Read issue 3 of the YNUC Anticapitalist zine here.
If you are able to help donate for printing zines, please send Venmo @leftvoice or Zelle leftvoicemultimedia@gmail.com. This zine is made by members of Left Voice and non-affiliated students and workers and is not official CUNY literature and does not speak for the CUNY administration.
Welcome to the third edition of the YNUC Anti-Capitalist Zine, which comes to life after a semester marked by capitalist barbarism and, at the same time, by the profound resistance of students and workers. We’re glad to have you here, in pages filled with writing and art about the tumultuous times we’re living through and visions of how to fight for the world that we want.
You’ll notice this zine is called the YNUC Anti-Capitalist Zine–CUNY spelled backward. We use this name out of concern about repression: the “Fired Fourth” has been banned from teaching across CUNY campuses for publishing a pamphlet that included the CUNY name in the title. We also chose it in honor of the CUNY Dragunav–”Vanguard” spelled backward—published by students in 1950. Those students, like the Fired Fourth, faced repression by the CUNY admin for what was deemed “conduct unbecoming.”
We release this zine on May Day 2026, International Workers’ Day, with the theme of constructing an internationalist answer to the imperialist war and ICE terror unleashed on our working class siblings at home and abroad. May Day is a historic day for our struggles, and this year, it is particularly important.
Just days into 2026, in a violent escalation of the Trump regime’s imperialist ambitions, the U.S. bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro. This shocking and blatant intervention of the U.S. was an expression of Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine,” desperately seeking to secure oil resources and hegemonic grip over a world order that it is quickly losing control of. But more broadly, it was an extreme expression of imperialism, which Lenin called the highest stage of capitalism. As we explore in the zine, this “stage” is not just a series of policies or disparate events, but rather the natural expansion of the bloodthirsty system that seeks to subjugate the working class of the world. The Democrats and Republicans are both imperialist parties and that is why we must organize independently of them.
At home, Trump intensified his anti-immigrant agenda with the deployment of Operation Metro Surge, which brought 3,000 ICE agents to terrorize and detain immigrant communities in Minnesota. Just days after the attack against Venezuela, on January 7, ICE agents murdered legal observer Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. Shortly thereafter, they killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti. In response, the workers and community members of Minneapolis and St. Paul rose up in rage. They had already been organizing intricate networks of solidarity and mutual aid, organizing grocery delivery for impacted families, safe passage to and from school for students, and patrols that tracked ICE agents.
After the murders, the resistance reached a boiling point. On January 23, and again on January 30, the cities were shut down with a day of “no work, no school, no shopping,” with an important recognition of the centrality of the working class and the desire for a general strike infusing a new passion into the immigrant rights movement. Students had a critical role to play as well. In Minnesota and around the country, students (from elementary schoolers to university students) staged walkouts and protests in defiance of the violence against their families and classmates. The incredible resistance forged in Minneapolis continues to inspire the world.
Trump’s attacks heightened even further when, in February, the U.S. and Israel launched a joint imperialist war on Iran, beginning with the bombing of a school in Minab, which killed nearly 200 schoolchildren. In March, the U.S. and Israel devastated the Middle East, killing thousands in Iran and Lebanon. The war has also demonstrated the incoherence of the U.S. political project, and revealed its fundamental weakness. Yet, its devastation ravages on as fragile ceasefires hang in a delicate balance. Although the war is wildly unpopular and anti-war sentiment is strong, as we saw in the massive demonstrations on No Kings Day, we have not yet seen this energy translated into a powerful anti-war movement that we need to challenge Trump with class independent methods.
Here at CUNY, we have been fighting for the reinstatement of the Fired Four — and in an amazing victory for the movement, three of the four fired adjuncts have been reinstated. But, there is still one adjunct faculty member who has been unjustly denied the return of her job. We demand the end of this McCarthyist attack, and demand the reinstatement of the Fired Fourth!
This zine also includes a wonderful contribution around the slogan of “full rights for immigrants.” This demand is one that honors the struggles in Minneapolis, & calls for Abolish ICE, but also for more.
We don’t just want a return to the way the system was before ICE. We don’t support the deportation machine under the Democrats, with a “kinder” facade, but continued brutality against undocumented people. We want full and equal rights for each & every one of our immigrant neighbors and community members. At CUNY, this means equal opportunities for immigrant and international students. We want a politics that puts forward the world we want, not just the one we don’t.
To fight political repression, imperialism, and the ICE terror waged against our neighbors, students, and classmates, we need an internationalist answer. In that spirit, we include internationalist greetings from our comrades in Venezuela, who against all odds are fighting for class independent anti-imperialism in the face of U.S. subjugation, & from our student comrades in Chile, who are organizing from the universities against the Far Right government of José Antonio Kast (an important example for us here!). More than ever, we need to reject the borders that separate us & unite with the students and youth across the globe. We need to reach beyond the daily limits imposed on us by capitalism to unite, too, with workers & faculty. From the heart of imperialism, we are organizing in active solidarity in the belly of the beast with the students and workers in Iran, Lebanon, & Latin America.
CUNY students have a special role to play in all of this. We have the power and creativity to organize the student movement, in all of its strength, to fight for our smallest and our largest demands.CUNY workers: faculty and staff have an important role to play too, organizing in our unions to use the power of labor to fight for these demands and to unite with students to fight.
This zine was organized by members of Left Voice who work and study at CUNY, as well as students and workers who are not in a group. Left Voice is a Trotskyist group and publication, which has groups in 14 countries around the world organizing in the labor movement & student movement and fighting for international socialism.
On this May Day, we present this zine as a space for analysis and aspirations for the world we want to build. If this zine speaks to you, please join us in contributing to the next edition. We dedicate these pages to watering the garden of our ideas, as internationalist students committed to fighting U.S. imperialism and ICE, for the future of our struggles to come.
Email us at anticapitalistzine@gmail.com.
The post YNUC AntiCapitalist Zine: Issue 3 appeared first on Left Voice.
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