◆ SpookStack

a ES Bote Tres ve Ms “oe” Nay Org cmeatinee Beare ea ee. oie ¥ CS ee etal - a my . ‘ POPEYR - 7 However, in the words of brother Mash, "he thought he was the slickest mother- fucker in the world’. For nintecen years, he had matched wits with a most pow- erful and cruel adversary, the world of the prison. lie was an expert in the arts of deception and intimidation but he knew nothing about how people had jearned to relate to each other while. he had been locked away. He was a big yard hustler, motivated only by self interest; his brothers and sisters were marks. This monster was loosed upon the world with the rhetoric of his latest hustle on his lips: revolution. Hie rap on the yard had turned political, although, ss Carl says: "I don’t think he really understood any of it at all except (that) the establishment is racists and fascists, and everybody else is poor people and minorities. As for the rest of the convicted class, * (only) 10% are white, and they're nazi stool pigeons for the guards... he looked at it entirely as a racial thing". Racially: "I'd say that he was a double racist, he hated white men and black women’. FRO ee ee nee erm ee ee Shortly after he was psrolled, he joined with ex-con brothers Willie, Tony, and John, and sisters Pat and Sally, to found the United Prisoners’ Union. Popeye immediately took over. Selly: ty. in our early organizational stages, we put together this conference in Lés Angeles. ‘we decided to have a 15 person board of directors... we were going to elect people we had known for one day! There were a lot of people nobody knew, and Popeye was one of them, It turned out that he who raw+jawed the most, the loudest, the longest, got the vote. What happens, of course, is three months later, this 15 member board is vir- tually defunct because everyone is either dead, or in jail, or hooked, or disappeared. tardly anyone left, except Popeyteee it's amazing, his survival ability. He is truly one of those kind of guys you could drop out of a ten t story building and, somchow or other! he*d land on his feet...”