Invisible Institute News

Variations on a Theme

I have no theoretical perspective to offer on the issue of property rights for the poor. I do have some relevant experience with respect to what can happen when the poor have no meaningful say in the fate of the place where they live. My experience is grounded at Stateway Gardens, a high-rise public housing community that was located, until its recent demolition, on South State Street in Chicago.

Since 2000, Chicago has been implementing a public housing strategy it calls “The Plan for Transformation.” The stated objective of the Plan is to replace high-rise concentrations of public housing with “mixed income communities.” To date, the City has proved far more effective at demolition than construction, at destroying neighborhoods than renewing them.

The name—“The Plan For Transformation”—used to seem, at best, comically grandiose and, at worse, Orwellian. Today it seems quite precise. The city has, indeed, been "transformed." No other word will do. Within a few years, entire communities have disappeared. Places have been erased. And fundamental human rights issues have receded from view.

I offer two statements written almost a decade apart.

The first was prepared for a seminar on “The Consequences of Abandoned Communities,” convened by the Open Society Institute in Harlem in 1998.

The second is a speech that opened a conference--"The View From The Ground: Issues and Inquiries Arising From Eight Square Blocks of Chicago's South Side”—at the University of Chicago Law School in 2007.

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Monday, May 4th 2009; 10:01pm

A Few More Words For Studs

Three 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.

It is inevitable that the tsunami of praise and affection—of love—released by news of Terkel’s death would prompt reaction. And it is of course appropriate for a critic to scale back the superlatives and inquire into the precise nature of his achievement. Such scrutiny is especially warranted in this case, because the legend that celebrates Studs also obscures him. He was sharper, edgier and more complicated than the statue that is hardening around him.

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Tuesday, November 25th 2008; 7:08pm

Some words for Studs on November 4, 2008

Studs Terkel and JR Millares

Studs Terkel and caretaker JR Millares. January 11, 2008

The following is an excerpt from a speech I gave on the occasion of receiving an award from Rape Victim Advocates in 2005. Studs Terkel presented the award. That gave me an opening to talk about him a bit. I quoted an invocation by Rev. William Sloan Coffin that Studs, in recent years, frequently included in his remarks on public occasions. Many words have been uttered about Studs in the last few days; many more will be spoken. It seems fitting on this day to recall these words that, at the end of his long life, spoke so deeply to him. - Jamie Kalven

In 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. He was my World Wide Web. Together with my father, Studs dramatized for me the joys and possibilities of conversation. They planted the seeds of the conviction, now central to my understanding of both the First Amendment and my literary vocation, that there is nothing that cannot be talked about.

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Tuesday, November 4th 2008; 11:57pm

The Face of Poverty: A View From The Ground

Speech at Legal Assistance Foundation Annual Luncheon, Grand Ballroom, Palmer House Hilton, June 23, 2008

Thank you, Diana. It is an honor for us to be part of this occasion. The Legal Assistance Foundation is a necessary organization. I know how LAF attorneys are regarded in abandoned communities throughout city. For the residents of those communities, they embody the possibility of justice. For my own part, I am grateful for all the ways, large and small, that you and your colleagues have enriched my understanding of the issues facing public housing residents.

During my years of immersion at Stateway Gardens, a practice developed that came to be known in certain circles as “the Jamie walk.” Journalists, academics, civic leaders, foundation executives, and assorted others would come down to South State Street ostensibly to see what I was up to but in fact to get a glimpse of life in public housing. I didn’t give them a formal tour; rather, they would tag along as I made my rounds. We would talk, as we walked. I welcomed these visits. So much more information could be conveyed on site than in a conversation in a downtown office. I recognized that for many the visit was not without its anxieties. It entailed crossing a significant threshold—stepping away from the official narrative about public housing (that hallucinatory mix of folklore, fear, and highly charged symbols) and stepping forward to see for themselves the conditions of life in a particular community. For some this proved a memorable and enduring experience. It removed the husks from what they thought they knew about high-rise public housing to reveal the questions inside.

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Wednesday, June 25th 2008; 1:09pm

Speech Given At Deloitte Tech Conference

A few months ago, Deloitte, a large professional consultancy, invited me to speak at a conference held for their tech consultants in the Midwest region. I delivered this address on September 21st, 2007:

Good morning... I'm honored to be here. I'm Dave Eads. I am an activist, a programmer, and a designer. I'll tell you more about my story in a bit. First, a question...

In Steven King's excellent book "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft", he concludes with his ultimate description of the writer's vocation:

"Writing," he says, "isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, ... or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ... Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art."

Can we say the same of being a geek, or a hacker in the broad sense, or even an IT consultant? What is being a geek about? Is it about making money or being famous? Can we say it's about getting up, getting well, or getting over? Can we say it's about getting happy? What can we say about the satisfactions of our work?

And if the technologies we are expert in are, for most people, indistinguishable from magic, have we become the magicians of our hyperconnected world? As experts in information technology, what is our responsibility to our fellow citizens, our society, and our world?

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Wednesday, September 26th 2007; 5:00am