Every Saturday in Washington, DC’s Dupont Circle at around 2:30 PM, Hamid Lellou, 54, can be found in the northwest corner of the park carefully placing dozens of Algerian flags and banners in the ground.
Once his setup is complete and he is surrounded by the colors of Algeria and slogans like “You are not alone” and “They all must go,” Lellou positions a tripod, clips in his cell phone, and begins broadcasting live around the world on Facebook.
More than 4,000 miles from the Algerian capital, Lellou and the handful of men and women who join him represent a transformational protest movement, the Hirak as it is called, that took hold across the North African nation and throughout its diaspora starting in early 2019.
The Hirak—a term derived from the Arabic word for movement—began in February of 2019 as weekly street demonstrations protesting the announcement that Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the country’s then 81-year-old president, largely incapacitated after a series of strokes, would stand for a fifth term. The Hirak quickly gained momentum across the country, bringing out millions from all walks of life via peaceful marches.
In the months prior to leaving Algeria for the US in the fall of 2019, Malik, a New York City-based activist who preferred not to give his last name, took part in massive Hirak demonstrations in the coastal city of Béjaïa, not far from his hometown. When asked to describe the power and emotion of those moments, marching the streets alongside hundreds of thousands of fellow Algerians, he pauses and answers softly: “We had tears in our eyes.”
Speaking of the octogenarian leader who served as president from April 27, 1999 to April 2, 2019, and passed away on Friday, September 17th, he adds: “He just hated the people.”
But the movement’s grievances were much broader than the removal of a sick and corrupt leader. Bouteflika represented decades of state repression, inequality, economic stagnation, graft, and political inertia. Since its independence from France in 1962, Algeria has been largely ruled by the same regime—le pouvoir as it is called—an unelected military and business elite who wield the levers of power behind the scenes, despite the veil of elections and democracy.
Brahim Rouabah, an Algerian-born political scientist at Brooklyn College (City University of New York) who regularly attends Hirak protests in New York, paints the picture of a nation marked by acute “pauperization and unemployment,” despite vast natural resources and human capital, and a state more intent on serving foreign interests than addressing the dire health, education, and infrastructure needs of its people. He refers to the “organized abandonment of the people by the military oligarchy that controls the economy, that dominates political life and denies the people genuine self-determination.” The Algerian population, he says, “feel like they live under colonialism with an indigenous face.”
As a mass movement calling for civilian rule, the leaderless Hirak cuts across class, ethnicity, gender, age, and religious observance. Rouabah explains this diversity noting ironically how injustice is the only fact of life that is “fairly distributed” in Algeria.
The Hirak also extends across a large diaspora around the world, approximately seven million according to the National Institute of Demographic Studies, a French public research organization specializing in population studies. These activists living abroad do not view themselves as separate and apart from their compatriots living within Algeria’s borders and their actions echo those of their countrymen and women back home.
In her paper, “The role of Hirak abroad: a renaissance for the Algerian Diaspora?,” Algerian academic Hayette Rouibah writes about the impact the Hirak has on Algerians living abroad, bringing them “closer to the everyday affairs of their home country” and “allowing them to be part the change taking place in their country.” The diaspora, she writes, “has become an important factor in the Hirak movement.” She contrasts the current moment with earlier periods of disconnect between Algerians of the “interior” and “exterior.” Hayette adds: “Since the start of the Hirak, we’ve noticed an unprecedented mobilization of the Algerian diaspora, via networks, associations and virtual communities on social media.”
While the largest demonstrations outside Algeria take place in France and Canada, small yet vociferous Hirak communities in the US have formed.
For Hamid Lellou, originally from Oran and a resident of Northern Virginia since 2006, the Hirak has been transformative. In many ways, it helped re-orient his time, his energy, and his passion.
“When I saw Hirak, I jumped in. For me it was something natural,” he says. “I’m a dual citizen, I have no problem with that. But I am deeply Algerian, and I am proud to help Algerian people. This is what keeps me going.”
