Steve Ahlquist

Steve Ahlquist is an American journalist. He previously wrote for the online publications Uprise RI and Rhode Island's Future, founding the former in 2017, and wrote comic books. He now works independently, reporting on local issues via the Substack subscription platform.

Some local journalists and media outlets have described Ahlquist's work as advocacy journalism, while some have said that his reporting has filled a gap that has formed as a result of staff cuts by traditional media organizations in the state. The Boston Globe in 2023 wrote that he was often one who is "breaking news, covering events on the ground, and doing it all with a point of view that's plain for anyone to see, including when he occasionally testifies before public bodies." He formerly owned a retail comics and video store. during which Rhode Island Pride, an LGBT organization, gave Ahlquist its 2015 Spirit of Pride Award for his reporting.

Ahlquist went on to found the online publication Uprise RI, for news and opinion, in 2017. He worked as a reporter alongside Greg Brailsford.

In 2018, the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) was sent a critical letter by American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island after the RIPTA chief security officer told Ahlquist to stop recording at a public meeting, in conflict with freedom of information rights afforded by the state's Open Meetings Act (OMA). He filed an OMA complaint with the state attorney general relating to a 2019 meeting held by the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation, operator of the privately-run Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, that was connected to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees that the facility was later found to have held. At one of the George Floyd protests in 2020, Ahlquist told The Providence Journal that he had gone to almost all protests held in the state in the past seven years. The local news outlet GoLocalProv recognized Ahlquist in 2022 for his reporting on human rights issues, such as his criticism of the state's policies governing homelessness.

Ahlquist left Uprise RI in 2023 to begin publishing a newsletter through the Substack subscription platform.

Personal life Ahlquist grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island. His niece, Jessica Ahlquist, was plaintiff in the federal lawsuit Ahlquist v. Cranston, wherein Cranston High School West was directed to remove a prayer banner hung in the building as it violated the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.

Ahlquist was a founding member and president of The Humanists of Rhode Island. While president, in 2014, he held a protest in Warwick calling for a boycott of Hobby Lobby after the Supreme Court's ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.; the decision allows private, for-profit corporations to take religious exemptions from a regulation that its owners object to.