New coalition will watchdog Atlanta’s World Cup promises
As Atlanta readies for the 2026 FIFA World Cup next summer, a new coalition called Play Fair ATL is vowing to hold officials accountable for their promises on housing, along with the rights of immigrants and workers.
Headed by Michael Collins, former senior director of the racial justice group Color of Change, the coalition has formed as Atlanta and other host cities submit their human rights plans to the sport’s governing body.
Atlanta’s plan has prioritized safeguards against human trafficking and protections for unhoused people and workers, according to a document the city prepared ahead of a community engagement meeting in August.
Collins said Play Fair ATL will watchdog the city and Partners for HOME, the nonprofit overseeing the city’s homeless strategy, as it aims to clear camps in the downtown area and house people by the end of the year under a plan known as Downtown Rising.
“It’s a coalition of labor, housing, immigration and criminal justice groups that are pushing to make the World Cup in Atlanta more equitable,” Collins said in an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Our main concern is that we end up with a World Cup that is built on the back of poor and low-income people to benefit the wealthy folks and the corporate invested interests in the city.”
On board are the social justice group American Friends Service Committee; the labor group Georgia AFL-CIO; the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR); the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; the Southern Center for Human Rights; the Union of Southern Service Workers; and criminal justice reform group, Women on the Rise.
Atlanta’s human rights action plan is part of FIFA’s new protocol for the 2026 soccer tournament after the governing body, long mired in scandal, faced international condemnation over human rights abuses and migrant worker deaths before the last World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
There was an Aug. 29 deadline for 16 host committees across the United States, Canada and Mexico to submit individual human rights action plans, informed by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
According to FIFA, cities and host committees are expected to tailor plans in consultation with local governmental and non-governmental stakeholders and community groups.
An Aug. 27 letter that Collins and coalition members sent to the city’s chief equity officer, Candace Stanciel, urged “more rigorous public engagement.”
“There is this disconnect between what the World Cup planners say they are doing and what they actually do,” Collins told the AJC. “We don’t feel that we’ve had a seat at the table.”
The letter asks the city to make sure thousands of workers are treated lawfully and with “dignity and respect,” and they receive fair compensation, including a minimum wage of at least $26 an hour, outside of construction work.
It also demands guarantees that Atlanta law enforcement does not team up with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to target the immigrant community at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and other parts of the city.
“The city and host committee must protect residents and visitors from the Trump administration’s xenophobic immigration agenda,” the letter states.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino has a close relationship with President Donald Trump, who has pursued aggressive immigration enforcement in Georgia and across the country.
“Despite FIFA’s mantra that ‘football unites the world,’ a World Cup held under discriminatory and exclusionary policies risks deepening social divides rather than bridging them,” Andrea Florence, executive director of global coalition the Sport & Rights Alliance, has said.
“FIFA should exert its leverage and demand concrete, legally binding guarantees that human rights won’t be further sacrificed for the sake of the game,” she said.
Longtime activist Tim Franzen, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Atlanta Economic Justice Program, said he is under no illusions about FIFA’s motives in insisting committees submit the plans.
“I don’t think we need to fool ourselves into thinking that FIFA exists to lift up human rights. They exist to make as much money as possible off these events,” Franzen said. “It’s very much something that they are doing in order to tick a box.”
Franzen said he would like the city to produce a legally binding commitment to its plan, so that it has “teeth.”
“A human rights document really isn’t worth much if there’s not some sort of accountability behind it,” Franzen said.
Stanciel said the city’s work on housing, homelessness, and labor protections are “works in progress” founded on “principles and policies that will live beyond the World Cup.”
“We’ve continued to move the needle on all these areas — even while under restrictions of federal and state law. Atlanta will continue to be a welcoming city that upholds the rights of all people,” Stanciel said in an emailed statement.
Collins welcomed plans to house people, but raised concerns they could end up in the Fulton County Jail.
Earlier this year, a federal judge approved a consent decree between the U.S. Department of Justice, Fulton County and the county sheriff because of inhumane and brutal conditions at the Rice Street facility.
“What happens to people who, for whatever reason, don’t take up the services on offer?” Collins asked. “The unsaid thing is that a lot of these people are going to end up arrested and detained in the city’s facilities, or perhaps in Fulton County Jail, which is an unconstitutional hellhole.”
Cathryn Vassell, CEO of Partners for HOME, said the city is committed to a housing-first approach and has pushed back against the notion the city will incarcerate people.
In an interview, she said her nonprofit’s goal was still “to ensure that no one is arrested” and there are no “plans to increase criminalization of homelessness.”
Earlier this month, the nonprofit said it had housed 129 people so far, and that the $212 million initiative called Atlanta Rising had led to the creation of 428 permanent supportive housing units.
“The milestone means that we’re on track to hit the goal of 400 people permanently housed well before the end of the year,” Vassell said in an interview.
Franzen said not nearly enough is being done to address homelessness. He estimates about 1,000 people need housing downtown.
Partners for HOME’s 2025 point-in-time count estimates there are close to 2,900 unhoused people in the city. The vast majority, about 80%, identified as Black, the nonprofit said.
About the Author
Matt Reynolds is a housing reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's local government team.
