-by Cameron Michels, Deepa Sivarajan, and Leslie McCallum
*This is an excerpt from writing originally posted here – in this version we offer a slightly more focused account of FWC26 Seattle, emphasizing the colonial-carceral logics underpinning its infrastructure and staging. [“Fight the Impacts” art created by Protect Our Pitch 206 ]
Introduction
We are three friends and sports fans living in known-to-settlers-as Seattle, Washington; Cameron and Deepa have known each other for more than a decade and met Leslie five years ago when we all joined a local collective dedicated to the abolition of the prison-industrial complex (PIC). In the lead up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup (which we rightfully refer to as the Men’s World Cup, or MWC), our group chat has been filled with infuriating facts about how the MWC is impacting Seattle, along with a rallying cry that Leslie came up with: “DeFIFA!”
The Carceral Juggernaut
Seattle’s municipal government is spending $32 million on the Men’s World Cup (MWC), with almost half of that coming from City funds, and the rest from state and federal grants. Over $15 million is designated for security purposes, primarily to the Seattle Police and Fire Departments (SPD and SFD) for training, overtime, and equipment. But it’s not just those two departments involved: over fifty agencies are working on security, including not only local departments, but also Washington’s Military Department; federal agencies like the FBI, DEA, Homeland Security, and ICE; the US Coast Guard; and more. SPD also paid more than $100,000 to fascist billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet company for five months of service leading up to and during the MWC.
All of this has resulted in an enormous increase in law enforcement across the city during the months of June and July 2026. More than 450 SPD officers, both uniformed and undercover, are being deployed across Seattle, including at four official FIFA fan celebrations downtown. Meanwhile, the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) has more than 200 deputies on patrol – about half in the “FIFA Core Service Area” near the stadium, and the other half on buses, trains, and light rail.
It gets weirder from there. SPD has a motorcycle unit acting as escorts for soccer teams, and they’ve recruited extra officers from Lynnwood and even Kennewick (220 miles away) to run it. For some reason, the City of Spokane (280 miles away) received a $726,158 grant to send officers to Seattle, including an explosives disposal unit and a helicopter. Air travel may even be restricted on game days. And over $100,000 is being spent on new surveillance across the city, including the installation of 22 new CCTV cameras in Pioneer Square and Stadium District, which Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson recently confirmed are being used during the MWC, in addition to more than 100 traffic cameras that city government regularly uses to monitor people during large events.
The kicker? The person coordinating all of this work, the Chief Security Officer for the city’s World Cup committee, is John Diaz – the former Chief of Police in Seattle from 2010 to 2013, who infamously was in charge of SPD in 2010 when a cop in Seattle shot and killed Deaf Indigenous woodcarver John T. Williams, simply because Williams was walking in front of the cop’s car while carrying a small pocketknife.
This wasn’t just one “bad apple” cop going rogue (it never is): protest from the local community led to the US Department of Justice getting involved, and they determined that SPD had a pattern and practice of excessive force and racially biased policing. This led to a 2012 consent decree and federal supervision that lasted until 2025. Yet Diaz’s past as the leader of a racist police force has not limited him from positions of power like his more recent stint overseeing juvenile detention in King County – nor from this role with the MWC.
Coloniality of the Stadium Zone
The harms of Men’s World Cup will be felt all across the Seattle area, but the harshest impacts will likely be on the neighborhoods closest to the stadium. There’s a long history of oppression here: the Duwamish village of Dzidzilalich, the first land which was stolen from Coast Salish tribes by white colonizers in the mid-19th century, was in what is now horrifyingly called Pioneer Square. That neighborhood and the nearby Chinatown-International District (CID) have experienced many other violent and racist displacements since then, including: the 1886 racial riot that forcibly expelled two hundred Chinese-American people from the city, segregation and redlining throughout the 20th century, the transportation of Japanese-American people to internment camps during World War II, the construction of I-5 carving the CID in half in the 1950s, and gentrification and housing unaffordability lasting through to the present day.
What does this history have to do with the MWC? Ask the Seattle FIFA organizing committee, which granted $50,000 to the Wing Luke Museum for a sculpture in memory of the 1886 anti-Chinese riots. There are, undoubtedly, links between that part of Seattle’s history and the present-day actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and their accomplices, who terrorize and kidnap immigrants with impunity. But it’s surprising that even those affiliated with the MWC are publicly making the connection between their own work and the history of violence towards immigrants in Seattle.
