BAP and UNAC on the 2026 World Cup + BAP’s 9th anniversary

I thought I heard on the BBC that an important FIFA meeting is coming up April 30th. 

Originally posted, April 7th, at:  blackallianceforpeace.com/movement-news/us-not-safe-world-cup 

U.S. Global Lawlessness and Security Concerns for Non-White Nations and Their Fans Intensify Concerns that the U.S. is Not Appropriate Venue to Host World Cup

For Immediate Release
Contact: communications[at]blackallianceforpeace[]com
(201) 292-4591

On April 6th, the Anti Fascist Football Coalition, a group of grassroots organizations in the three World Cup host countries - the U.S., Mexico, and Canada - delivered a petition to FIFA (signed by prominent individuals and organizations from every part of the planet) asking that FIFA and the International Olympic Committee demonstrate their stated positions on universal human rights and, as such, ban the United States and Israel from hosting or participating in international sporting events.

The Coalition is collaborating to implement shared strategies to demand that FIFA immediately remove the 2026 World Cup matches from the United States, and also calls on the international community to boycott the U.S. as a host nation for international sporting events.

Prior actions by the Coalition, including additional communications to FIFA, highlight the hypocrisy of their so-called “human rights statutes” when, historically, qualifying countries have been banned from participation in the Games for far less, such as the disqualification of Mexico in 1994 for incorrect paperwork. And yet, FIFA continues its shameless complicity with the U.S. agenda of global domination, no matter the cost of human and environmental life.

Brianna Alvarado Ramos, representing Diaspora Pa’lante Collective in the Anti Fascist Football Coalition, states that “The disqualification of the U.S. as both a host and participant is the bare minimum when we look at the U.S. warpath of barbaric and lawless acts of violence, repression, and genocide domestically and abroad - from the escalating economic strangulation of Cuba, the attacks on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President, the ongoing U.S. occupation of Haiti, its brutal war on Iran, the subjugation and genocide of Palestinians, as well as the murder of working class people in the U.S. through both physical militarized forces and economic warfare.”

The past weeks have seen a clear build in momentum, internationally, with the demands to move the 2026 World Cup Games from the U.S. and hold FIFA accountable for its unwavering complicity in U.S. repression, lawlessness, escalating violence, and normalization of genocide. Dutch groups have collected nearly 200,000 signatories supporting their call to “Boycott the Trump World Cup.” Germany’s Fairness United is circulating their campaign and petition to “Love Football/Hate Fascism” with serious considerations to boycott matches held in the U.S. After the Trump administration openly disparaged Spain for its opposition to the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Spanish government announced on March 3 that its national team’s withdrawal from World Cup participation is under consideration.

These actions echo the calls from several other countries, including Sweden, France, Switzerland, and, of course, Iran, where the Trump administration openly threatened the safety of their players should they choose to travel to and compete in the U.S.

The evidence as to why the World Cup Games must not be held in the U.S. continues to grow and there is nothing covert about the agenda of the U.S.state to use these mega events as direct pathways for militarized entities to further disappear and neutralize colonized and oppressed populations -  not just those living in the U.S., but also for international fans and players hoping to attend the matches. Just recently in Dallas, Texas, Iraqi football fans were physically and verbally harassed with threats to call ICE. In response, a countless number of fans reiterated that the U.S. is dangerous for anyone attending the Games.

The Coalition will continue to build resistance to FIFA’s complicity in U.S. lawlessness and genocide and invites the public to join in the Coalition’s Campaign to Boycott the World Cup and Boycott the U.S. at bit.ly/EndorseNow and learn more at https://peoplescenteredhumanrights.com/move-the-games/.

From UNAC; originally sent out March 25th in the early evening:

Boycott the World Cup

Boycott the U.S.

March 3, 2026, With the FIFA World Cup 2026 now 100 days away, an international coalition has launched a coordinated boycott campaign demanding that FIFA move matches from the United States. The Coalition warns that US thuggery is creating a humanitarian crisis, both domestic and international. International sport is not neutral. Mega-sporting events function as instruments of political legitimation. To host global sporting events is not merely a logistical privilege — it is a declaration of belonging within the international community.

“The coalition believes that with the siege of Cuba, the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela, unprovoked and illegal war on Iran, and the fact that the United States has become an increasingly unsafe and hostile environment for peoples of the world — particularly for Black, Brown, Indigenous, migrant, and non-European peoples - the U.S. has excluded itself from the community of civilized nations and should not be allowed to normalize its violence and international gangsterism,” says Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace’s North-South Project for People(s)centered human rights, one of the conveners of the coalition

In the US, violent immigration crackdowns, illegal detentions, and discriminatory travel measures  endanger communities, fans, players and tournament personnel all while the US soaks its hands in foreign blood across the globe.

Nowhere is this more evident than in West Asia and Africa. There, the US continues its violent campaigns against nations whose players and fans will soon set foot on American soil for 78 world cup matches beginning June 11th. Many will arrive as victims of US-sponsored carnage. We demand: the games cannot go forward as if these lives do not matter-whether it is in graves or cages. We refuse to let the United States hide its transgressions against sovereign peoples. The blood of women and children will not be washed away on the pitch to fertilize its grass, and its seats must remain empty for every person ICE has disappeared.

