Take what thou hast and give it to the poor.
–attributed to some longhair commie freak
The letter was sent out May 1, 1984, to the New York Times-News-Post, the Chicago Sun, the Los Angeles Times-Free Press, NEC News, CBS News, the White House, Mae Brussel, the Berkeley Barb, KPFA, ABC News, the London Times, Zodiac News Service, The Christian Science Monitor, the Archdioceses of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and St. Louis, the Church of Scientology, Mark Lane, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory, Chase Manhattan Bank, the Bad Ass Bugle, the Nihilist Anarchist Horde, Norman Mailer, and 237 miscellaneous other institutions and celebrities. POE wanted to be sure that their message would get out to the general public with the minimum of distortion by the Establishment.
The letter said:
May God forgive us. May history judge as charitably.
We have placed tactical nuclear bombs in over 1,700 locations throughout the United States. The targets are all enemies of the people: large banks, multinational corporations, government facilities. We will trigger one of these bombs at noon tomorrow, somewhere in the eastern United States, to demonstrate that we are not bluffing.
All of the other nuclear bombs will be triggered in succession until our demands are met. If any attempt is made to apprehend and arrest us-any attempt at all- all the remaining bombs will be detonated at once.
We demand:
That President Furbish Lousewart immediately confiscate all fortunes above one million dollars;
That this money, which we calculate makes a sum of approximately three trillion dollars, be distributed at once to the forty million families, who are, according to the government's own standards, living below the poverty line, so that each poor family receives $75,000;
That all government money presently invested in weapons of war and preparations for war be immediately redirected to improving schools, homes, and hospitals in poor neighborhoods, so as to make them fit for human beings;
That George Washington be removed from the dollar bill and replaced by Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse to remind people forever of the idiocy of worshiping money.
A final word of warning: We have been working on this project for sixteen years and have the full capacity to do all that we say. The Revolution of Lowered Expectations has been a monopolist's heaven and a poor people's hell. We intend to change that.