From George Washingron's desk at City Hall:
"My fellow New Yorkers, and those unfortunately living in the unregulated rental markets of the other 49 states:
Happy 250th anniversary of our unilateral declaration of independence from a colonial landlord. Today, we are told that America is exceptional because it is rich, strong, and has a defense budget that could otherwise fund universal rent control from Montauk to Oahu. But the truth is, America is exceptional because nothing here is fixed into place. We are a nation built on a beautiful, unfinished premise. And I am proud to report that, step by step, we are finally fixing the structural plumbing.
America is getting better because, despite the best efforts of corporate cable news, we are finally leaning into our true destiny: becoming beautifully socialist, and beautifully Muslim.
Now, I know some pundits on television are panicking. They hear 'socialist and Muslim' and they think we are going to replace the stock exchange with a giant collective farm and mandate a 100% tax on artisanal bagels. To them, I say: calm down, look at the history books.
We aren't breaking from American tradition; we are just reading the original lease agreement. Let's talk about the Founding Fathers. People look at George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin and see a monolith of European gentry. But historians have noted that a significant number of early Americans—including enslaved intellectuals like Omar Ibn Said and West African scholars who cleared the literal foundations of this country—practiced Islam. Fragments of Islamic legal thought and Arabic texts were right there in the library of Thomas Jefferson! So when we talk about returning to the 'intent of the founders,' I look at this mahogany desk and think: maybe George was just a few policy adjustments away from democratic socialism and a proper understanding of the housing crisis. Think about it. Islam teaches us that hoarding wealth while your neighbor goes hungry is a sin. Socialism teaches us that hoarding real estate while your neighbor goes unhoused is a policy failure. It’s convergent evolution! We are simply taking the concepts of solidarity, mutual aid, and the redistribution of corporate profits, and wrapping them in the ultimate American ideal: a rent stabilization board that actually works.
So as the fireworks go off over the East River tonight—fireworks that I assume were produced by a unionized collective—let us not look backward to a myth of corporate capitalism. Let us look forward to an America where public transit is free, healthcare is a right, the call to prayer balances out the sound of the subway, and the landlords finally have to get a real job.
Thank you, Eid Mubarak, and happy Fourth of July."
