For half an hour, the crowd circled between the Grande Poste and Place Audin chanting, “[This is] a republic, not a monarchy”.
After Friday prayers on February 22, tens of thousands of mostly young men from the blue-collar neighbourhoods of The Casbah, Bab El Oued, 1er Mai and Belcourt marched towards downtown Algiers in protest against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s intention to run for a fifth term in the Algerian presidential elections scheduled to be held this year.
A police cordon holds steady before the human wave bypasses Telemly, an artsy-chic district that has borne the brunt of the clashes. The most prized commodity for looters were Adidas Stan Smith sneakers. That year, 22 million pairs were sold, earning them a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest selling sneaker. For many young men, Stan Smiths represented a level of affluence and access to the world that was not available to them in the tougher districts of the capital. The shoes remain extremely popular in Algeria, even in 2019.
In a rapidly changing Algeria, where young men are outnumbered by their female counterparts in universities and the populist discourse claims women are hired more frequently for entry-level positions, the backlash is articulated in the stadium.North African supporters are notoriously musical and their songs increasingly address social issues from the eyes of the young and excluded Algerian man.
The derby usually draws a minimum of 50 000 supporters at the Stade 5 Juillet, but this year saw a meagre turnout.On the evening of the match, cafes in the Upper Casbah were replete with USM Alger supporters, who suspected the regime of concocting some kind of plan.
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