61st Street Community Garden At Risk - Blank slates make for easy planning. Awareness of ecological richness confounds the process, creating conditions for innovation. The purpose of this essay is to complicate the planning process for the new Chicago Theological Seminary building to be constructed on the south campus of the University of Chicago. Read more »
The Invisible Institute is a Chicago-based journalistic production company. A small core staff works with a farflung network of collaborators who combine in different configurations as required for particular projects.
The diverse activities of the Invisible Institute cohere around a central theme. We seek to enlarge the sphere of permissible discourse by resisting the forces that disappear certain issues, individuals, and populations.
That, then, is one meaning of our name: we work to keep visible fellow citizens and fundamental questions threatened with invisibility.
Another is that we are determined to remain lean and agile, in order to focus on the quality of our working relationships and the conditions required for robust, searching public conversation about difficult issues.
Invisible Institute News
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Some words for Studs on November 4, 2008
November 04, 2008 · Jamie KalvenIn order to give an account of Studs’ influence on me, I have to excavate down to bedrock. For there is a sense in which I grew up inside his voice. The radio station that was his original and longtime home—WFMT—was always on in my parents’ house. It was the medium through which my brothers, my sister and I moved growing up. And Studs was on the air a lot in those days—at 10:00 am on weekday mornings, and then again on Sunday evening. For me as a child, the sound of his voice conjured the richness of the wide world beyond the household and carried the promise of how much of that richness a single sensibility could absorb without bursting. -
A Few More Words For Studs
November 25, 2008 · Jamie KalvenThree days after Studs Terkel’s death, the New York Times published a column by critic Edward Rothstein titled “An Appraisal: He Gave Voice to Many, Among Them Himself.” The piece is a striking instance of the low art of red-baiting disguised as high-minded criticism. It has been effectively countered as such by, among others, Victor Navasky, Howard Zinn, Roger Ebert and Andre Schiffrin. Yet I have continued to brood about it. I am moved to write about it now not because Terkel needs further defense against such petty sniping but because Rothstein’s essay, so clearly intended to diminish his achievements, has the ironic effect of illuminating them.
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Ruth Young (1938-2007): In interviews occasioned by the publication of his book Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, Ruth’s dear friend Studs Terkel described himself as “an agnostic.” In other words, he said, “a cowardly atheist.” I have a hunch that characterization may apply to a number of us here. But not to Ruth. In her gentle, quiet way, she was an uncompromising atheist. An atheist for all seasons.
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The Stroll: A Blues Requiem for Stateway Gardens:
"I first came to Stateway Gardens in the early 1990’s, following a set of moral intuitions where they led. As a citizen, I was moved to explore what it might mean to conduct oneself as a neighbor under conditions of urban apartheid. As a writer, I felt the need to earn the right to use certain words. I was, in short, deeply but actively confused."
The keynote speech given by Jamie Kalven at the Eight Square Blocks conference held in April, 2007.
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Chicago Sun-Times op-ed on police reform: On January 1, 2007, the Chicago Sun-Times published an op-ed by Jamie Kalven.