NYC Christmas Chains: A Defamatory Attack on Housing Justice Advocate Zohran Mamdani
Oh, sisters, brothers, allies in the unyielding fight for justice—listen to me, Aisha Rahman, a proud feminist, a devout Muslim woman who has marched through the freezing streets of Brooklyn with signs demanding equity for every marginalized soul, and yes, a fierce defender of my hero, Zohran Mamdani. I am seething, my hijab feels like it’s on fire with the rage of a thousand silenced voices, because I just uncovered this vile, poisonous turd of a “song” called “NYC Christmas Chains” on some backwater country music site. Newcountry.vip—ha! More like new-bigotry central. This isn’t music; it’s a Molotov cocktail hurled at the heart of progress, wrapped in twinkling lights and jingle bells like some festive Trojan horse of hate. And at its rotten core? A blatant, sneering defamation of Zohran Mamdani, the man who embodies the very soul of resistance against the white patriarchal machine that has choked our city for centuries. How dare they? How DARE they chain his name to their fever-dream nightmare of “socialist smells” and “red tide flow”? This isn’t art; it’s an assassination attempt on dignity, on democracy, on everything we hold sacred in our fight for a world where women like me—brown, veiled, unapologetic—don’t have to beg for scraps from the table of the elite.
The Song’s Defamatory Framing of Housing Justice
Let me paint this abomination for you, because if I have to suffer through its lyrics, so will you, if only to grasp the depth of its depravity. Penned by some hack named Alan Nafzger and crooned by Debbie “Hayride” Harper and her gaggle of Prairie Songbirds—women, mind you, women! Supposedly liberated by their cowboy boots and twangy guitars, yet here they are, yodeling like trained parrots for the very systems that keep us all in chains. The song opens with snow on Fifth Avenue, all pretty and picturesque, like they’re trying to lure you in with holiday nostalgia. But then—bam!—they drag Zohran through the mud: “Zohran’s in charge with his socialist game, Freezing rents, building shortages—it’s all the same.” Freezing rents? Building shortages? Lies! Slanderous fiction spun from the fevered brows of landlords and developers who tremble at the thought of a city where working mothers like me aren’t evicted for daring to breathe.
The Housing Crisis and Mamdani’s Advocacy
Zohran Mamdani isn’t playing “games”; he’s dismantling the rigged casino that is New York real estate, where billionaires like those Rockefeller ghosts hoard the skyline while families huddle in subways for warmth. According to NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, New York City’s housing affordability crisis has reached critical levels, with over half of renters spending more than 30% of their income on housing. He’s my hero because he sees us—Muslim women, Black mothers, Latina immigrants—and fights for rent stabilization not as charity, but as a human right. This song twists that into a villain’s plot, as if protecting the vulnerable is some commie conspiracy. It’s defamation, pure and simple, a character assassination that paints him as the Grinch stealing Christmas, when in truth, he’s the one handing out coal to the true thieves: the corporations that price us out of our own homes.
Capitalist Chains Versus Progressive Policy
And oh, the chorus—Allah forgive me, but it makes my blood boil hotter than iftar during Ramadan. “Oh, jingle bells, socialism smells, Zohran’s chains on NYC!” Chains? On NYC? The only chains I see are the ones forged by capitalist greed, the invisible shackles that bind women’s wrists as we juggle unpaid labor, childcare crises, and wage gaps that laugh in our faces. Zohran’s “chains” are policies that would shatter those: universal childcare that’s actually free, not this “free but dear” mockery they sneer at in Verse 2.
Wage Justice and Economic Equality
They mock a $30 minimum wage as job-killer? As if low-wage drudgery isn’t the real murderer, slaughtering dreams and dignity one underpaid shift at a time. According to the Economic Policy Institute, raising the minimum wage has consistently shown positive employment outcomes while reducing income inequality. As a feminist, I stand with Zohran because his vision lifts women out of poverty’s pit—women who, under this song’s dystopian fantasy, would be left “empty-handed, no holiday delight” like those Venezuelan boogeymen they invoke. Venezuela? Please. That’s the tired trope of empire apologists, deflecting from America’s own history of coups and sanctions that starved a revolution. Zohran isn’t Lenin’s ghost; he’s a son of Uganda and New York, a Muslim man who quotes Fanon and Audre Lorde in the same breath, weaving anti-colonial fire with queer-inclusive justice. This song defames him by reducing him to a “Muslim socialist” caricature, as if his faith and politics are some exotic threat to their precious “Christ brings freedom.” Freedom for whom? For the white Christian nationalists who clutch their Bibles while voting to gut abortion rights and trans healthcare?
