While the US was hosting the most shamelessly depraved World Cup in history, NOlympicsLA and Black Alliance for Peace SoCal curated the People’s World Cup Program. The program highlighted counterprogramming that offered alternatives to dominant narratives and structures, encouraging urgent critiques of the status quo and insisting that another world is possible. Angelenos turned out to events celebrating one of the most diverse communities in the nation, mashups of the myriad cultures that make LA so special, without washing the reputation of US empire or endorsing the unabashedly corrupt arbiters of the world’s most popular sport.
We were not alone in this effort; turns out “Love football, despise FIFA” is common sense in LA and across Turtle Island. Formed in late 2025, the Anti-Fascist Football coalition brought together groups from all 11 US host cities, Mexico City, Toronto, and Vancouver to reject FIFA across the continent. Every week, we strategized, engaged with, learned from, and built beside groups already fighting fascism in their communities: our member organizations have been fighting the “FIFA Jail” being built in Kansas City, ICE kidnappings in Inglewood (LA), the gentrification and criminalization of Chinatowns in Vancouver and Seattle, ICE detention centers like Delaney Hall in New Jersey that sit just miles away from World Cup venues, the criminalization of sex workers, tax dollars being used for spectacle and circuses instead of social needs, US imperialism writ large, the oppression of the Black/African diaspora in the US and abroad, the US war on Iran, the US war on Venezuela, the US war on Cuba, the US war on Lebanon, the US war on Palestine, the US war on Sudan, the US war on Nigeria, the US war on Haiti, or the US war on the Global South. Through the Anti-Fascist Football Coalition, groups throughout the imperial core and the world were able to identify the links between our shared struggles and join together to develop alternatives and a shared language and strategies for rejecting the FIFA circus.
European institutions denounce FIFA (and the International Olympic Committee) for normalizing and platforming states like Qatar, Russia, and China. But those voices have been silent concerning the first World Cup hosted by a nation literally waging war on tournament opponents, while forces within the country kidnap and deport thousands based on their race and assumed origins. The Anti-Fascist Football Coalition formed to assert loud and clear from the belly of the beast that these contradictions are not lost on the residents of the most violently oppressive nation on the planet. The job of organizers is to heighten the contradictions; this World Cup dealt them in spades:
In Los Angeles:
- LAPD removes poor people from view starting four years before the games.
- Snipers point rifles down from downtown Inglewood rooftops while children play soccer below.
- US Marshals and Department of Homeland Security patrol fan zones at LA Coliseum and LA Union Station.
- Archer Aviation’s Air Taxis are advertised at fan zones while they partner with weapons makers Anduril and Palantir.
- Commuter parking increased from $8 to $65 during match days.
- LA introduces metro credit card payments by Cubic Systems who share data with Palantir.
- LA increases police presence & fare enforcement at metro stations ahead of and during World Cup
- Displacement and forced removal of local community members including residents, street vendors, and unhoused peoples in neighborhoods hosting World Cup games and fan zones.
- DEA and local police raid MacArthur Park, destroying the lives of poor people and intentionally disrupting the largest Salvadorian market outside El Salvador.
- Hansen Dam pool closed to residents because of nearby fan zone.
- A poisonous week-long warehouse fire in Boyle Heights spews poison gases while LA public officials assert all is well to residents and World Cup tourists.
- Inglewood residents refused entry to their neighborhood for hours at a time by World Cup security.
- Facial recognition on Flock and other security cameras installed in communities shared with ICE partners.
- The FBI steals drones from community gardens for daring to document their fields within a 1 mile radius of a fan zone.
Nationally:
- US denies entry to decorated Somali referee Omar Arton, the Iraqi team’s photographer, and 15 members of the Iran team’s staff.
- FIFA bans symbol of Haitian liberation on Haitian national team’s jersey two days before Haiti’s opening game.
- US denies entry to thousands of fans from African nations including DR Congo’s most iconic supporter Lumumba Vea.
- US demands multi thousand dollar bonds for fans to enter the US.
- US President threatens the lives of the Iranian Men’s National Team.
- Ride share prices increased near fanzones claiming “event fees”.
- US refuses to allow the Iranian team to sleep in the US.
- ICE kidnappings surge to 10,000 reported body snatchings in a 5 day span, while countless more are taken covertly under the cover of the Games.
- Were ICE officers deployed for the WC involved in trafficking/kidnappings while not at the stadium?
- Produce parasite outbreak in US causing three week long flu and diarrhea, with no cause identified.
Internationally:
- US/Israel murder Egyptian Relief Committee in Gaza member Mohammed al-Wahidi who organized World Cup Watch Parties in Gaza.
- US/Israel bombs entire villages in Lebanon.
- US/Israel continue the destruction and genocide of Occupied Palestine/Gaza
- US resumes bombing in Iran days after the team bows out of the tournament.
- Settlers in Occupied Palestine wreak havoc on Palestinians and a sitting Congressperson.
- Massive wildfires caused by climate change affecting First Nations Whitesand, Namaygoosisagagun, Lac des Mille Lacs, and Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe with little Canadian Government support.
- US led its 9th consecutive day of bombing Iran on the day of the World Cup Final.
Amid a litany of U.S.-led violent world events, we have built community and relationships that will last long past this travesty of a tournament to strengthen our collective resistance. Angelenos and residents across host cities held solidarity matches, community celebrations, resource fairs, film screenings and discussions, banner drops, fan zone disruptions, protests outside stadiums opposing US interference with sovereignty the world over, art openings proclaiming el futbol es del pueblo, street shut downs declaring football belongs to the people, and “goodbye FIFA don’t come back” wake-up calls at Marriott hotels.
We must oppose oppression of all forms while we support the beautiful social reproduction that is innate in our communities. The Really Really Free Markets held in Los Angeles offering free food, books, clothes, health care, pet vaccinations, music, dancing, sport, and community show us what our governments and leaders could be offering if they weren’t beholden to capital and imperialism, if they didn’t need a disposable class of unhoused people as an example to threaten workers into submission. Our leaders prefer bread and circuses to educated and empowered workers, though even the bread supply is intentionally scarce.
The 35 organizations that have come together as the Anti-Fascist Football Coalition made the principled choice to call for not just a Boycott of the World Cup, but a Boycott of the US in its entirety. Guided by the fights against apartheid in South Africa that used sport and boycott as a cudgel against state violence and societies steeped in White supremacy, we recognize that the US entity’s grip on the world economy is slipping and their war on the poor of all nations can and must be fought in part through economic solidarity.
As we move beyond this tournament, we elect not to dissolve the many connections made during this spectacle, but to continue our work with a view to the next big spectacle the US will host with the perfect encapsulation of the history of this settler colonial bully nation at the helm. Much of the world looked away as Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics, but the Anti Fascist Football Coalition and the over 45 groups in the NOlympicsLA coalition will continue to call upon the world to reject US imperialism and lawlessness with an economic boycott and a refusal to consume or participate in another sullied sports spectacle. In two years when the International Olympic Committee will attempt to host the 2028 Olympics in LA while 7 people a day or more die from living without a home on the streets of Los Angeles, and while thousands are stolen from their communities and caged under the threat and risk of deportation and death, the US empire will again invite the world to indulge while the empire washes itself in spectacle. We will be telling a different story, one of a city and nation fed up with being the world leader in gangsterism and immorality. We will be writing a story of peace and the mutual liberation of the downtrodden inside and out of the US Empire.