No Charges for Not Pulling Up Pants

SAN FRANCISCO -- Prosecutors will not file charges against a University of New Mexico football player who was arrested after wearing saggy pants on a plane at San Francisco airport.

San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe announced Wednesday his office had reviewed the June 15 arrest of Deshon Marman and determined criminal charges were not warranted.

Marman was arrested on suspicion of trespassing, battery of a police officer and obstruction after police say he refused to leave the US Airways flight on the captain's orders.

According to airline officials, Marman was asked repeatedly to pull up his pants but did not listen. They say he was exposing a body part.

Marman's attorney has denied that his client's skin was showing. He has accused the airline of racial discrimination. Marman is African American.

US Airways Lets Man In Women's Panties Fly
06/22/11 02:36 PM ET

A woman photographed this man boarding a US Airways flight days before University of New Mexico football player Deshon Marman was arrested after a dispute about his baggy pants with airline officials.

SAN FRANCISCO — Days before a college football player was arrested on a US Airways flight at San Francisco airport following a dispute over his saggy pants, the airline allowed another man wearing skimpy women's panties and mid-thigh stockings to fly, according to a passenger and airline spokeswoman.

Jill Tarlow, a passenger on a June 9 flight from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Phoenix, took a photo of the scantily clad man, which she provided to the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper published the photo in its Wednesday edition.

The man flew six days before University of New Mexico football player DeShon Marman was arrested on a US Airways flight at San Francisco airport following allegations he refused to pull up his pants.

Tarlow told the Chronicle she and other passengers complained before boarding the plane, but US Airways employees did not prevent the unidentified man from flying.

"No one would believe me if I didn't take his picture," Tarlow, 40, of Phoenix said. "It was unbelievable."

US Airways spokeswoman Valerie Wunder defended the airline's decision to let the man fly, saying employees acted correctly.

"We don't have a dress code policy," Wunder said. "Obviously, if their private parts are exposed, that's not appropriate...So if they're not exposing their private parts, they're allowed to fly."

The airline has said Marman was exposing a body part on June 15 when he was repeatedly asked to pull up his pants.

His attorney, Joe O'Sullivan, said surveillance video would show his client's skin was not showing. He accused the airline of racial discrimination. Marman is African American.

"It just shows the hypocrisy involved," O'Sullivan told the Chronicle. "A white man is allowed to fly in underwear without question, but my client was asked to pull up his pajama pants because they hung below his waist."

Wunder said Marman was asked to leave the flight not because of his clothing, but because he refused an employee's request.

Marman was arrested on suspicion of trespassing, battery of a police officer and obstruction after refusing to leave the plane on the captain's orders, according to police. Police have also said he injured an officer while being taken into custody.

Prosecutors have until July 18 to file any charges against him.

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Introduction

Introduction

Pull Yo Pants Up fa da Prez is a collection of essays written before and after Obama became President of the United States of America. The essays cover his run, the primary, nomination, election and first year of his presidency. The historic nature of his run goes without saying. North American Africans were emotionally charged as the possibility of his victory drew near, even though there were those who were astute enough to understand he was a politician, and thus would do things that all politicians do, say one thing then do another. His campaign called for change, but once in the White House political expediency deemed he contradict himself and revert to reactionary policies, forgetting the constituency that elected him, especially the poor, North American Africans, Latinos and others.

During the campaign he called for peace, but once elected he expanded the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, though he did say he was going into Pakistan during the campaign. I knew then this dude is out of his mind, for who would want to make war in a nation possessing nuclear weapons, especially when the insurgents, Al Qaeda and Taliban, originated from the Pakistani intelligence agency, thus how much distance is there between them? Who knows!

In short, after he took the oath of office, we saw him lose himself trying to save the global financiers who caused the economic meltdown, including the sub-prime loan scam that bankrupted the middle class, black and white, to say nothing of the working poor who were scammed as well, hoodwinked and bamboozled out of their basic wealth.