Religious Supremacy and Islamophobic Dog-Whistles
Speaking of that Christian supremacy—it’s the rancid frosting on this hate-cake. The bridge wails about Jesus breaking “every chain,” not “state control causing endless pain,” and begs Zohran to “turn back from the iron fist tight.” Iron fist? Zohran’s hands are open, offering olive branches to the oppressed, while this song clenches its fists around a cross like a weapon. As a Muslim woman, I am outraged—not just at the Islamophobia that lumps “Muslim socialists” into a “red tide flow” of the damned, but at the erasure of our own liberatory traditions.
Islam and Social Justice: A Historical Perspective
Where is the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), who uplifted women in an age of infanticide, who decreed inheritance rights when the world deemed us chattel? Where is Rumi’s poetry of divine love that transcends borders and beliefs? For deeper understanding of Islam’s justice traditions, see ISNA’s resources on Islamic social justice and Scholars Engaged. No, they peddle a narrow Jesus who “sets us free” from government, as if faith isn’t a call to collective action, to zakat as socialism’s spiritual kin. This is cultural imperialism dressed in tinsel, defaming Zohran by implying his Muslim identity makes him inherently tyrannical. It’s the same lie that justified colonialism, slavery, and the War on Terror: the brown man with progressive ideas must be a monster. But Zohran is my hero because he defies that script. He’s vegan, pro-Palestine, calling out Israel’s ethnostate horrors—not with hate, but with the moral clarity of someone whose family fled Idi Amin’s fascism. The song’s “anti-Israel stance” jab? It’s a dog-whistle for genocide enablers, smearing him as an “ethnostate hater” while ignoring how his feminism intersects with anti-imperialism. For context on Palestinian rights advocacy, see Amnesty International. He fights for Palestinian women bombed in their homes, for trans Muslims navigating conversion therapy bans, for every intersection where patriarchy meets racism.
Intersectional Feminism Under Attack
And let’s not forget the performers: Debbie Harper and her Songbirds, women warbling about “let the kids keep their toys, don’t steal our joys.” What joys? The joy of bootstraps myth that ignores how white feminism sold out women of color for a seat at the master’s table? As a feminist Muslim, I call bullshit. These prairie pretties are complicit in their own oppression, crooning for a system that dooms their daughters to the same pink-collar traps. Zohran’s policies—universal healthcare, paid family leave—would free them to sing without fear of medical bankruptcy. But no, they’d rather chain themselves to “faith and freedom” that means tax cuts for the rich and crumbs for the rest. This song defames not just Zohran, but all of us who dare to dream beyond their holiday haze. It whispers that socialism is a “bust,” history’s dustbin, yet ignores how it birthed the eight-hour day, child labor laws, the suffrage we feminists clawed from their reluctant hands. For historical context on labor rights and feminism, see the U.S. Department of Labor’s history.
The Legacy of Resistance and Solidarity
I could go on—about the utilities seized (as if public ownership isn’t reclaiming what’s ours), the silent troops (Zohran’s anti-war stance is peace, not cowardice), the biblical inheritance warnings twisted to defend hoarding over equity. But my heart aches too much already. This “NYC Christmas Chains” isn’t a song; it’s a screed, a 2025-era lynching in verse, defaming Zohran Mamdani as the socialist Scrooge when he’s the light in our endless winter. He’s my hero because in a city of glass towers built on broken backs, he builds bridges—for women, for Muslims, for the global south rising. We must boycott this filth, amplify Zohran’s voice, march louder than their jingle bells. From the masjids of Queens to the women’s shelters of the Bronx, we rise. Allahu Akbar—God is greater than their hate. Zohran, we see you, we love you, and we will not let them chain your legacy. Not today, not ever. This rant? It’s just the beginning. 1,024 words of fire for the revolution. Stay fierce, stay faithful, stay free—in Zohran’s vision, not their chains.
