Bead 17: Coup d' éTom, Part 1

Jessica Morse has lived in more third-world countries than most Americans have lived in states.  Fresh out of college, there was Ethiopia, where she worked for a famine relief NGO.  Then there was a gig in Iraq with the U.S. Agency for International Development.  In India, while at the U.S. Pacific Command, she was tasked with strengthening the U.S. / India defense relationship.  And in Nepal, she followed her own vision, helping Nepalese women launch careers as mountain guides. 

These days, Jessica is back home in California's 4th Congressional District.  She hopes to capture it from everyone's least-favorite Tom when it's up for grabs in 2018.  She is a better choice than Tom McClintock for myriad reasons. Take her extensive public service.  Take her emphasis on humanitarian issues and diplomacy.  Take her work at the State Department, where she managed the multi-billion dollar foreign aid budget.  And take her place of residence.  Jessica Morse lives among her potential constituents, rather than in a gated community outside of Sacramento.  In fact, Jessica presently lives among her potential constituents to the tune of their guest bedrooms and couches.  She is roaming the district, giving talks, meeting people.  What's more, she is listening.  And for those of us who have lost our voices pleading with the brick wall that is our incumbent congressman, that is perhaps Jessica's most shining asset.

I met Jessica in a bucolic backyard outside of Coarsegold, California.  She had been invited to speak at the monthly gathering of our local peace group.  There against a backdrop of horses, turkeys, and an emphatic parrot, and with Coarsegold Creek pooling and pulsing around boulders just down the hill, Jessica addressed us.

She started with a speech.  This took me somewhat aback, as the evening had been so informal up to that point.  We had all been drinking wine and snacking.  I had been sitting on a boulder, watching our hosts' small dog play in the creek.  There were kittens wandering around everywhere.  And then--a speech?

But Jessica's speech was as real and energizing as the springtime evening air around us.  She told us where she came from, and credited the whos and whats that made her.  She showed us how her values differed from those purportedly espoused by Tom (but suspected by many of us to just be stage props for his personal gain).  And she told stories that defined the contour lines of her character.  One of my favorites was from her time in Iraq.  She went for a run in what she had been told was a "safe zone," and promptly found herself surrounded by a dozen armed militants who intended to kidnap her.  She scrambled around in her head for what to do, and ended up sprinting directly at them--as if it were they, and not her, who were about to be taken prisoner.  They were startled, and let her go.

Jessica Morse at the Oakhurst Area for Peace's June 14 gathering.  Photo courtesy of Matt Henderson.

By the end of the speech, I knew Jessica to be courageous, innovative, and committed to the greater good.  Moreover, I liked her.  We had things in common; for example, our predilection for long-distance walking.  She once hiked 500 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, covering the entire length of California's 4th Congressional District, and then some.  I once hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.  I never thought of my backpacking credentials as something that would strike a chord with any of my elected officials.  And yet here she was, talking about the High Sierra the way I knew it:  as a place to live, and cherish, and move through slowly.

Jessica's Q-and-A session impressed me even further.  One of the first questions came from a man who had driven several hours, from a town at the southern end of the district, to be here.  His was actually several questions in one, and they weren't softballs.  He was fed up with our government's foreign policy blunders and military overreach.  He wanted to know why we had 800 military bases around the world.  He wanted to know how we had managed to mess up Iraq so badly as to foment the rise of ISIS.  He wanted to know a number of other things that I don't remember now.

But Jessica remembered everything.  She addressed his questions thoughtfully, and in order.  She provided a detailed summary of our government's errors in Iraq, linking them to the present-day unrest.  She discussed our bloated military budget, and made suggestions for cuts that could be made.  And she laid her own, clearly-defined opinions out on the table for us to look at, rather than sticking to the safe, vague rhetoric that is the domain of so many modern politicians. 

Later in the Q-and-A, one of my fellow peace group members tipped Jessica off that "this is a Bernie crowd," and asked Jessica how she could help us reconcile the fact that she had volunteered on the Clinton campaign.  Again, Jessica did not disappoint.  She gave a good reason for her support of Hillary; namely, that she had worked under her at the State Department, and had been impressed with her approach for promoting democracy in Burma.  She didn't apologize for endorsing Hillary over Bernie, and she certainly didn't backpedal.  At the same time, she highlighted those Bernie planks that especially resonated with her; for example, free college tuition.

Also in the Q-and-A, we learned that Jessica is trilingual.  She once had the opportunity to employ all three languages simultaneously.  While in Nepal, she met a lesbian couple from Spain who had just finished a trek.  She chatted with them for a while in Spanish before noticing a little girl hanging around.  She began speaking with her in Nepalese.  Instantly, the women were exclaiming, beside themselves.  They explained that the girl was their newly-adopted daughter with whom they couldn't communicate.  They only spoke Spanish.  The little girl only spoke Nepalese.  Jessica spoke both.

For the next hour or so, Jessica helped the couple get to know their daughter, and vice versa.  The little girl knew that she had been adopted, and was excited to go live with her new family in Spain.  For foods, she liked to eat lentils and rice.  The women told their daughter how happy they were to have found her.  And Jessica put her English-speaking brain in the middle, and did her best to fold the gratitude, the shy joy of the moment, from one language into the next.

At the end of the Q-and-A, we gave Jessica Morse a noisy round of applause.  The parrot joined in, squawking its approval.  And then the evening circled back on itself, into more wine and snacking.  Jessica lingered, and spoke with anyone that wanted to.  I went up to her with two burning questions that I hadn't gotten to ask in the Q-and-A.  First, did she live in District?  (The answer was yes, and that was when I learned about the couch-surfing.)  Second, did she support single-payer health care, as in the bill that was currently making headway in the California State Legislature?  (The answer was yes again.)

And then we talked backpacking.  Her pack is a Deuter; mine is a Gregory.  We love all the same places.  I ventured that we must have crossed paths at some point, along the John Muir Trail or a quieter Sierran side route.  And we agreed to find ourselves in the mountains together at some point in the future--perhaps with a fundraiser hike up one of the 4th District's fine peaks in the Ansel Adams Wilderness or Yosemite.

California's 4th Congressional District is its own spectacular world.  It only makes sense that it should be represented by someone who has experienced it from top to bottom.  By someone who wants to protect it, to keep it clean and livable.  By someone who cares deeply for people, and most especially for the people of the 4th.  And, of course, by someone who calls our District home.