On a cloudy Saturday afternoon, the Los Angeles central public library bustled with nearly 100 people making zines, small, DIY magazines made out of a single piece of paper. There was folding, laughing and helping with cuts. Titles like “Narcan 101,” “Free Palestine,” and “An American Zine,” filled with illustrations and tips, lined a table down the hall.
While this may sound like a scene from the 1980s or 1990s – when zines were popular as a countercultural form of expression – this was a workshop in modern-day Los Angeles, where immigration raids and federal threats have left residents restless and scared.
Zines have made a resurgence in recent months as communities seek to share information, such as how to protect one another from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or how to resist the Trump administration outside “No Kings” protests. Just this week, 404 Media announced it is printing a 16-page zine that includes their reporting on ICE. People of all ages, from all regions, are making, printing and distributing zines on the streets, in libraries and at local gathering spots.
Zine-makers and enthusiasts say that people are likely embracing the pen-and-paper medium again due to social media censorship, surveillance, doxing and the alleged suppression of certain topics on algorithms.
“There’s a freedom people are craving because they’re feeling so constrained, surveilled and, frankly, threatened in so many other spheres that exist,” said Mariame Kaba, the co-founder of the Black Zine Fair in Brooklyn, who has been making zines since the 1980s. “You can print it cheaply, copy it, and make it into something, then you can give them out by the thousands to people in your community. There’s no barrier to entry, and that makes a difference.”
In particular, Kaba pointed to Brooklyn illustrator Megan Piontkowski’s series of “How to Report ICE” zines, a simple black-and-white one-page pdf document that requires four folds and a cut in the middle to aid folding. This zine has gone viral on Bluesky and Google Drive, where Piontkowski houses over 70 versions of her pamphlet in English and Spanish with localized rapid response hotlines and resources for cities and states across the US. She makes these zines in her spare time – fielding dozens of requests for other locations – to use her art to lend support.
“I really hate feeling powerless when horrible things are happening around me,” said Piontkowski, who drew inspiration from Kaba to make the zine. “It’s something I can do, and it’s also something other people can do. If they’re very vulnerable, ill, on a visa, or have a small child and they can’t protest, they can still fold some zines. You could do it at home, and hand them out to your friends or people you know at the grocery store or cafe.”
Zine-folding parties have also become popular in recent months. After ICE launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago in September, resident Emily Hilleren saw local social media posts where people packaged whistles with the Pilsen Arts and Community House’s zine about warding off ICE, called “Form a Crowd, Stay Loud.” Hilleren started gathering friends at a local bar called Nighthawk to fold the zines and pair them with whistles. Soon, the bar promoted the events via social media, and other Chicago bars began asking Hilleren to host folding parties for them. She’s hosted seven events around the city – most to capacity – and has helped people organize two others.
“People have seen the whistle kits and zines in person, recognize it’s a good, helpful thing and they see the opportunity to contribute to it,” she said. “The social aspect of it has been really attractive as well. Everyone I’ve talked to says: ‘I have to do something. I can’t just sit home, looking at my phone and reading all the bad news. I have to get out there, be with people, and do something tangible.’”
Zines have always been inherently social and political, since they began as “fanzines” centered on science fiction in the 1930s, with the first known being The Comet. Fanzines shared opinions and views that were often expressed in letters to the editor that publications rejected.
“Science fiction is a very political fiction, because it’s imagining different worlds and new worlds, and so the crossover to politics happens pretty early,” said New York University media and culture professor Stephen Duncombe, author of the book Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. “Zines started out as talking back to mass culture, and part of what people want to talk back to mass culture is about politics.”
In the 1980s, during the punk rock movement, zines had their “second birth”, according to Duncombe, and it gave rise to the “perzine,” or personal zine of relayed experiences and opinions. Around this time, zines became more social – before social media – with review publications, like Fact Sheet Five by Mike Gunderloy, which catalogued hundreds of zines, becoming a place where people could learn about and request zines, discovering new ones in the communities with which they identified, such as queer, riot grrrl and Afro-Punk.
For example, Duncombe recalled an old letter published in the queer zine Homocore from a gay teen boy who lived in Montana and loved hardcore music. “For that kid, this is pre-internet, and he lived in the world of country and western machismo straight guys,” Duncombe said. “This [zine] was like a world just opened up for him, and zines have always had that role for people.”
According to the zine community, the medium has always sought to inform the public. Back in the 1990s, Kaba recalled reading zines that spread then little-known information about the abortion medication mifepristone and herbal abortions.
“All of a sudden, through zines, you learned how to self-manage your own abortion,” she said. “Every generation has the information that is relevant to their cultural space that they’re in, and zines are always going to speak to that, because those folks who are on the margins are looking for ways to connect.”
And zines have long been a safe space for marginalized communities to express themselves. Nova Community Arts in Los Angeles hosts a weekly “Queer Art Hang” workshop, where LGBTQ+ folks can make, fold, and trade zines together, in person, without surveillance or bullying on social media.
“Being able to sit down in front of a piece of paper in a safe space, amongst friends and community members, is something that is honestly so healing for queer people, who have experienced, all of our lives, people telling us what we’re supposed to do, what things we’re supposed to put out there, and what we’re supposed to look like,” said Nova co-director Rosie Mayer.
Though people often associate zines with Gen X, younger generations – who have grown up with social media and cellphones – are turning to zines to inform and for solace amid the current political landscape. After ICE raids and protests erupted in Los Angeles earlier this year, 16-year-old Victoria Echerikuahperi hosted a healing zine workshop for raid victims and has continued to lead youth zine events around the city under her stage name, DJ Mariposa.
“There’s no right or wrong way to do it, and people could get their creativity out,” she said. “A lot of people were thanking me and were happy, because, yes, writing about political things is heavy, but it’s also like a release, knowing that this zine could be helpful to someone, or this could open someone’s eyes.”