Mireille Fanon Mendes - France, chair of the Frantz Fanon Foundation declares that “it is morally obscene and politically backward that the United States, a country that has persistently defied international law and stands implicated in grave human rights violations—including wars of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and active support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza—should be entrusted with hosting a global event meant to celebrate dignity, collective humanity and unity like the World Cup.”

At this historical juncture, permitting the United States to host international sporting events such as the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics with the participation of Israel, represents a profound moral and political contradiction for the international community of nations.

As we face 100 days before the World Cup, we say reject the normalization of war, repression and genocide. Demand that FIFA move the games and boycott the U.S. until it has demonstrated that it is prepared to operate in the world as a normal state committed to equality, peace and people(s)-centered human rights. 

UNAC is a member of the coalition organizing against having the World Cup games in the U.S.

Originally posted, April 3rd, at:  blackallianceforpeace.com/bapstatements/2026/4/2/baps-9th-anniversary

BAP’s 9th Anniversary: Turn Imperialist Wars into Peoples’ Wars Against Imperialism

For the past nine years, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has sought to advance the radical Black, anti-war, pro-peace, and anti-imperialist movements through practice and uncompromising analysis grounded in our Principles of Unity and a People(s)-Centered Human Rights approach. The U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination’s imperialist brutality and lawlessness currently on display on both domestic and global fronts is intended to demobilize and destabilize us – in just the last few months, this lawlessness has enabled the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores, and the bombing, invasion, and ongoing intervention in Venezuela; the heightened strangulation and attacks on Cuba; the war on Iran; continued occupation and destabilization of Haiti; and murders and occupations of U.S. cities by federal agents. However, this very brutality and lawlessness heightens the contradictions brought on by the Pan-European colonial/capitalist patriarchy and clarifies the stakes of our commitment to challenging and defeating the war against our people.

Importantly, BAP was founded on April 4, 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech that reconnected with the Black Radical Peace tradition by adding his voice of opposition to the murderous U.S. war machine unleashed on the people of Vietnam. In this, he argued that the U.S. was the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet, and that a radical revolution of values was needed to defeat “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism [i.e. capitalism], and militarism.” BAP’s work is part of Dr. King’s unfinished fight against these forces that have only intensified in the last 59 years and continue waging war on our people. 

To understand the nature of such warfare is to see through the veil of imperialist global conflict and recognize it for what it fundamentally is: a continuation of class war. The United States' recent global wars, particularly the full-throated illegalities of the post-9/11 era, represent a qualitative shift. This external aggression has a direct domestic byproduct: intense repression and the engineered splintering of the population, all while funneling working-class tax dollars into the military-industrial complex that supports imperialist violence globally. 

However, within this grim reality lies a critical opening for forces like BAP and all others who struggle for a revolutionary transformation of society, such as the communal economy and governance within the Bolivarian Revolution or the development achievements through national sovereignty in Iran. The system's brutality via imperialist domination, while intended to demobilize, must sharpen the resolve for us and all the African/Black, colonized, and oppressed working masses of the globe. What we have witnessed, particularly since the Al-Aqsa Flood and the subsequent U.S.-Israeli genocidal campaign on Gaza, is the removal of remaining liberal pretenses that thinly disguised the theft of land, labor, and life that capitalism requires to sustain itself. We must name the truth, that this process, this structure of U.S.-led imperialism, seeks only death to establish and maintain “full spectrum dominance”.

In this context, we focus on defeating this war against our people. This requires not merely exposing the contradictions of U.S.-led imperialism, but turning imperialist wars on our people into peoples’ war against imperialism. The radical, revolutionary, and progressive forces that understand this must find ways to strike strategic blows against the imperialist war machine that is intent on destroying our lives, livelihoods, environments, and the planet. For BAP and other forces in the radical African/Black movement, this can only be done effectively by engaging and supporting the masses of our people to prepare for and conduct a peoples’ war for liberation. 

In our ninth year, BAP recommits to this protracted struggle through our consistent campaign frameworks that are increasingly focused on moving from simply exposing the contradictions of imperialism toward political clarity and consciousness expressed as organized, sustained activity that builds legitimate resistance to U.S. imperialism and militarism:

• No Compromise No Retreat: Defeat the War Africans/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad. Our core campaign framework, which includes emerging efforts such as the Climate, Environment, and Militarism working group.

• U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM

• U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas: Make Our Americas a Zone of Peace!, and 

• “MOVE THE GAMES”: Boycott the World Cup and Boycott the U.S and Israel

In the context of this protracted collective struggle, BAP continues to forge a path between analysis and action through these campaign frameworks that are the trenches in which we fight for a future beyond the logic of capital.  The decade ahead demands that we deepen this struggle, sharpen our ideological clarity, enhance our activity, and continue to build a movement capable of not only opposing the machinery of death but of building a new world in its place.

Not one drop of blood from the poor and working class to defend capitalist dictatorship!

No Compromise No Retreat!