The economic breakdown has caused massive unemployment and homelessness. Yet our President rewarded the bandits who robbed the people, and rather than jailing them and/or putting them before the firing squad, they took the bailout money and rewarded themselves with bonuses and extravagant retreats, slapping the people in the face, those who had been robbed and left half dead on the roadside of economic devastation.

We wondered if this man was some kind of schizophrenic since he never mentioned helping the poor but rather the rich and especially the militarists who have received unlimited support in their wars of expansion and occupation of Muslim lands. We predicted his speech to Muslims would be Miller Lite and a snow job, for how can one occupy Muslim lands and talk peace or As-Salaam-Afakum.

At this hour, America is occupying Iraq, Afghanistan, inside Pakistan with drone aircraft and Blackwater mercenaries, gearing up to enter Yemen, with proxy troops in Somalia. So Obama can say one thing, quote Qur'an, hadith, sharia, etc., but what's happening on the ground? And we can see, so these essays attempt to point out his policy contradictions and hopefully the people will take things to the next level.

Dr. Cornel West says respect him, protect him, but correct him. And I say we must check him with protests and demonstrations, for politicians of every stripe respond to pressure, as we saw with the Democratic defeat in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey. Maybe he and his cohorts are beginning to see the light.
His focus on reforming health insurance was noble, but misplaced energy in light of the severe unemployment situation, ten to fifteen million, even more if those not counted were counted in the ghettos who suffer perennial lack of work under the best conditions of the general economy.

And yet we see his administration funding employment of insurgents in Iraq, with plans for the same in Afghanistan, including schooling and housing. What about the war in the hood? Ten to fifteen thousand homicides nationwide annually, a low intensity war that receives no real attention because it is mainly young black men who are expendable in the economy of globalism, with outsourcing to markets where labor is cheap and natural resources "a steal."

With the bailout of the banker bandits, we saw Obama and his cohorts in another contradiction, for it was socialism for the rich, capitalism for the middle class and poor. In short, the rich were rewarded, replenished and enabled to continue business as usual, a clear contradiction of the free market philosophy so touted by the right wing demigods and war hawks. The true capitalists would have allowed market forces to play out but instead we saw a brotherhood of thieves coming to the aid of each other, and Obama appeared to have joined the gang or gangsters.

We had to take off our rose colored glasses and romanticism about the first black president. In truth, we have seen his type around the world, throughout Pan African nations on the continent and in the Caribbean, men in black face but white hearts. Either we can cry crocodile tears or be about the business of organizing and demonstrating until our agenda is met in a substantial manner.

We are forced to look upon Obama in strictly political terms, certainly not racial terms since he is a post-racial Negro or Black or North American African. Yet we saw his Harvard comrade, Skip Gates, discard his post-blackness when confronted by police when he failed the tone test established for blacks, the lesson he missed at Harvard and Yale. Perhaps we should look upon Obama post-blackly as well.

We struggle on, we struggle on, past idealism and romanticism that a black president was going to save us, liberate us from centuries of oppression, economic, social and psychological. Only us can free us, from the bottom up, not top down. We can show our displeasure at the voting booth, as the people of Massachusetts displayed, or we can ultimately use the general strike and maybe Obama, his administration, and both political parties will understand it is time for a new order, a fundamental change of the economic order, not reform or repair, for the cancer of greed inherent in capitalism cannot be given a band aid, a patch, but needs structural surgery that involves radical change of the social and economic order. Call it what you wish, but militarism, capitalism, racism must find its way into the dustbin of history, either now or later, orchestrate by ourselves or our children.

Pull Yo Pants Up Fa Da Prez is calling upon youth to channel their energy into radical social action rather than reactionary tripping. It is their turn to take the baton of change into their hands, just as the youth of every generation must, otherwise they betray the ancestors who sacrificed to get them to this point. Yes, it is time to pull up the pants, young brothers, and get busy finishing the work undone, yet we cannot proceed without your energy and input. Your elders have set the course, but you must finish the race. In our youth, we attempted and accomplish much, but the freedom train has no reached its destination and it shall not until you get on board to engineer the final path up the mountain. In the Addendum, I have included additional essays relevant to youth, especially young men, but women as well who have equal responsibility for our future.