Lessons from a Skinhead Pt. 2 - Basic Needs

Meeink’s story shows us how both the skinheads and other people met some of his basic human needs. Both in negative and positive ways, meeting those needs, even in small ways, contributed to his sense of connection with other human beings and his transformation into, and out of, the skinheads. Here are some of the needs he mentioned:

Care and Interest: People showed interest in him, his life, what life was like for him.

Acceptance: They provided ‘safety’ for him, not only physically, but safety from criticism.

Doing something together for a higher ‘cause’. Meeink said that doing ‘missions’ together was very bonding. They did things for ‘the cause’ – whether spray-painting synagogues or beating someone. A ‘mission’ can be destructive or constructive, but groups that do things together for a higher purpose bond members more and more to the group. I often tell couples that doing things together to make the world better is very bonding for them as a couple, but it also bonds them to other people with whom they share the experience.

Years ago, I used to work regularly in retreat programs. Doing that bonded me to other people on the retreat team in very powerful ways. Some of them are my best friends to this day. Others that I may have worked with once or twice, could see me in a restaurant, and the feeling of immediate connection is there.

Meeink went to prison for kidnapping and beating a man for hours and videotaping it. In prison, his life began to change and his hatred started to dissolve. How?

Seeing beyond appearance and efforts to connect with him:
What began his transformation was black guys asking him to join them in sports in prison. They were friendly toward him. They talked together about their girlfriends and baby’s that were on the way. They looked beyond his swastikas and his 'role' and saw him as simply another human being.

Offering hope of something better: He said that one guy was the first person that ever gave him a sense of hope simply by saying that there was still a chance when his girlfriend broke up with him. That man and one or two others help up a vision of the possible and of the possibility of creating a new life.

Emotional Intimacy: By sharing what was important to him and some of those men letting him see their thoughts and feelings, they created basic intimacy – seeing into each other.

Contact with people he had stereotyped replaced fear and hatred: He decided that because of his experience with fellow inmates, he would no longer hate Blacks, Latinos or Asians and would just hate Jews because he didn’t know any. Then one day someone told him a guy was paying good money for help to move some antiques. The guy turned out to be Jewish. Meeink didn’t care because he needed the money and worked 3 days for an agreed $100 per day. Expecting the guy would cheat him because he was a Jew, he was surprised when the man not only paid him his $300, but gave him another $100 because he had worked so hard.

Recognized and expressed the positive in him: The Jewish man drove Meeink home and when Meeink made some comment about his own stupidity, the Jewish man told him to never call himself stupid – that he was very smart, even if it was from street-smarts. Meeink made some comment about this Jewish man ‘ruining’ his last stereotype.

Meeink longed for connection, for acceptance, for someone to see who he really was inside, to give him hope and to treat him like a fellow human being.

Now Meeink speaks to kids across the country on hatred and harmony and has a program to help kids through hockey. He is working with others for a ‘higher’ cause and bonding with others, but this time it is to make the world better and to build a society that respects every human being, even those who are different from us.

We can all learn something from his transformation.