Robert Reiss has been camping out at Occupy Wall Street since it took root at Zuccotti Park in September. At first, he slept on nothing more than newspaper without a sleeping bag. Every day he’s made at least one new sign to display, with more than 80 to date. His sign above was getting lots of attention on Fri., Oct. 14, when the feeling at Zuccotti was euphoric after police backed off plans to selectively clear the park that morning to allow for its cleaning. “I thought this up 20 years ago,” Reiss explained of the placard, happily adding of the Tao, “It can never go down.” A self-described “scholar and magician,” he used to contribute to the now-defunct New York Sun’s Knickerbocker nightlife column. His grandparents, both artists, met in bohemian Greenwich Village. One of his early signs responded to conditions at Zuccotti, specifically, the occupiers’ inability to get port-o-potties: “Hell no, We can’t go!” A Smithsonian representative took his first sign — “F.D.R.’s social democracy vs. Obama’s neoliberal economics” — for the museum’s “Reform and Radical Politics” collection. “All I want is the completion of F.D.R.’s New Deal,” Reiss stated. “In a word — Denmark. That’s not utopia.”
Lincoln Anderson
