On July 1, city employees entered Freedom Park in Atlanta and removed the belongings of unhoused residents. No one was warned. The park sits close to a major World Cup watch party venue, and roughly 15 people had been living there for months.

Tents. Clothes. Shoes. According to several residents interviewed by the Guardian, losses across those present included vital documents — birth certificates and social security cards — along with a laptop, tools, and medications including insulin, hormones, and blood pressure pills. Gone.

A city official told the Guardian the site was "not an encampment" and the clearing was "routine park maintenance." Because no tents were visible at that moment, no one was warned. No procedures applied — including the policy Atlanta built after Cornelius Taylor was killed in January 2025, when a city vehicle crushed his campsite while he was asleep. In the months that followed, the city drafted procedures requiring that unhoused residents receive advance notice before any clearing. On July 1, those procedures simply did not count.

The logic of that exception is worth naming plainly: when officials categorize a removal differently, the rules don't trigger. Replacing government ID takes months under ordinary circumstances. Without a fixed address, it can become an insurmountable barrier. Without ID, there is no housing application, no benefit access, no path forward. Losing an insulin kit or blood pressure medication is not an inconvenience. It is a medical emergency.

Two additional downtown parks were also closed off during the same period, according to activists, displacing dozens of people who had been gathering there. Service providers are watching clients lose access to healthcare and the networks they depend on to survive.

Atlanta is hosting eight World Cup matches. The city has spent months telling the world it is ready. Mayor Dickens told reporters he wants unsheltered people to not come anywhere downtown. Hosting an international event does not make the people your city has failed invisible. It just makes the failure more visible.

There are roughly 3,000 unhoused people in Atlanta. The city's World Cup housing initiative reached about 1,400 of them. That leaves thousands more being shuffled from park to sidewalk to park while the city argues over definitions.

Sign this petition to demand Mayor Dickens and the Atlanta City Council take three concrete steps: end the "not an encampment" loophole by applying pre-clearance procedures to all removals of unhoused people's belongings; create a secure storage program so people do not lose medications and vital documents in future clearings; and commit to a moratorium on sweeps and park closures for the duration of the World Cup.

Atlanta built the stadium. It can build a policy that doesn't kill people or take their insulin.