Shellyne Rodriguez, the former CUNY professor who was filmed holding a machete to the neck of a New York Post reporter, has launched a new venture: a “speakeasy tattoo parlor” offering communist-inspired body art to a radical clientele.
Rodriguez, 46 at the time, was fired from Hunter College in 2023 after footage showed her confronting Post reporter Reuven Fenton with a machete and threatening to “chop him up.” She now works as a tattoo artist.
Her business, Comrade Comadre, describes itself on Instagram as a “speakeasy tattoo parlor and community library.”
The account features an array of radical designs, including red stars and sickles inspired by Soviet imagery.
Photos show Rodriguez tattooing a quarter-sized, five-pointed red star onto the right arm of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, a 76-year-old CUNY Graduate School professor and advocate for prison abolition.
Gilmore’s husband, Craig, a 58-year-old community organizer, received a black-and-gray sickle tattoo above his wrist, resembling the symbol used on the former Soviet flag.
Manhattan Institute investigative analyst Stu Smith said the pair’s connection to CUNY was unsurprising.
“CUNY has an unchecked level of radicalism there,” Smith said. “There’s so many issues with CUNY. It makes me sad that what should be a gem of New York City is tarnished by these activist professors. It’s really sad.”
Rodriguez, now 48, has also posted images of tattoos she gave herself, including the Arabic word “sumud,” meaning steadfastness. The term is also associated with a Gaza flotilla linked by critics to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In another design, she tattooed a black-and-white portrait of Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci on a man’s left arm.
One customer received a black-and-white stretch of barbed wire on his right arm, just below the elbow, representing what was described as “Palestinian land defense.”
Rodriguez also promotes books from the parlor’s library, including “In Defense of Looting” by Vicky Osterweil.
The collection also includes “The Radical Politics Coloring Book” and “Anarchy Explained to Children.”
Rodriguez’s name did not appear in the city database of licensed tattoo artists. The Health Department did not immediately provide information about her licensing status.
She was fired from Cooper Union in 2024 over antisemitic social media posts and is currently listed as a part-time faculty member at Parsons School of Design at The New School.
Rodriguez was awarded $407,000 by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs to create a 23-foot brick, steel and terracotta statue decorated with Black Power fists in The Bronx. The work was unveiled in November 2025.
Rodriguez received $81,400 for constructing the statue and said she conceived it at a time when “the violent foundations of the United States was collectively being called into question.”
