Unicorn Riot

07/18/2025

Over 1,000 people are marching in downtown Minneapolis for the Good Trouble Lives On: Twin Cities rally and march to commemorate the 5th anniversary of Rep. John Lewis' passing and demand that Congress protect civil rights and ensures free and fair elections.

07/16/2025

Today the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled to deny attempts by Energy Transfer, the oil giant behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, to force Unicorn Riot to turn over documents from our reporting on the historic, Indigenous-led movement:

St Paul, MN — Unicorn Riot’s long legal battle in Minnesota to protect newsgathering materials from attorneys working for Energy Transfer reached yet another phase: The Minnesota Supreme Court released its ruling Wednesday about the subpoena in Hennepin County that has attempted to probe our org...

07/16/2025

NEW: The Trump administration ditched Minneapolis Police’s federal Department of Justice consent decree on the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Minneapolis officials want to merge these reform provisions into an active state agreement. These efforts stalled during a July 8 City Council meeting.

The Trump administration ditched a federal Department of Justice consent decree on the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder.

07/16/2025

For 10 years now, UR has been on the frontlines covering social & environmental movements often ignored by legacy news.

Help us continue providing an unfiltered, nonprofit platform for diverse communities, storytellers & media makers.

Donate Now:

For over a decade, Unicorn Riot has been on the frontlines of social and environmental movements covering stories that are often ignored in mainstream discourse, including alternatives to conventional normalcies. Our small, independent nonprofit media org provides ad-free, on-the-ground reporting co...

07/14/2025

With the US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza continuing unabated and the border crossings closed by Israel, the ingenuity and resolve of Gazans continues to shine amid the ethnic cleansing being waged on them. As no diesel or gasoline is allowed into the Gaza Strip, citizens have come up the successful idea of converting plastic into diesel and gasoline to be used for means of transportation.

In the west side of war-torn Gaza City, Unicorn Riot was given a tour of the makeshift processing center where plastic waste is melted into diesel. “The country needs diesel—it needs to move,” said 22-year-old worker Saad Abu Ajwa, “if diesel doesn’t come in, everything stops. Hospitals shut down, clean water stations stop, transportation halts. This work is not a choice—it’s a necessity.”

“We produce 500 liters of diesel daily,” said Abu Ajwa. “We opened this place because the crossings are closed and the desalination plants—the people need drinking water, the desalination plants need power, and transportation needs power too—they all run on industrial diesel.”

This process is absolutely not clean. Burning plastic is really bad for the environment as well as the individuals working at the makeshift center. “It takes time, effort, and exhaustion, and it badly affects people’s health too,” said Abu Majed Sakr.

Toxins released from burning plastic can “disrupt neurodevelopment, endocrine, and reproductive functions” and lead to cancer, heart disease, and many more serious health conditions, according to the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“And I, of course, deal with the dust and smoke and the burning,” said Abu Ajwa, “this all goes into your lungs and makes you cough all night. It’s exhausting. It wears you out completely. The work is tough—not easy. It’s fire, and we all got burned here. We’ve all been burned by this fire.”

The fact that someone as young as Abu Ajwa would take this health-depriving work of burning plastic to make industrial diesel as “necessity” and “not a choice” points to the survival and resolve of Palestinians under occupation and facing daily war crimes.

07/12/2025

For over a decade, Unicorn Riot has been on the frontlines of social and environmental movements covering stories that are often ignored in mainstream discourse, including alternatives to conventional normalcies. Our small, independent nonprofit media org provides ad-free, on-the-ground reporting consumed by millions published through Creative Commons.

Unicorn Riot thanks our amazing community of donors for your unwavering and consistent support to help us make it this far! As we celebrate 10 years of independent, community-centered reporting, we need your support more than ever. Be a Part of the Next Decade of Unicorn Riot. Donate Now --- link in comments.

07/12/2025

NEW: Gazans Make Diesel From Recovered Plastic || With the US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza continuing unabated and the border crossings closed by Israel, the ingenuity and resolve of Gazans continues to shine amid the ethnic cleansing being waged on them. As no diesel or gasoline is allowed into the Gaza Strip, citizens have come up the successful idea of converting plastic into diesel and gasoline to be used for means of transportation.

In the west side of war-torn Gaza City, Unicorn Riot was given a tour of the makeshift processing center where plastic waste is melted into diesel. “The country needs diesel—it needs to move,” said 22-year-old worker Saad Abu Ajwa, “if diesel doesn’t come in, everything stops. Hospitals shut down, clean water stations stop, transportation halts. This work is not a choice—it’s a necessity.”

