We are a journalism production company on the South Side of Chicago.
We work to enhance the capacity of citizens to hold public institutions accountable.
Among the tactics we employ are investigative reporting, multimedia storytelling, human rights documentation, the curation of public information, and the orchestration of difficult public conversations.
Our work coheres around a central principle: we as citizens have co-responsibility with the government for maintaining respect for human rights and, when abuses occur, for demanding redress.
Latest
The Invisible Institute, Chicago Torture Justice Center, Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, and the Pozen Center for Human Rights have launched the Chicago Police Torture Archive, a human rights documentation of former Commander Jon Burge’s violence against more than 100 Black men, from the 1970s-1990s. The journalistic centerpiece of this site are the profiles of police torture survivors, most of whom were represented by the People’s Law Office of Chicago.
UNDERSTANDING PATHOLOGIES OF POWER IN THE AGE OF COVID-19
On December 9, the Invisible Institute and Partners In Health (PIH) hosted a virtual panel discussion on the systematic conditions affecting the health, safety, and freedom to flourish of those living in marginalized communities from Chicago’s South Side to Haiti's Central Plateau.
Featuring:
Dr. Paul Farmer, PIH co-founder Dr. Thomas Fisher, University of Chicago Medicine, Jamie Kalven, Invisible Institute founder
Moderated by Dawn Turner, journalist and former Chicago Tribune columnist
We are pleased to announce the launch of The Somebody Podcast Teaching Guide. The curriculum consists of ten lessons focused on strengthening high school students’ critical listening abilities. It includes excerpts from the podcast, transcripts of the episodes, and guided questions.
In October, the Invisible Institute published a yearlong investigation with the Indianapolis Star, AL.com, and The Marshall Project into the alarming number of bites by police dogs around the country, focusing on Indianapolis, which leads the nation in the rate of bites. Our investigation uncovered more than 15% of those bit were children, and of those children, more than 75% were Black.
The SHOWTIME documentary 16 Shots, co-produced by the Invisible Institute, received the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Documentary.
In May, the Invisible Institute published a yearlong investigation into the wrongful conviction of Robert Johnson that unearthed substantial new evidence in the 24-year-old case.
Subscribe to The View from the Ground for more updates from the Invisible Institute.
From the Archive
For Morton, the Bee Branch has provided a setting in which he can continue the education he advanced in prison. While incarcerated, he got his GED. He went on to get an Associates Degree in General Education, an Associates Degree in Liberal Arts, and an Associates Degree in Science. Then he began to take college courses in a program offered by Roosevelt University. When he was released from prison, he had enough credits for a BA degree. The administrators of the program arranged for him to graduate with the Roosevelt University class of 2000. Oprah Winfrey was the graduation speaker. The title of his senior thesis was “Urban Renewal: a minority nightmare.”
When the police released him, Morton proceeded to the library and signed up for a computer. While awaiting his turn, he read newspapers and magazines. It is perhaps a comment on the daily realities of being a black male on the streets of a public housing community that he didn’t mention his encounter with the police to Shawn. “It was nothing," he said later, "to bring out in conversation.”
First photo by Patricia Evans (1993) in the Ida B Wells homes, during the last chapter of Chicago's high-rise public housing. Read more about the Ida B Wells homes in the Code of Silence.