Closing Reflections from Jamie Kalven

December 26, 2022

Dear friends,

It has now been more than a year since I stepped down as executive director and resumed full-time reporting as a member of the Invisible Institute team. Transitions from founder to new leadership are inherently difficult for organizations. The Invisible Institute is no exception. It is thus with a sense of pride and profound gratitude to my colleagues and the Invisible Institute board that I can now report that we have emerged from this period with enhanced capacity, renewed covenants with one another, and a sharpened clarity of purpose.

For me, new perspectives have opened up during this period. I am at a point in my journey where it’s possible to look back and more clearly see the shape of things. What is now apparent is that the Invisible Institute has been engaged over the years in a single inquiry that has unfolded from project to project, always moving to new ground, always presenting new questions and new possibilities.

Our reporting has centered on policing and public safety, but that is best understood as the portal into the larger investigation at the center of our work. If the last decade has taught us anything, it is that police reform in itself will not adequately remedy the racial injustices that abusive policing dramatizes. It will not in itself dismantle the structures of exclusion and inequality that police too often are called upon to enforce.

It is thus necessary to give a full account of the underlying conditions and interlocking systems that continue to produce racist outcomes. Investigative reporting is commonly understood to be a matter of revealing that which is hidden. That is certainly an aspect of the work, but the larger challenge is to make immediate and visible that which is in plain sight yet not seen: conditions of life so enveloping that it is difficult to gain a perspective on them. Yet such perspective is a necessary condition for a paradigm shift in our understanding of public safety and human flourishing.

That is the collective project to which the Invisible Institute seeks to contribute. We are grateful to you for accompanying us on this path. Your attention and support are as essential to our work as the air we breathe. We hope you will consider a year-end donation to the Invisible Institute and look forward to our ongoing engagement with you in the new year.

As ever,

Jamie