Time to Pull Up Your Pants Son

Time to Pull Up Your Pants Son

I think it’s safe to say that when a school celebrates a makeshift holiday called, “Pull up your pants day,” we’ve lost the battle concerning our youth being respectful in school.

Plantation High School – who the hell named this school – in South Florida celebrated the day in honor of a speech President Barack Obama gave back in November 2008 in which he stated, “Brothers should pull up their pants.”

A local Wal-Mart supplied the school with 200 free belts to help the cause. And teachers said there were no incidents, adding that all of the students were on their best behavior.

Reading the article, reminded me about a statement I recently heard activist NYOIL make on Hot 97’s Street Soldiers a few weeks back. When he spoke about how respectable the young men and women behaved while participating in his Blackbird Fly Conference and Gala Event.

The young ladies dressed like princesses and queens in beautiful gowns, complete with crowns. And the young men who accompanied them dressed like young royalty, looking as sharp as ever in their rented tuxedos. It’s no wonder they carried themselves with a great deal of pride as they walked around.

If you’ve ever dressed like this yourself you’d understand that it affords you the ability to walk with your head held extra high, feeling like a million bucks, dressed in a way that often reflects on the inside who we’d always like to be on the outside.

Dressing in such a glamorous way often causes people to stop and stare, to pay attention to us as we enter or exit a room… and as a first impression, there is no better way to say, “I respect myself and I expect you to respect me the same…”

So it’s of no great surprise that with the young men of this next generation walking around like penguins, in a clumsy-like shifting from side-to-side, trying to keep their pants up walk, they look every bit the buffoonish way they often seem to act.

They’re behavior is simply mimicking the dress code they’ve adopted from the penitentiary system.

I myself remember walking around my cell when I was 15-years-old without a belt and no shoe laces, trying to find another way to hang myself so that my mother wouldn’t beat me senseless for getting caught writing graffiti.

But for me there really wasn’t anything cool about it… And I never found a reason to bring that style home with me… granted my 12 hour bid wasn’t long enough for me to become accustomed to the fashion, but you get the meaning. I didn’t see being arrested as a badge of honor the way many do in our inner-cities.

Being a part of the Hip Hop generation often means we’re not quick to speak out against issues that can be perceived as, “Selling out…”

The Stop Snitching campaign is a wonderful example of just how far we’ll go to keep shut about behaviors killing our neighborhoods, because we don’t want to be seen as taking the side of the law, who is often seen as not on our side.

But there are times when we have to stand up and say, “Enough is enough…” And for me personally this is one of those times when I have to use my voice to make that statement.

I don’t believe in censorship of any kind, but I also shouldn’t have to walk down the street with my young daughters while staring at the ass or dirty draws of some young wannabe thug.

I don’t believe in policing what people wear, but I do believe in the indecency laws on the books that should prevent me as a father from having to stare at some young mans boxers.

I’m not interested in seeing if you’re wearing Calvin Klein, Fruit of the Loom, or Hanes underwear young brothers. It’s time for you to pick up your damn pants and have some respect for the young ladies and for that matter the older ladies in your community… As a mater of fact it’s time for you to have some respect for yourselves.

New York State Senator Eric Adams has recently launched a campaign to “Ban the Sag,” by placing six billboards all over Brooklyn that read, “Raise your pants… Raise your image,” and “We are better than this…” And frankly I agree not only with his message, but with his campaign to pass a bill that would make the practice of indecency in our streets illegal.

I understand that some might say this is just another way to invite aggressive policing into our communities. But in my humble opinion this isn’t about fashion, this is about asking our communities to dress appropriately and to respect the young ladies we have walking around these same neighborhoods we’re aiming to change for the better.

How can you have a daughter and think this is acceptable? And as a man in your community how can you condone a dress code that you know those emulating will never have a chance of being taken seriously… that they’ll never have a chance to land a decent job.

Make no mistake about it… this isn’t about dressing in a manner that we don’t believe to be fashionable. This is about combating a way of life that spells nothing but failure for those who adopt it for themselves.

This is about being a responsible adult… and telling the youth that they need to respect themselves enough to pull up their damn pants.




Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

Fly… Blackbird Fly

Fly… Blackbird Fly

I have a disease that although I’ve never been diagnosed for, I know exists in the very depths of my DNA. It’s as much a part of my genetic code as the tiniest chromosomes that make me the living, breathing, walking, talking mess of a human being that I am.