“We produce 500 liters of diesel daily,” said Abu Ajwa. “We opened this place because the crossings are closed and the desalination plants—the people need drinking water, the desalination plants need power, and transportation needs power too—they all run on industrial diesel.”

This process is absolutely not clean. Burning plastic is really bad for the environment as well as the individuals working at the makeshift center. “It takes time, effort, and exhaustion, and it badly affects people’s health too,” said Abu Majed Sakr.

Toxins released from burning plastic can “disrupt neurodevelopment, endocrine, and reproductive functions” and lead to cancer, heart disease, and many more serious health conditions, according to the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“And I, of course, deal with the dust and smoke and the burning,” said Abu Ajwa, “this all goes into your lungs and makes you cough all night. It’s exhausting. It wears you out completely. The work is tough—not easy. It’s fire, and we all got burned here. We’ve all been burned by this fire.”

The fact that someone as young as Abu Ajwa would take this health-depriving work of burning plastic to make industrial diesel as “necessity” and “not a choice” points to the survival and resolve of Palestinians under occupation and facing daily war crimes.

07/11/2025

NEW: With the US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza continuing unabated and the border crossings closed by Israel, the ingenuity and resolve of Gazans continues to shine amid the ethnic cleansing being waged on them. As no diesel or gasoline is allowed into the Gaza Strip, citizens have come up the successful idea of converting plastic into diesel and gasoline to be used for means of transportation. “The country needs diesel—it needs to move,” said 22-year-old worker Saad Abu Ajwa, “if diesel doesn’t come in, everything stops. Hospitals shut down, clean water stations stop, transportation halts. This work is not a choice—it’s a necessity.”

With no diesel allowed into Gaza, citizens are successfully converting plastic into diesel and gasoline to be used for transportation.

07/11/2025

“He was the perfect patsy,” said Marcia Howard, Mahdi Ali’s former high school teacher and president of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators. In an emotional speech during a press conference in June, Howard choked back tears while saying she felt “ashamed” that she and other teachers had given up on Ali after he was arrested and “just accepted it at face value.”

Just two months after forming, The Coalition to Free Mahdi Ali continues to grow, with teachers, organizers and community members committing to fight to liberate Ali from his life sentence. On June 10, 2025, the coalition held a press conference at the Hennepin County Government Center. For a longer video of that conference, see our FB post on June 26, 2025.

Mahdi Ali was just 15 years old when he was convicted and given a life sentence for a 2010 triple murder in South Minneapolis.

Unicorn Riot’s independent investigation of his arrest and prosecution found dozens of issues in the case and found that his conviction was largely based on unreliable testimonies from two people implicated in the crimes, along with the multinational retail giant Target Corp’s forensics team, who testified at trial against the teen.

Ahmed Shire Ali, the accomplice in the crimes, served 12 years in prison and testified against Mahdi, but before he was released from prison he recanted his claims of Mahdi’s involvement. “I was protecting someone else. And he (Mahdi) ended up taking the fall for something he didn’t end up doing.”

Link to full story in comments.

07/10/2025

Thousands of people departed Cairo on June 13 in an attempt to break the siege of Gaza and demand an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people by Israeli forces. The effort was led by the grassroots movement Global March to Gaza (GMTG) which responded to a call to action in April by the labor movement in Gaza for people to “organize urgent demonstration at the Rafah crossing to demand an immediate and to the genocide.”

The idea of a mass march to Gaza rapidly spread and brought together people from over 80 countries, as far away as Malaysia, Mexico and South Africa. Over 4,000 people registered for the march, with thousands more arriving without having registered. In a press release GMTG stated that it was their “duty as citizens to act” in light of the inaction and complicity of governments around the world in the ongoing genocide.

Activists from the movement had been negotiating with Egyptian authorities to allow for safe passage from Cairo to the border crossing with Rafah. The original plan was for marchers to travel by bus and car to El Arish in the heavily militarized Sinai Peninsula and march for three days across the desert to the border. That plan was rapidly and violently cut short on the first day of the action.

Egyptian police stopped hundreds of people at checkpoints, confiscating their passports. Traffic was snarled for hours. At one major checkpoint the trapped crowd grew to nearly 1,000. Demonstrators launched a sit-in as they waved Palestinian flags and chanted in support of Gaza. The mood was largely positive, even as over 100 riot police encircled those gathered and started to close in.

Full story in link.

Thousands of people departed Cairo on June 13 in an attempt to break the siege of Gaza and demand an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people.

07/10/2025

On this date in 2016: Days after a cop shot and killed Philando Castile in front of his daughter, thousands of demonstrators stormed I-94 in Saint Paul. Police responded by attacking protesters and journalists.