End of the Year Fundraiser
UPDATE [1/1/18]: This fundraiser has ended. Thanks for supporting Unicorn Riot, your source for non-profit independent media!
As we close out 2017, we want to say thank you to those supporters who have made the past two and a half years possible! That continued support is needed to help propel us into 2018, to build our capacity, and continue our platforms to share our media.
As an added thank you, we are shipping out a Unicorn Riot mug and sticker for each donation that is over $30! (For international shipping addresses, $50). The mugs are union-made in the USA.
Our goal is to raise $5,000 in donations by January 1, 2018! All donations to Unicorn Riot are tax deductible!
This fundraiser is scheduled to last until January 1st, 2018. Please provide us with a current shipping address along through PayPal, or in the notes of the payment, and your Unicorn Riot mug should be received by early February 2018. Thanks so much!!!
So, get yourself that mug by clicking on the button below to donate using credit card or PayPal.
Donate Bitcoin and Altcoin by clicking the photo below!
You can also mail checks and other resources to:
Unicorn Riot
PO Box 7472
Minneapolis, MN 55407
Unicorn Riot is a horizontally organized, volunteer-operated, educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering the understanding of dynamic social struggles and producing media that exposes root causes of social conflict and explores sustainable alternatives in today’s globalized world.
For Unicorn Riot, the year of 2017 was one filled with coverage from a variety of areas in the continental United States, as well as venturing as far as Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Athens. We have explored a multitude of social and environmental struggles in 2017, as well as worked to create our first ever feature length, creative commons, documentary film which we released for FREE to the internet, ‘Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story‘!
See some of our highlighted stories:
Eviction of the #NoDAPL Oceti Camp
Mini-doc from the US/Mexico Border – Crisis: Borderlands
Continued Coverage of the Denver Housing Crisis
Charlottesville and Beyond (Discord Servers & Reports)
Climate Action Code Rood in Amsterdam
G20 in Hamburg, Germany
Over a Dozen Special Reports from Greece
We couldn’t have done all of this without our viewers’ support!
We are working towards becoming sustainable and growing our organization into the future. Your tax-deductible contribution goes directly toward making new original content and sustaining our efforts to provide quality commercial-free independent media for years to come!
See below for what other independent and mainstream media outlets had to say about Unicorn Riot in the last year!
“More immersive than mainstream media and more polished than the work of most activist documentarians, the collective’s coverage has been essential to understanding the events in North Dakota.” – Alleen Brown, The Intercept
“The members of Unicorn Riot attribute the collective’s functionality to its structure, which is not hierarchical. There is no chain of command to run a story idea up. Unicorn Riot works on a consensus decision-making model, which gives them the ability to act quickly in the field.” – Baynard Woods, Columbia Journalism Review
“For 10 months, Unicorn Riot had helped show the world what was going on at Standing Rock; in its final days, Standing Rock helped show the world what Unicorn Riot was capable of as a media organization.” – Wes Enzinna, Mother Jones
“And as Standing Rock illustrates, there are times when groups like Unicorn Riot can be more effective than the larger, less nimble, Establishment outlets whose narrative they compete against.” – Cheree Franco, Vice
“The independent media site Unicorn Riot has been doing great work showing just how dangerous the “Unite the Right” attendees are. Through leaks of chats among the white supremacists in preparation of the event in Charlottesville, we see yet more evidence that these men were out for blood.” – Wagatwe Wanjuki, Daily Kos
“Unicorn Riot’s structure has enabled members to publish dozens of stories on the alt-right without turning their subjects into stars or even normalizing them. While other organizations wrote celebrity profiles that marveled at the sartorial sense of fashion-conscious fascists, Unicorn Riot revealed what the alt-right was talking about when they thought no one was listening.” – Baynard Woods, Columbia Journalism Review
“The documents published by Unicorn Riot focus on months of chat logs from Charlottesville 2.0, a private ‘server’ inside Discord operated by far-right provocateurs Jason Kessler and Eli Mosley, among others. Mosley, a self-described ‘alt-right’ activist, says in an interview that the few documents and recordings highlighted on Unicorn Riot’s website appear authentic, but he does not trust the outlet.” – Nitasha Tiku, Wired
“This isn’t to say, of course, that neo-Nazis, the “alt-right” or the so-called “alt-light” aren’t worth covering at all. But one can do so without giving them a platform, without letting them spout their genocidal ideology with little or no context. An alternative to NBC’s glossy approach is media upstart Unicorn Riot…” – Adam Johnson, FAIR.org
“Unicorn Riot uses mostly neutral language, is factual and uses evidence as support to claims…” – Media Bias Fact Check
“Unicorn Riot has become an amazing resource of social struggles and movements across North America. Last year, they led the charge in documenting the #NoDAPL struggle at Standing Rock and in Charlottesville they were on the front lines of the clashes against neo-Nazis who murdered Heather Heyer and injured up to 20 others.” – It’s Going Down
In a letter written to Morton County State’s Attorney, a coalition of press freedom advocates called for charges against Unicorn Riot journalists, stemming from coverage at Standing Rock, to be dropped.