And unlike most patients, I can actually pinpoint the exact moment my symptoms began to display themselves to me, since it was the first time I held my oldest daughter, Heaven, in my arms. With the births of my daughters Starr and Anesa some years later, each symptom only became stronger and more acute.

I don’t believe there is any clinical terminology for this disease… But it’s basically one that causes my softest side to reveal itself to the world every time I look in the eyes of a young girl…

I see my daughters in all of them, I immediately want to protect them, shelter them from harm, educate them about loving themselves, believing in themselves and respecting themselves…

In other words, I want to be their fathers, especially to those who don’t have one… or have a poor excuse for one.

If I had to put a name on this disease, I’d call it fatheriticus complexitus. And the definition would read: “A complex disease in which a father wants to save the daughters of the world, even if they’re not biologically his.”

Not the worst disease in the world to have, but a draining one to say the least.

And even though I’m told about twice a week that I’m an inspiration to someone, many probably don’t understand that even the inspiring have to find inspiration where they can to make it through their most difficult days.

The funny thing is you just never know where that inspiration is going to come from. And I had no way of knowing how much I’d find at the Blackbird Fly Conference in Staten Island, New York, this past weekend, organized by community activists NYOIL and Artina Sharpton.

After speaking to the girls bluntly about my own teenage history with domestic abuse, why I was a batterer, why I hurt the young girls I was supposed to love and how I feel about my behavior today as a man, I stayed to listen to NYOIL speak to the young women.

I was immediately called out when NY said, “I’m not here to play nice with you and tell you that you can be anything you want to be…”

Damn, did NY just call me out?

After all, I had just told them they could become whatever they wanted to be, if they worked harder than the person to the left and right of them…

He went on to passionately explain his position when he told the young ladies that many of them would fail in life, that many would get caught up in bad relationships with bad guys, that some would even be murdered out there running around on the streets.

NYOIL was speaking sincerely and straight from the heart when he spoke about how many of them felt like the adults owed it to them to give them whatever it was they wanted in life. As if everything should just be handed to them.

Damn, NYOIL has a bad case of fatheriticus complexitus. Perhaps an even worse case than me…

I could tell he was trying to be brutally honest with these young females who are living in a world where brutal honesty rears itself on a daily basis in their neighborhoods and I truly appreciated his frankness.

He went into a story about how he and his wife had invested so much of their personal money into buying these same teenagers sneakers for the track team, and dresses for dances, that they literally ended up in court fighting to keep their house.

He spoke about the heartbreak of putting his families financial needs second, only to see the kids quit the track team after getting their free sneakers… after being put first in a world that almost never puts them in that order.

And I thought all this time I was the only one spending rent money to help someone seemingly more in need than myself.

His message was an inspirational bullet that stuck me so hard in the head I almost allowed the tears to roll down my face. He talked to them about the fact that they were stealing the next person’s opportunity every time they took advantage of someone’s sincere love and kindness… and I thought everything about the event was genius and timely.

If even one rapper on Jay Z’s, Eminem’s or 50 Cent’s level understood the truest definition of real… I believe they’d all have a case of fatheriticus complexitus. I understand Jay Z doesn’t have children, but what excuse do the other two have?

NYOIL defined “REAL” for those young ladies in attendance in a way that very few men ever will. And I pray that his message was heard in that room because it was certainly one of the most powerful I’d ever heard. It gave me the energy to continue my own mission to alter the mind states of these young adults in need of our help. It gave me a belief that there are people out here who still care. And it came a time when I was contemplating the eradication of “youth advocate” from my resume.

NY and Artina Sharpton managed a grassroots effort to bring in speakers, artists and professionals over several days to show these girls that there are people who still care.

My good friend Lynx Garcia ran a workshop with another good friend Patricia “Lady Picasso” Perez who came from Chicago. The workshop titled, “Be Your Vision,” was a hit in helping the girls discover who they want to be and how to get there.

On Sunday, the girls dressed in the most beautiful dresses and became real life princesses and queens for a night – complete with crowns – as they attended a beautiful gala dinner to introduce them to their inner royalty.

I truly respect what was done in Staten Island this past weekend and I ask you all to use this as an example of what a few concerned residents of a community can do to make this world a better place for our future mothers.

There is a saying by Friedrich Nietzsche that states, “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”

If we don’t teach our young how to fly right into their dreams… how are they ever going to make it?

Fly… Blackbird Fly!



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.