Engaging the Aryan Nations

The Boyertown Area Unity Coalition's public profile was raised by the class-size committee fiasco, and the coalition sustained this attention by focusing on the activity of white supremacist groups in the area.  For instance, the BAUC organized demonstrations in support of diversity and the appreciation of cultural and ethnic differences on the same corner where a local KKK group had been known to solicit.  It also began to monitor more closely the activity of the white supremacist groups, both the KKK and the Aryan Nations, which was housed at a Longswamp, Berks County farm owned by Mark Thomas.

To educate the Boyertown area public about the dangers of these hate groups and others like them, the BAUC continued to sponsor speakers such as Ann Van Dyke and Floyd Cochran, a one-time recruiter for the Aryan Nations who raised thousands of dollars for the group and gained national notoriety for his effectiveness at persuading young people to join Aryan Nations.  On August 7, 1995, Cochran told a packed Boyertown Senior Center about his change of heart and mind:
 

Floyd Cochran, Anti-Hate Group Educator

It took a threat on the life of Cochran's son to shock him to his senses. In April of 1992, he confided to a fellow Aryan Nations member that he need money for an operation on his son's cleft palate. The Aryan Nation member told Cochran that his son would have to be killed when their movement seized control of the country. Shaken severely by his comrade's remark, Cochran began a period of intense self-examination. He left the Aryan Nations organization three months later, but found himself racked by guilt for having cast off his Christian Identity teachings [Christian Identity is the religious arm of the Aryan Nations movement.] He felt he had abandoned God. Eventually Cochran was embraced by two individuals belonging to organizations that opposed the Aryan Nations movement. He began a process of self-examination and atonement that he says continues even now, three years later. These days Cochran travels across the country, exposing the new faces of hate in the 1990s white supremacy movement. . . . "You have a colony of bigots that have landed here," he said. "If you let them go unnoticed, they will continue to grow, pandering again to those fears and those stereotypes."                                        [Jeff Bell, Boyertown Area Times, 10 Aug. 1995]

Cochran's appearance once again brought together the BAUC and Mark Thomas.  Thomas and Robert L. Woodley, Bechtelsville KKK leader,  both appeared at Cochran's talk to heckle and claim that the latter distorted information about Aryan Nations.

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