 We're here with Reverend John Pampern, a community legend, a campus and community minister. We talked on the earlier segment about the early years. Now we're going to ask Reverend Pampern about his later years. So, Reverend Pampern, tell me, let's go some highlights. Okay, you talked about growing up. You were an outstanding athlete. You held the state record in a high jump in Wisconsin and you were activist. You worked with Cesar Chavez. Bring us up to the early years. You're a work with, well, I met you for an example. Let's go from here. When I met you and you worked with, I was with NFL legend Jim Brown, the running back, and you came over and you talked with me. So, you were involved in 209-187 against 209, against 207. Those were propositions in California. One was targeting Mexican-Americans like Trump and the other one was targeting all minorities, people of color, affirmative action in 209 and we focused on, was dealing, going battle against Ward Connolly and then Pete Wilson, who was a governor. So, tell us about what led you into activists. You're coming to Davis and some of the highlights, you know, even the Matt Barnes story, right. Well, as I said, we were trained at seminary in those days to be activists without knowing it, actually. And once you go in a big civil rights march, I tell the story about getting to Montgomery. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, and a boot black came up and said, I want to shine your shoes. And I said, well, about the last thing I need right now is a shoe shine. And he said, well, let me do it free. He hadn't looked at me in the eye. And he finished the shoe shine and he said, the place you need to go is Ebenezer Baptist Church, the phone number you're to call is, and he gave the phone number. Then he looked me in the eye and he said, I have waited a lifetime to be able to share that with somebody that was important in the civil rights movement. I, of course, teared up and thought, gee, this is very, very serious. And once you got used to that, you couldn't pass up 209, 187, even to today. Donald Trump. Donald Trump in the football scene. What you learn, I think, is how deep civil rights are for all groups. I was active doing gay counseling when I was first here. And then we did some work with the Asian scene. We did some work with the other groups of minority that were at Davis. And then you begin to have successes with somebody in your program, Francisco Rodriguez, who was with our community program with the police. He became currently the head of the junior college system for the state of California. And he faced in our little police work some of the prejudices that were common at that time. And then I need to just mention, I didn't the other night, but I need to mention that part of the civil rights work at that time was the anti-war work, meaning the war with Vietnam. And I had a officer that was giving me my test for to get into seminary explaining what was wrong with that program in Vietnam and that we wouldn't, we didn't possibly have a chance of winning as to quote him. Of course, I heard that. And he knew that way back then. That was even before the war started. And so some of that is not necessarily anti-military, although you know we have 800 bases around the country, around the world. So we need to cut back, continually need to cut back. We had four people in the military that just got killed, rangers in Nigeria. What are we doing in Nigeria? I mean, well, that's your field. That's your field. Okay, go back to you. But I guess to sum this up is it gives you a perspective of how other people live for the first time. I grew up in an all-white town. The Kennedys came to La Crosse to test whether or not a Catholic could be elected president. And my dad wouldn't let my mom go to Mrs. Kennedy's tea in La Crosse. So continually you see the struggle both with religion and race and how important trying to eradicate racism or sexism, then you find out. I always thought there would be gay marriage. And now there is gay marriage. So there's been some real steps forward in almost every field. And as I said Saturday night, but both Caesar and Martin, Martin Luther King, reading what they wrote during their lifetime is a good start to understanding the struggles for all races and all peoples. Could you predict the rise of Donald Trump, him actually getting elected president of the United States in 2016? I mean, is that something you saw coming in any way, shape or form? I didn't see that coming in 2015 or the day before the election. And in fact, I'm prejudiced on that. I think it was the connection with the Russians that really got him elected. But I couldn't understand people seeing how he could help them in their lives. I just couldn't. Well, his play on blatant racism, the playing the race card in this day and age, after President Barack Obama served two terms. We go from Obama to Trump. We go from the very top, in my opinion, to the very bottom. Explain that and explain also why you think he picks these issues that focus on race, for example, the saluting the flag, kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance. And these athletes are protesting the brutality that African-Americans face. Many killed by the police. We had a student, I mean, we had a teacher at Winn-Eye recently, Wendy Pappas, who was at an assembly and knelt and had a sign and saying, you don't have to agree with anything