People Nation
People Nation

People Nation

In April 1978, Black Gangster Disciple leader Larry Hoover organized a work stoppage among prisoners.  The reason for the stoppage was prisoners being served rotten food and overall being treated poorly.  Most prisoners agreed with Larry Hoover even his rivals were on board.  This protest caused Larry to organize a coalition between gangs in order to participate in this revolt.  Larry got together with his allies and enemies and organized the Folk and People alliances.  His allies would become Folk and his enemies would become People.  During the work stoppage Folk and People were allies behind bars, after the revolt they went back to their rivalries, however, these coalitions allowed for negotiations between the rival groups to ease and control gang wars behind bars.

The People Nation adopted religious concepts unlike the Folk Nation.  The El Rukns adopted Islamic fundamentals in 1976 and they wanted the Vice Lords to adopt the same ideals when the People Nation formed.  The Vice Lords agreed to adopting the Islamic faith and both organization represented the Islamic side of the People Nation.  The Latin Kings represented Christian beliefs.

El Rukns and Mickey Cobras ended their war in prison since the death of Mickey Cobra leader Henry “Mickey” Cogwell as the Mickey Cobras joined the People Nation.  The Four Corner Hustlers became a Vice Lord faction and were then invited to join the People Nation.  The Latin Kings agreed to end their wars with Latin Counts, Bishops, Puerto Rican Stones and Insane Unknowns so that these gangs could join the People Nation.  The Spanish Lords were close allies with Latin Kings so it was easy for them to walk into the alliance.  These were the original gangs that joined the People Nation in prison in 1978.

In the year 1980, the Folk allied Hispanic gangs created the “Spanish Gangster Disciple” concepts which effectively invited multiple new gangs into the Folk alliance.  The People allies saw this as a threat and responded by invited new gangs of their own into the People alliance in the prison system that year.  A big invite was given to the Gaylords and the Insane Deuces.  Other gangs that were brought in were: Villa Lobos, Stone Kents, Ghetto Brothers Organization, Cullerton Deuces (then known as Morgan Deuces), Latin Brothers and the Laflin Lovers.

This alliance was only to used to control prison wars, but in the year 1981, representatives from both the Folk and People alliances were released from prison that year and preached on the streets about representing the Folk and People alliance and all the gangs were informed as to which side they were on. People alliance bylaws were now enforced on the streets and new organizations were invited to join like the Twelfth Street Players, Noble Knights and the south side branch on the Insane Popes.

The People Nation alliance has quite a bit less gangs so they made up for it by keeping their alliance tight all throughout the 1980s while the Folk Nation gangs started to engage in more Folk on Folk violence by the late 1980s in certain parts of the city.  There were only small disagreements and skirmishes that the Latin Kings were involved in against the Insane Deuces, Latin Counts, Puerto Rican Stones and Ghetto Brothers Organization; however, the gangs were at peace the vast majority of the time.

By 1990, the Latin Kings were at war with the Insane Deuces and were on the verge of war with the Latin Counts.  The Latin King and Insane Deuce war of 1990 was the first full blown People on People war within this alliance in history.

By 1991, the Latin Kings were at war with the Latin Counts, Bishops and Insane Deuces and as the decade progressed the Latin Kings were at war with many other People Nation gangs.  Factions of Black P Stones, Vice Lords and Mickey Cobras began engaging in wars in certain parts of the city.  Bishops and Latin Counts went into a bloody war in 1991 and eventually the People Nation became as fractured as the Folk Nation.