We, the Occupy Wall Street people, hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men, women and transgendered — and any other human who is able to elude the
tyranny of work for a couple of weeks — are created equal. We gather to be free
not of tyranny, but of responsibility and college tuitions. Prudence, indeed,
will dictate that a government long established and a nation long prosperous be
changed for light and transient causes. So let our demands* be submitted to a
candid world.

First, we are imbued with as many inalienable rights as a few thousand
college kids and a gaggle of borderline celebrities can concoct, among them a
guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment and immediate
across-the-board debt forgiveness — even if that debt was acquired taking on a
mortgage with a 4.1 percent interest rate and no money down, which, we admit, is
a pretty sweet deal in historical context . . .

. . . but down with the modern gilded age!

We demand that a Master of Fine Arts in musical theater writing, with a minor
in German, become an immutable human right, because education is crucial and
rich people can afford to fund unemployment checks until we find jobs or in
perpetuity, whichever comes first.

We demand a minimum wage of $10 . . . no, make it $20. We earned it. And we
demand the end of "profiteering," because there is no better way to end
joblessness than stopping the growth of capital.

We demand the institution of direct democracy, because if a bunch of people
say it's OK, it's OK. And everyone deserves to have his or her voice heard.
Except Mr. Moneybags, who we demand stop contributing his own money to
candidates we disagree with.

We demand the end to bailouts and corporate subsidies, unless we're talking
about companies that feature sunflowers or sun rays in their logos, because
that's the kind of morally gratifying institution we approve of, and thus, they
should totally be fast-tracked and bailed out with your money.

We demand the end to a corrupt Wall Street because banks hold too much power.
We demand that government consolidate authority so that elected officials can
make prudent choices for us. All that cash in banks was printed by the war god
Mars and has nothing to do with the voluntary deposits by ordinary Americans, so
we do not consider this theft.

We demand the end to corporate censorship, because if we can't force private
news organizations to run the types of stories with which we agree, there can't
be a healthy democracy. So actually, we demand the end of all corporate news
organizations in the name of free speech.

We demand the end to health profiteering, because everyone knows that all the
wondrous and lifesaving advances in modern medicine were invented in the
People's Democratic Republic of Laos. Smart people work for the good of
humanity, not because they're greedy.

We demand these rights because of the mass injustice of being able to freely
protest against racism and corporatism without any real fear of imprisonment in
the most diverse city on Earth. And to the wiseguy who walked by the other day
and claimed that I'd be writing this manifesto with a quill pen on parchment
paper if it weren't for capitalism, we have two words for you: Koch brothers.
Think about it.

This is the fifth communique from the 99.9 percent. We are occupying Wall
Street, and we're not going home until it gets really cold.

* These grievances are not all-inclusive.