that we're doing or any sign that we have here and put up Black Lives Matter. And they escort her off campus. Now, she's back at school now. That was on a Friday. I believe she returned to school on Tuesday. But the kind of climate that Trump has created and his base is racist. The KKK, the Nazis, the white supremacists, he couldn't say that these people are wrong. He refused to say he made the equivalent to the people who would protest against them. What's going on in the world right now, particularly in America? Well, us ministers studied theology pretty deeply at seminary and then we try to apply it in the different communities. And the fact that human beings are pretty alienated in their values that happens in history, certain sections of it, more important than others. But we killed 70 million people in four years in the Second World War. Oh, War Two. The Greatest Generation. Yes. And we killed over 10 million in the First World War. And we were at war with our so-called capitalist allies. And we depended on Russia, really, to pull us out there with the German situation. So part of the theology, I was just at a meeting talking about what are the first five years of education meaning. Right, right. But I want to, before you tell that story, I want to get back to the story. When Matt Barnes, the NBA player, he just won an NBA championship with the Golden State Warriors. He was at Del Campo High School. And he had death threats. They had, die, Matt Barnes, die. What would make you go with me to Del Campo High School to work with Matt Barnes and to get him back in school? Because a newspaper reported saying he wasn't in school when he wasn't. Yes. Well, once you've been active in civil rights, pretty hard not to be active. And in the case of Matt, I knew about the sports writer. He was not a good sports writer. And I just thought you and I, and the third friend, ought to go over to the family. He's in South Africa now. Really? Yeah, he's in Durban. So we went there and I remember asking Matt, I said, have you been back in school? Because I didn't think he had. Right. We went to his house first. And I had studied graffiti and hate graffiti. And all of the stuff that was at that restaurant, the school restaurant, qualified as serious graffiti. They wrote all over the school. They said they were going to kill him, basically, threatening his life. And so then we went over to the principal and the principal. I said, you know, you have money in your city budget. You could provide him protection. And they said he's not the president of the United States. Yes. And they said he's not the president of the United States. And what did I say? And you said you're going to think he was the president of some Amazon. Yes. Because we had, by then, cities had, in fact, the guy got elected to the Elk Grove City Council. Yeah, I know you were talking about. I'm trying to remember the name. He was there. He was an African-American policeman. And he's the one that said, but Matt was not. Not the president of the United States. That's the president of the United States. And that's what my reply would be. So, and then, you know, people, I mean, we all forget and act out our racism to some extent. What's going to happen to Trump? What do you think is going to happen? Predict the future. Go and say a year. Is he going to last even a year? I can't picture him. Well, he might last a year. I think he'll be impeached. He'll be impeached, yeah. I think the Republicans will find, there are quite a few turning on him now. And he, now his latest statement is about Puerto Rico. He didn't care about Puerto Rico. We only have two minutes left. And he clearly doesn't care about Puerto Rico. He made very insulting statements about Puerto Rico. It was messed up before the storm. He didn't say that about Florida. He didn't say that about Houston. But this racism, you know, Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany. And I always grew up saying, how in the world could they let this guy get into power? And here Trump comes in after Barack Obama. What does that say about the human condition that he's president? Donald Trump, a blatant racism that Obama was not even born in the United States, is president of the United States right now as we sit here. What does that say about the human condition? Well, it means that we should send the president, Victor Frankel's book from Death Cabin. Man's search for meaning. Yeah. Death Cabin existentialism, man's search for meaning. And the study of the death camps, I know when I was active in the CO counseling, one boy from Palo Alto, he was 18-year-old. Just on time. We're going to have to wrap this up pretty quick. Yeah. Anyway, he became a CO and his father came to my office and said, John, thank you, because we did not want any of our children fighting in a war. And he and the wife and the boy's mother had met in Auschwitz. Trump made the statement in a meeting that he won 10 times more nuclear weapons. So, you know, something is crazy. That's where Tillerson said, called him a moron, what a cuss word, effing moron. But anyway, thank you for being here, Reverend John Samford, a great legend, a living legend in our community. Good friendship. Thank you for being my friend and for your contribution to our community and to the world in general. And thank you all for being in the studio with us once again. Take care, God bless. Have a great day and enjoy life.