By Steve Gillis 
February 3, 2026

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) — a U.S.-based group that “seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic antiwar, anti-imperialist and pro-peace positions of the radical Black movement” — has issued a clarion call to the world’s people to “Boycott the World Cup! Boycott the U.S.!”

BAP issued the global boycott call on Jan. 24, the day U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents publicly executed nurse Alex Pretti in front of a Minneapolis doughnut shop in a premeditated escalation of the ongoing, violent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) occupation of that city and many others. (blackallianceforpeace.com)

“U.S. officials have chosen to operate outside the bounds of law and basic morality,” declares the BAP call, “from supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and illegal settlement expansion, to launching a direct military strike on Venezuela that kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, his wife, to escalating repression against migrants and racialized communities inside the U.S. that has led to murder. These are not isolated policies, but interconnected expressions of an empire that relies on illegal violence abroad and domestically to enforce dominance.

“Yesterday [Jan. 23] was one of the largest labor mobilizations in recent U.S. history with tens of thousands of Minnesotans taking to the street to end the tyrannical violence of ICE and its anti-immigrant operations. One day later, ICE agents in Minnesota have murdered another person — this time a 37-year-old man.

“The federal government is systematically violating the most fundamental of human rights: the right to life. While federal officials run cover for their crimes, state and local officials do nothing but stand by, make statements but take no action. We must demand that these democratically elected officials act immediately to defend their constituents and combat all attempts to clean the image of this neo-fascist state.

“This includes the World Cup, which should not be used to launder state violence or normalize genocide and international gangsterism. … Organizations and people of conscience must demand that FIFA [Fédération Internationale de Football Association] move the games out of the U.S. and take a stand for people-centered human rights rather than empire, repression and impunity.

“Sign the petition demanding that FIFA and the IOC [International Olympic Committee] ban the U.S. and Israel from hosting or participating in international sporting events.”

Boycott, divest, sanction the U.S. terror state!

BAP’s petition points out that FIFA and the IOC have historically denied participation to rogue nations that violate its stated value of human rights from global sporting events — such as banning fascist Germany and Japan during World War II and South Africa during its apartheid era.

The petition also stresses: “The U.S. has become dangerous for members of the global community, and specifically for non-white/non-European people. The world is witnessing massive violations of human rights and the Constitution of the United States as masked agents using unmarked vehicles raid work places, homes and places of public assembly to incarcerate and disappear Black, Brown and Indigenous people and, in too many cases, denying them legal representation and basic information as to their whereabouts and well-being to their families and attorneys.”

Joining and working to enforce BAP’s call to “Boycott the U.S.” is an immediate, concrete way that all justice-loving people in the U.S. can fight to defeat the Trump administration’s fascist attacks on immigrant communities and their allies and be in solidarity with the world’s peoples, who are facing off against the U.S. imperialist war machine in Palestine, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Somalia, Greenland and everywhere. Adding the U.S. to the Palestinians’ longstanding, global Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting the U.S. colony of Israel is a call whose time has come.

Broadening the sports boycott from inside the belly of the beast into a universal call to BDS all U.S. economic, cultural and political activity can contribute to putting a final end to the capitalists’ police state terror that U.S. imperialism is inflicting daily, at home and abroad, in its desperation and decline.

To join the “BDS the U.S.” campaign, start by spreading BAP’s petition at bit.ly/BANFIFA.