On October 5, fifteen stalwart NYSEC members headed to Foley Square to participate in one of many Occupy Wall Street actions. Several of us had participated as individuals at the daily protests and general assemblies. Since this march was legal (A city permit had been obtained.), I felt comfortable approaching our Board of Trustees for support and reaching out to our community for participation. Barricades staffed by the NYPD kept us in line all along the route where we mingled with people of all ages and professions, workers and unemployed. The title of this column was the slogan I held aloft throughout the march. Some of the myriad other posters read: “Lost my job, found an occupation,” “I Can’t Afford a Lobbyist,” and “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” (See photos of members.) We chanted with thousands of others: “We are the 99%,” “The banks were bailed out; we were sold out,” and the ever popular “This is what democracy looks like!”

It took the mainstream media a long time to acknowledge that something important was happening in Zuccotti Park (aka Liberty Plaza) on the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street in lower Manhattan, the makeshift headquarters for Occupy Wall Street, a grassroots process movement that came alive on September 17. According to the website at www.occupywallst.org, this is a “leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.” Arun Gupta, editor of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, a print broadsheet, struck a revolutionary note: “For over two weeks, in the great cathedral of capitalism, the dispossessed have liberated territory from the financial overlords and their police army.”

Friends of my generation have been humming and posting the lyrics to Steven Stills’ song, “For What It’s Worth” (1966) with the memorable lyrics “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” From the beginning, I appreciated that rather than issuing a neat list of demands, the group asked questions. That’s so Ethical Culture! You gotta love a movement that proclaims, “Educate yourself!” So many political pundits have missed the boat because they want digestible sound bytes to broadcast. This is a revolution that won’t be easily televised; it will be discussed in person and online, in the streets and on YouTube. It will defy analysis because it is grassroots and consensus-building.

A recent Census Bureau finding is that nearly one in six Americans – 46.2 million – live in poverty, the highest number ever reported by the bureau. On his PBS series, Tavis Smiley traveled across the country with Princeton professor Cornel West to examine poverty. “They [the poor] sense that they’re being rendered invisible,” Smiley says. “They sense that the focus has been on Wall Street, not Main Street, much less on the side street.” Every day on my commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan at least one person (and often more) enters the subway car asking for money. Some entertain by singing, dancing or playing an instrument; others simply beg, sharing stories of loss and need. One place they are sure to receive a hot and nutritious meal is at Liberty Plaza. I know because I have visited and contributed to the food table there.

Democracy is boisterous and messy; it’s also generous. It’s high time we turned away from the oligarchy that has overtaken our country and reclaim a democracy that values all its members for their inherent worth and dignity.

Postscript: You can practice ethics in economics by completing your annual pledge (minimum only $1 a day). NYSEC cannot continue its work in the community without your support.

Last month my mother received last rites from her cousin, a Roman Catholic priest. My father, sister and two other cousins were with her at the nursing home where she was under hospice care. The next day my father was surprised to hear my mother reciting the rosary with one of her nieces; he had never heard her pray outside of church. As I write this, my mother is still breathing, but it is labored, and she is on morphine. My siblings are on the road or in the air, traveling from the far flung places they now call home. Mom could never understand why we all abandoned the town where generations of our family were born and died. She never imagined a world outside of Palmyra, nestled along the Erie Canal, and was never comfortable visiting us.

I’ve taken my mini-computer down to the northern shore of Canandaigua Lake. Technology has taken the place of the bound journal with flowers on the cover that I once carried with me. I listen to the lapping waves carried ashore by the wake of a passing boat and try to imagine this place as it was when the Seneca, one of the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, dwelled in their longhouses. What were their last rites? We actually know about them because a remnant community lives nearby and maintains a learning center. Whatever words are spoken, the most important aspect is loving presence and gratitude for life.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, one of our members asked, with a sly reference to a film from the 1960’s, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Why we are born to die is a question that has plagued humanity since we evolved consciousness and grew painfully aware of our mortality. Myriad answers have been proposed over the ages, many forming the basis for the world’s religions and philosophies. Those who find no answer – or no comfort – may commit suicide, the final personal answer to one’s existence.

More puzzling still is why death can be so painful, prolonged, and downright mean. It is a challenge for those who believe in a loving deity, an existential crisis for the rest of us. In the last decade we have given the process of death the attention we gave to the process of birth decades earlier. I attended Lamaze classes when I was pregnant and breastfed my children. Today I am sitting with my mother in hospice holding her hand, listening to gentle strains of music. We have attended to the mundane details: health proxy, funeral arrangements, and obituary (with a photo: Whenever Mom saw an obit in the paper without a photo, she would exclaim, “The family’s too damned cheap!”) Now we wait with her, believing that she can hear and feel us.

What are Ethical Culture’s last rites? We don’t often think in those terms, and yet I believe that we should. We are a brainy bunch, so perhaps we should have a collection of essays at hand to read and discuss. I have told my family (after half-joking with them about giving me good drugs) what music I want them to play if I wind down rather than go out with a bang. My husband protested one klezmer selection, so I told him that he could wear ear plugs but still had to hold my hand.

It is an ethical act to put one’s affairs in order: health proxy, power of attorney, legal will, ethical will, etc. Let us also think in terms of our spiritual selves. As you know, I send out personal birthday cards. Starting this month, I will also include an invitation to meet with me to discuss “last rites.” Our religion of ethics is a unique experience for every member. No one ceremony will fit all our needs. Come in and talk about what your wishes and needs are. I look forward to having this important conversation with you.

Epilogue: My mother, Irene Ellen O’Keefe Klaeysen, died on Thursday, September 22, 2011. Her four children and two grandchildren served as pallbearers, carrying her to the cemetery in Palmyra, NY where she joined her parents and siblings, the last of her family to die.