Lellou, a mediator and conflict resolution specialist by training and experience, began his Hirak in early 2019 by standing in front of the Algerian Embassy in Washington, DC every week with other protesters voicing their anger with the regime and calling for civilian rule. After the start of the pandemic and with the permission of DC officials, Lellou moved to a park near the US Capitol where he began bringing flags with him, one for every Algerian wilaya or province. Shortly after the January 6 insurrection this year on Capitol Hill, these small demonstrations found their permanent home in Dupont Circle, in the heart of Washington, where Lellou is joined by five to 12 activists every Saturday.
Expatriates like Ahmed (who preferred not to give his last name) meet up with Lellou regularly. Despite having lived all over the world since leaving Algeria as a child, Ahmed remains deeply connected to his country, traveling back nearly every year. In the fall of 2019, he made the trip specifically to see the Hirak protests for himself, an experience he describes as “awe inspiring.”
The Washington, DC Hirak also mobilizes online, sharing videos from Algeria, sharing videos from DC, debating next steps, posting memes, highlighting government abuses, and simply making statements of solidarity and support. Lellou manages several different social media networks, broadcasting live twice a week: once from his home in Virginia and once from Dupont Circle. His audience varies from hundreds to tens of thousands per video. His goal is to facilitate a conversation about the Hirak, to discuss the implications of current events and to envision what a future Algerian state could look like.
A lot has happened in Algeria since February 2019, though in some respects, very little has changed. Weekly street marches turned into twice weekly demonstrations. In April 2019, President Bouteflika was forced to step down, and a new leader was put in place by the military regime. Elections were held—presidential, a constitutional referendum and a legislative vote—though on terms dictated by the ruling powers. The legitimacy of these and other “cosmetic” reforms have been discredited by feeble voter turnout and the tenacity of the Hirak.
The COVID-19 health crisis represented a major challenge and forced the movement to pause or at least take a different form for a while. Activists decided to halt in-person demonstrations due to public health concerns and for nearly a year, the streets were quiet. During this time, the state cracked down harder on descent. Journalists, activists, and social media users were arrested on trumped up charges, arbitrarily detained and even kidnapped and tortured.
A big question for the Hirak, a movement where street demonstrations represented so much, was what it would look like on the other side of the pandemic. Ultimately, online activism picked up and this helped prime the physical and digital terrain for the full return to in-person demonstrations that occurred starting in February of 2021.
Since this spring, the government has taken a more heavy-handed approach to the weekly marches. In May, they began banning protests in many cities outright, while continuing to weaponize the judiciary to mute the peaceful protestors, all under the approval and watchful eye of a supposedly new and reformed government. According to the CNLD, an Algerian citizen rights and watchdog group, approximately 200 individuals are imprisoned today for crimes ostensibly linked to the Hirak.
On why the government has taken the step to forbid marches and silence peaceful protestors, Rouabah, the Algerian political scientist, explains: “They are, more and more, realizing that this is not going away. This is not a party or a festival. This is a popular revolution to remove them from power. The more they realize that, the more berserk they go: arrests, kidnap, torture…a judiciary weaponized to abort this revolution. But the more they do this, the more people lose faith in their reformability and become even more convinced of the necessity of uprooting them.”
In the context of the movement in the USs, Algerians in New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC have maintained an in-person and digital presence supporting a Hirak network around the globe.
“You cannot believe how many Algerians I know now, from all over the world,” says Lelloua. Highlighting the freer space in the US to communicate and organize, he adds: “and we can do it because there are no security forces coming for us.”
On a warm afternoon this past June, protest chants echo down a quiet street in midtown Manhattan where a small group of Hirak protesters gather in front of the Algerian consulate.
Farida Bouattoura, who left Algeria 27 years ago when she was a young girl, is among those present. She traveled more than an hour…