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From The New Yorker a report on a small but powerful activist media collective. 
By Troy Patterson

For the past week in Minneapolis, the media collective Unicorn Riot has delivered a sustained act of witness: night after night of vigils and struggle and trouble.

The killing of George Floyd—on May 25th, in Minneapolis, under the weight of Derek Chauvin’s knee and a brutally racist police system—precipitated a torrent of images of spectacular violence. Cell-phone-camera footage of the horror committed against Floyd ignited a wave of protests; any number of police squads, first in Minneapolis and then in scores of cities across the country, received the protests as an invitation to assault civilians—likewise captured on video, likewise outraging the conscience. It is a moral duty to witness the scenes of uprising, but it is concussive to take it in. You can glut on the best cable-news coverage of this flaming grief, or the most conscientious and keyed-in correspondents on Twitter, and still feel starved for context.

It may be wiser to attend to this nationwide conflagration as a local news story. An extremely compelling view of what is happening in—and to—Minneapolis is streaming by way of Unicorn Riot, a not-for-profit media collective that was incorporated in Minnesota five years ago, with a mission to bring attention to social and environmental struggle. Its reporters regularly cover the Twin Cities, Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia, and have fanned out to cover events such as the Unite the Right rally, in Charlottesville, in 2017, and the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

For the past week in Minneapolis, Unicorn Riot has delivered a sustained act of witness: night after night of vigils and struggle and trouble. The coverage is impressive for its intimacy with the community and unrivalled in its ability to tell the story patiently, in hour upon hour of searching the streets for clarity.

Continue reading @ The New Yorker.

The Tiny Media Collective That Is Delivering Some Of the Most Vital Reporting From Minneapolis

From The New Yorker a report on a small but powerful activist media collective. 
By Troy Patterson

For the past week in Minneapolis, the media collective Unicorn Riot has delivered a sustained act of witness: night after night of vigils and struggle and trouble.

The killing of George Floyd—on May 25th, in Minneapolis, under the weight of Derek Chauvin’s knee and a brutally racist police system—precipitated a torrent of images of spectacular violence. Cell-phone-camera footage of the horror committed against Floyd ignited a wave of protests; any number of police squads, first in Minneapolis and then in scores of cities across the country, received the protests as an invitation to assault civilians—likewise captured on video, likewise outraging the conscience. It is a moral duty to witness the scenes of uprising, but it is concussive to take it in. You can glut on the best cable-news coverage of this flaming grief, or the most conscientious and keyed-in correspondents on Twitter, and still feel starved for context.

It may be wiser to attend to this nationwide conflagration as a local news story. An extremely compelling view of what is happening in—and to—Minneapolis is streaming by way of Unicorn Riot, a not-for-profit media collective that was incorporated in Minnesota five years ago, with a mission to bring attention to social and environmental struggle. Its reporters regularly cover the Twin Cities, Boston, Denver, and Philadelphia, and have fanned out to cover events such as the Unite the Right rally, in Charlottesville, in 2017, and the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.

For the past week in Minneapolis, Unicorn Riot has delivered a sustained act of witness: night after night of vigils and struggle and trouble. The coverage is impressive for its intimacy with the community and unrivalled in its ability to tell the story patiently, in hour upon hour of searching the streets for clarity.

Continue reading @ The New Yorker.
George Floyd murder New Yorker Unicorn Riot

3 comments:

  1. Barry Gilheany8:10 PM, June 09, 2020

    Excellent account of this brave mode of citizen journalism. Reminds so much of the same during the Arab Spring (Remember that?).

    ReplyDelete
  2. frankie4:53 AM, June 10, 2020

    The Arab Spring...the CIA funded uprising that caused (and still is) causing carnage in the middle east..Everyone remembers that..

    ReplyDelete
  3. Barry Gilheany1:25 PM, June 10, 2020

    Frankie

    Absolute garbage. The Arab Spring was about upripskngs by young people across the MENA region who wanted the fall of corrupt, ineffiocent and tyranical regimes wno had cdeprived them of their futures. It is the survival of thesew regimes be it Assad, the House of Saud and the Iranian mullahs that is causing carnage across the MENA region today.

    ReplyDelete

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