However, as grassroots organizations in Seattle have called out, little is being done to protect immigrants who are at risk now: ICE agents will still be at the Seattle MWC games, and elected leaders like Mayor Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay have only made paltry attempts at protecting undocumented immigrants from them. Protect Our Pitch 206 is a campaign designed specifically to protect Seattle from the harmful impacts of the MWC; their Community Demands outline numerous ways that our local governments could—but haven’t— work to mitigate these harms. The CID Coalition, which fights against displacement and gentrification, is also declaring the CID an ICE-free zone, recognizing the increased risk to immigrants from the MWC and the failure of city officials to defend them.
Other marginalized communities in Seattle are also being targeted by the MWC’s carceral apparatus. City government and police are increasing the use of cruel homeless encampment “sweeps”—a practice that reached record levels in Seattle under the previous mayoral administration—in areas near the stadium. Sweeps are fundamentally inhumane: unhoused residents are often given only a few minutes’ notice to clear out of an encampment, leading to increased violence and arrests, and any property they cannot immediately carry out is confiscated by the government – and only 7% of those impacted are able to get their belongings back. In anticipation of such sweeps, Mayor Wilson pledged to add 500 new shelter units by the time MWC began, but ultimately only 75 were open by the first match. Then again, even if all 500 units had been constructed, at least 89% of unhoused people who have suffered a sweep don’t actually end up sheltered, so adding such a small number of units would hardly make a dent.
Sex workers are also being harmed by the MWC – but perhaps not in the way you have heard. There is a popular narrative that mega sporting events cause an increase in sex trafficking; not only is this claim unproven, but it also serves to justify the incarceration of sex workers under the guise of “protecting” them – particularly sex workers of color. In Seattle, there has been an increase in police raids of massage parlors leading up to the MWC, and the majority of impacted workers are from Asian diasporic communities. In January 2026, the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards held a summit in Tacoma where speakers spouted Orientalist nonsense to justify their anti-Asian and anti-worker approach, in a room where over half of attendees were law enforcement, and less than 5% were Asian. The Massage Parlor Organizing Project, a grassroots formation of Asian and Asian-American community members and workers in Seattle, is organizing along with environmental justice organization Puget Sound Sage to build power among the migrant workforce in the CID and fight the the racist criminalization of massage workers, recognizing the increased threats from the MWC.
Actions to Take
When we discuss abolishing the prison-industrial complex, we’re not only talking about tearing down existing systems of oppression: we’re also talking about creating the world where we don’t need those oppressive systems in the first place. When much of what we call “crime” is born of scarcity, and when laws and law enforcement in the US are more aimed at protecting property and profit than at protecting people, what would it look like to live in a society where communities were responsible for helping each other get our needs met? This is at the core of abolitionist praxis: combining political action with mutual aid to protect each other and build a more just world. And this can be achieved in sports as well as in every other sphere of our lives. Specifically,
- Sign petitions to protect Asian massage workers from ICE and police raids exacerbated by the MWC (you can sign any of them regardless of where you live)
- Petition against Everett Ordinance 4184.26 that authorizes police to conduct warrantless raids of Asian massage parlors
- #SafetyNotStigma statewide community letter
- #NoRaidsForFIFA action alerts for Seattle and King County
- Sign a petition to stand with Chinatowns across the country against displacement, surveillance, and policing made worse by the MWC
- Use the ICE-Free Zone Neighborhood Toolkit to protect your neighborhoods and declare Seattle an ICE-free zone during and after the MWC
- Watch a webinar bringing together advocates from Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Vancouver BC to discuss their activism against the harms of the MWC on Chinatowns
- Use free art downloads about the MWC for non-commercial purposes to get the word out
- Read a set of comprehensive community demands addressing surveillance, displacement, environmental and climate pollution, policing and incarceration, anti-immigrant violence, and other harms caused by the MWC
Organizations to Follow and Support
- Protect Our Pitch 206 is a campaign and coalition encouraging all of our communities to come together in solidarity and protect Seattle from the negative impacts the FIFA World Cup brings. (IG: @protectourpitch206)
- Massage Parlor Organizing Project is a grassroots formation of Asian/Asian American community members and workers organizing to build power among the migrant workforce in the Chinatown/International District (CID) and greater Seattle area. (IG: @mpop_sea)
- CID Coalition brings together organizations that support growth, resources, equity, accessibility, and transit for the working class, immigrant, multiracial communities in Seattle’s CID. (IG: @humbows_not_hotels)
- Puget Sound Sage charts a path to a living economy in the South Salish Sea and Duwamish River Valley regions by developing community power to influence, lead and govern. (IG: @pugetsoundsage)
- Coast to Coast Chinatowns Against Displacement is a coalition of grassroots community organizers from Chinatowns across North America, including many from Seattle. (IG: @c2c_chinatowns)