Steve Edwards, host of Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight, poses a question to panelists at "The View From The Ground" conference held April 20 and 21 at the University of Chicago Law School.

Watch streaming video and learn about the conference.

The Invisible Institute is a Chicago-based company dedicated to collaborative social justice projects. It is designed along the lines of a production company. A small core staff works with a farflung network of collaborators who combine in different configurations as required for particular projects.

Our tools include human rights documentation, photography, graphic design, and the use of information technology for social inquiry.

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

  • 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.
  • 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.