“CPJ has documented at least 10 journalists still facing charges in relation to the protests, including nine in Morton County. Two of the journalists–Christopher Schiano and Nicholas Georgiades, from the nonprofit media collective Unicorn Riot–face trial on misdemeanor criminal trespass charges today and tomorrow respectively. Police arrested them September 13 while Schiano and Georgiades were filming protesters who had locked themselves to construction equipment. In a video of the arrest, one of the journalists can be heard saying, ‘I’m press, sir. I’m press.'”
- Carlos Lauría-Program Director and Senior Program Coordinator for the Americas Committee to Protect Journalists
- Bobby Magill-President, Society of Environmental Journalists
- Bruce D. Brown-Executive Director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
- Bryan Pollard-President, Native American Journalists Association
- Delphine Halgand-North America Director, Reporters Without Borders
- Lynn Walsh-National President, Society of Professional Journalists
- Melissa Lyttle-President, National Press Photographers Association
- Trevor Timm Executive-Director, Freedom of the Press Foundation
Other mentions of Unicorn Riot’s coverage.
“In another video captured by local guerrilla journalism outfit Unicorn Riot (which Westword profiled in February), Denver police officers can be seen confiscating homeless individuals’ tents near Arapahoe Street and 27th Avenue on November 28″ – Chris Walker, Westword
“The ACLU of Colorado is horrified by widely-circulating videos showing Denver police confiscating blankets, sleeping bags, tents, and other survival gear owned by unhoused persons as winter weather and sub-freezing temperatures set in, potentially endangering their lives.” – ACLU of Colorado
“The chat logs, in addition to revealing the vile politics and violent aims of many adherents of this right-wing ideology, revealed a high level of organization and strong commitment to building power. We learn about how Unicorn Riot’s work has made its way into more mainstream outlets, and the effect that this and other similar work is having on the ability of these groups to function effectively.” – Delete Your Account Podcast
“Unicorn riot appeared to capture white nationalists starting a wild and mostly one sided melee by attacking apparently unarmed counter-protesters with torches (starts around 0:37), mace (0:32), and other weapons. As far as I know, this was the first violent act in the Charlottesville demonstration.” – Jeffrey Brender, Quora
“The march finished near a statue of Thomas Jefferson on the University of Virginia camp, where the marchers aggressively confronted a small group of college students and anti-racist protesters. At that point, Schiano said, one of the marchers hit him in the head with a tiki torch.” – U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
“A lawyer for two counter-protesters hurt at the rally told Wired that the chats could be used to bolster their case against 28 groups and individuals involved, including organizer Jason Kessler. The transcripts demonstrated the premeditated intention to commit ‘violence and mayhem,’ attorney Timothy Litzenburg told Wired, saying that they could serve as ‘the crux of the case.’” – Allegra Kirkland, TPM
“One Peter (or Pete) Tefft, of Fargo, North Dakota. Tefft’s identity was first deduced by the currently invaluable Twitter account “Yes, You’re Racist,” which used an interview Tefft gave to Unicorn Riot to expose him.” – Mike Mullen, City Pages
“Unicorn Riot, which describes itself as ‘a volunteer-operated decentralized media collective,’ lets us peer inside the extreme-right’s corners of the internet thanks to a trove of documents it has leaked.” – Cody Nelson, MPR
“A representative from Unicorn Riot, a media outlet that has been deeply critical of far-right movements, said that he had seen white supremacist chat rooms in the Discord app while participants were still actively chatting. A reporter for Wired magazine confirmed with a prominent Unite the Right organizer that a first batch of messages and recordings published on Unicorn Riot appeared authentic.” – Aaron Sankin and Scott Pham, Reveal (Center for Investigative Reporting)
“The messages were obtained by an anonymous source, who infiltrated and gained the trust of white nationalists and other right-wingers, and has been leaking the material to Unicorn Riot, a “decentralized media collective” that emerged from leftist protest movements.” – Micah Lee, The Intercept
“One of the major events Unicorn Riot has covered was the Fourth Precinct shutdown in Minneapolis, where last year police shot Jamar Clark, an unarmed 24-year-old black man. Unicorn Riot streamed protests outside the police station for days on its Livestream account, and their coverage was beginning to get noticed. One woman who saw the stream even drove about three hours to drop off donations for the encampment.” – Anna Sterling, Splinter News
“Unicorn Riot, an independent media collective with several members in the state, published a heavily redacted version of the 2011 edition of the “Denver Police Department Crowd Management Manual” obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request. Days later, an anonymous source sent them an unredacted copy of the 2008 edition of the manual. The two editions appear to have few differences and the policies described in both versions match the behavior of police toward protests, according to activists and journalists interviewed by MintPress News.” – Kit O’Connell, Shadow Proof
“Unicorn Riot journalists Chris and Pat describe items recovered following the events at Backwater Bridge” – video from APTN News
“…thousands of other conversations among white supremacists were leaked from a chat app called Discord and posted on the website of a left-wing media collective called Unicorn Riot. Many users’ participation could not be verified, but ProPublica was able to confirm that two people whose statements were included in the leaked trove made the comments attributed to them.” – George Joseph, ProPublica
“We also want to support Unicorn Riot, a group of independent, non-profit journalists and media artists, in their continued front-line coverage. Their on the ground coverage of the #NoDAPL movement spanned throughout 2016, and into 2017. Unicorn Riot’s non-commercialized independent perspective provided a unique view into unfolding events in a remote area of the country. Without them we would not have many of the facts about what is happening at Standing Rock” – The Lumineers
Podcasts and interviews with Unicorn Riot journalists about their work.
