Spirituality
GET ANYWHERE
FROM HERE.
Breaking Free
Former skinhead tells ADL
audience of life of hate.
Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News
More than 700,000 people have attended
Oakland Community College since it was
founded in 1964 — that's equal to half the
population of Oakland County.
Among its graduates OCC counts an
astronaut, the president and CEO of
one of the nation's largest real estate
companies, a physician with attention deficit
syndrome who has risen to the top of his
profession, and innumerable other leaders
in the fields of business, banking, and
community activism.
There's no better place to begin your higher
education than Oakland Community College.
With programs in 160 high-demand fields,
OCC is here for you to get started in a
high-demand career.
If you're planning to go on for a four-year
degree, you can do your first two years
at OCC for 1/4 the cost of a four-year
university — that's lust $60.10 per credit
hour for Oakland County residents.
And there's a full range of financial
opportunities including scholarships,
grants, loans, and work-study programs.
Sign up now for spring classes. Touch `Tone
and Web registration now through May 9.
Classes begin Monday, May 10.
When we say "Get anywhere from here,"
we're not bragging, we're lust stating the
plain facts. Call 248.341.2350.
www.oaklandcc.edu
--, OAKLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE
30
May 6 . 2010
A
ll the elements were there,
and they came together in
a predictable way.
An alcoholic, mostly absent dad.
A distracted, party-hardy mother.
A controlling, abusive and addicted
stepfather. Low self-esteem. Racial
unrest. A welcoming surrogate
"family" of neo-Nazis.
Put them all together and you get
Frank Meeink, whose racist friends
shaved his head when he was 13.
Before he got his life together, he
would be committed to a mental
institution, become an alcoholic
and heroin addict and be thrown
into a maximum-security prison.
Meeink, now 34, spoke about
his life for the Anti-Defamation
League-Michigan Region and
signed copies of his new book,
Autobiography of a Recovering
Skinhead, at the Holocaust
Memorial Center in Farmington Hills
on April 22.
"They were cool:' Meeink said
of his cousin and the other racist
skinheads he stayed with after being
kicked out of his mother's home in
south Philadelphia and then his dad's
home in west Philadelphia. "They
were older than me, and they had
girls and they could drive."
They schooled him to hate using
the Bible, teaching that the biblical
Eve had sex with Satan, bearing the
Jews as their offspring. They were as
serious about their ideology as they
were about their guns.
Meeink said: "They told me, 'You
are now an Aryan Christian soldier
and you are in the Army of God.' I
believed this 100 percent. I did."
He had a large swastika tattooed
on the side of his neck. He was
jailed, institutionalized and impris-
oned. While locked up, he restudied
the Bible with black inmates and
rethought his racism. Once out, he
worked for a Jewish businessman,
who he grew to respect and value.
"God kept putting people in my life
and told me 'Keep judging them, keep
judging them,"' Meeink said.
He did, and it led to leaving the
racist movement.
Former skinhead Frank Meeink
signs copies of his book.
Meeink says the Oklahoma City
federal building bombing in 1995
by Timothy McVeigh, who was anti-
government and an Aryan believer,
made him "feel so evil" even though
he wasn't part of it anymore. He went
to the FBI and then to the ADL, who
debriefed him and helped him create
"Harmony through Hockey:' which
brings a diverse group of kids togeth-
er to learn about life as well as sports.
Now, he uses the same techniques
to recruit for his program as he did
for the hate groups. "You talk to
kids about what's going on in their
lives — that's how you get to them:'
Meeink said.
Tanji Grant of Farmington Hills
says she had no idea what to expect
from a former skinhead. "I hope he
continues to pass on the message
that we are all equal and all one:' she
said. "I wish him the best. He's turned
his life around."
"It's the alienation and rage that
you worry about," said Stephen
Schmier of Ann Arbor, who serves
on the ADL-Michigan advisory
board. Noting the 15th anniversary
of the Oklahoma City bombing just
days earlier, Schmier said, "We need
to think about the vulnerability of
young people in tough situations, and
how they can be sucked into these
movements." Iii