Four months after he unfurled a stitched-together Palestinian and Sudanese flag on the field during Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl LIX halftime show, New Orleans dancer Zul-Qarnain Kwame Nantambu has been arrested and charged with two misdemeanors. The NFL released him from on-field security the night of the protest without charges; Louisiana State Police came back for him in late June.
On Thursday, June 26, 2025, Louisiana State Police arrested Zul-Qarnain Kwame Nantambu at his home in New Orleans and booked him into the Orleans Parish Justice Center on two misdemeanor counts: resisting an officer and disturbing the peace by interruption of a lawful assembly. The charges stem from his on-field protest during the Kendrick Lamar halftime show at Super Bowl LIX, more than four months earlier.
The action
Nantambu, a professional dancer based in New Orleans, was hired as part of the on-field performer corps for Kendrick Lamar's halftime show at Super Bowl LIX on February 9, 2025 at Caesars Superdome. During the set, while standing on the 1987 Buick GNX prop used as a stage piece, he pulled from his costume a flag he had brought into the venue — a stitched-together Palestinian and Sudanese flag bearing the painted words "Gaza" and "Sudan" — held it aloft, and ran across the field before being tackled by NFL security personnel. The action was broadcast live to an audience of roughly 127 million U.S. viewers and an additional global audience of tens of millions more — the most watched television event of 2025.
In a television interview shortly afterward, Nantambu explained that his goal was to "highlight the human suffering" in Gaza and Sudan — two ongoing wars he, like millions of others, had been watching unfold while the NFL declined to acknowledge either.
Released that night — arrested four months later
The New Orleans Police Department detained Nantambu in the moments after the halftime show ended and released him without charges that night. He went home.
The case did not stay closed. Louisiana State Police opened a new investigation. Sgt. Kate Stegall, an LSP spokesperson, told reporters at the time of the June arrest that troopers reopened the matter "due to the nature of the incident, and the performer's access to a highly secured area." More than four months after the on-field protest itself, troopers came for him.
The charging theory is notable for what it tries to do. By alleging that an NFL halftime show — a private-league entertainment property broadcast to over a hundred million people — was a "lawful assembly" that Nantambu unlawfully interrupted, Louisiana prosecutors are effectively renting the state's criminal-legal system to enforce the league's security objections months after the fact. The "resisting" count tracks Nantambu's contact with the NFL security personnel and police who tackled him on the field.
The penalty besides the charges
Independent of the criminal case, the NFL has imposed a lifetime ban on Nantambu from all league stadiums and events — a private-actor sanction that does not require any criminal conviction and is not reviewable by any court. The misdemeanor charging range for resisting an officer in Louisiana caps at six months and a fine. The lifetime ban is, in practical terms, the larger penalty already imposed.
The lineage
Nantambu's case sits in a small but recognizable tradition of athletes and performers using mass-broadcast moments to draw attention to wars and political violence: Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the medal podium at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics; Toni Smith-Thompson turning her back on the flag during national anthems at Manhattanville College in 2003; Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in 2016. Each was punished — by selectors, by leagues, by employers — for using a platform built for one message to broadcast another. None was, in any honest reading, a criminal.
The case is set to proceed in Orleans Criminal District Court. NPPC will track its progress and post updates as the case moves through arraignment, motions, and trial. The flag flew. 127 million people saw it. Louisiana wants to make him pay for it anyway.