This Is Hell! There will always be warriors ready: #StandingRock, #NoDAPL and the war for tomorrow.
Unicorn Riot on Neo-Nazis Celebrating & Planning Violence at Unite the Right and “Soft Targets”
Delete Your Account Podcast – Unicorn Riot
Solecast 48 “Report Back From Charlottesville w Pat & Wendy of Unicorn Riot”
Solecast 39 w Chris of Unicorn Riot on Counter-Counter-Insurgency & How to FOIA
Democracy in Crisis Episode 40 Unicorn Riot
The Final Straw Radio The Cleveland 4 & Unicorn Riot
Rhymes Media Group – Independent Media Monday
Watch an interview from BelAhdan with Ahmed featuring a Unicorn Riot journalist:
Responses to our work from notable critics.
Disclaimer: Unicorn Riot in no way endorses any of the groups or persons quoted in writing below nor are we implying that the information the persons or groups quoted below are conveying are in any way completely factual or accurate. We wanted to show our supporters responses to our work from organizations, social movements, and individuals that we have exposed and highlighted. In some instances our critics have attempted to discredit us and prohibit our coverage, while at the same time we found some of their comments to be interesting. Enjoy! This work would not have been possible without donor support.
#Charlottesville @FoxNews spewing misinformation about Unicorn Riot. We are a 501c3 independent media organization https://t.co/xsUg5pdxBo pic.twitter.com/bXoUBGmNln
— UNICORN RIOT (@UR_Ninja) August 12, 2017
“There have been lots of speculation about whether many of these antifa counter protestors had been bussed in or brought in from other parts of the state or perhaps across the county. Well here is a little piece of evidence of that that suggest that for you right now. A gentlemen just handed me this business card. When was the last time you saw a protester have professional business card? It says ‘Unicorn Riot your commercial free media alternative info at unicorn riot dot ninja’ So it suggests indeed a lot of these guys if they’re not professional protestors were at least brought in to protest.”
– Doug McKelway, Fox News, Unicorn Riot at Charlottesvilles’ “Unite the Right” protests.
“…Unicorn Media or something, it’s literally an Antifa news network that is funded and supported and has their livestream going….It’s an entire funded organization, an army that’s very well established. I don’t know where the funding comes from. I think it would be very interesting for people to look into that and figure that out because I think you could find some…probably find some scary stuff, uncover some scary stuff there.”
– Lauren Southern, in an interview with Stefan Molyneux regarding Hamburg G20 protests
“They put out a lot of different information about the Alt-Right or White Nationalists in general. In fact it seems like these are the guys who kind of got a lot of our discord servers shut down because they have been trolling the hell out of us for I don’t know months, but nobody really knows how long they have been kind of infiltrating our groups.”
– Dion, Producer of Wolfman’s Activism & Entertainment on the Right Stuff podcast from an episode titled “Unicorn Riot”
“I’ll be honest it’s kind of scary.”
– Blake, Host of Wolfman’s Activism & Entertainment on the Right Stuff podcast from an episode titled “Unicorn Riot” in regards to Discord Leaks published by UR.
“So they did this hit piece, and I want to just address some of the points, overall his hit piece is go. It’s actually not that poorly written. I think the guy that wrote this should have put his name on here, he is actually a pretty good writer.”
– Brian Brathovd, AKA “Caerulus Rex” in response to being exposed by Unicorn Riot as Richard Spencer’s bodyguard and an active member of the National Guard.
“UR is skilled at video recording police response to protestors action while ‘missing’ the protestor action that caused it, to make the police response seem excessive. UR is very active on social media and job search related sites such as Linked-In to collect criminal justice and law enforcement employee resumes, which often contain addresses and identifying information. They then post this information to social media. UR has been filming in North Dakota since the first days of the protest and continue to post videos as police involvement increases.”
– North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center, Dakota Access Pipeline Protest Threat Assessment document UR labeled as a “group of interest” for coverage of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests
On Censorship
“The link was removed in error and restored as soon as we were able to investigate. Our team processes millions of reports each week, and we sometimes get things wrong. We’re very sorry about this mistake,” – Facebook Spokesperson, in regards to censoring UR during our #NoDAPL coverage.
“You’re under arrest.” – North Dakota Highway Patrol
NEW(ER) VIDEO of ND Hwy Patrol targeting & arresting Unicorn Riot journalists covering #NoDAPL actions pic.twitter.com/hBAVHoYwnY
— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) September 15, 2016
To see what our Facebook audience says, check out our reviews!
To donate to our End of the Year fundraiser, click on the link below:
