Champion early this week sat down for an interview with Mshale in the side of downtown Minneapolis that he represents in the senate.

The affable Sen. Champion says he is proud of the accomplishments he and his DFL colleagues achieved in the first session of the 93rd Legislature that concluded

By Tom Gitaa By Ben Jealous,

I traveled recently from Baltimore, the city where my mother grew up, to Portland, Maine, where my dad did. It’s easy for many to see differences between one of the Blackest cities in America and largest city in one of the whitest states in the country.

What always hits me is what unites the two places: the suffering they’ve felt as a consequence of the decline of American industry in the 50 years of my life.

My father’s family once operated woolen mills in New England. Those factories no longer exist, like 63,000 factories across America that have shuttered since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed three decades ago.

As a result, millions of American families of every color have been locked in a downward spiral of economic on the eve of the Memorial Day weekend, and that he looks forward to building on that record when the second session reconvenes in February. “It was a great session for all of Minnesota and especially those historically marginalized,” the Minneapolis Democrat said. “We passed Restore the Vote, a monumental bill restoring voting rights for over 55,000 fellow Minnesotans who are no longer incarcerated but living among us and contributing to society. We also passed the Jobs and Economic Development budget bill that will support folks all across our great state no matter their zip code, whether they are in mobility for too long driven by the greed of multinational corporations and facilitated over decades by government policies like NAFTA. In part because of the pandemic and in part because of narrow cushion that’s left before our climate is beyond repair, we’re at a moment when we can turn that around.

Over the last three years, we committed as a nation to an unprecedented private and public investment in clean energy and infrastructure in ways that promises to reverse this dream-killing trajectory. We’re in a moment when we can finally shift from an economy defined by consumption back to one defined by working people making and using things they can be proud of again from electric school buses to solar panels. You’d think that opportunity would be welcomed by all. But the self-interested like Big Oil