July 5, 2022, marks the 60th anniversary of Algeria securing its independence from France. Algeria’s revolutionary example inspired activists and freedom fighters around the world, including anti-colonial leaders throughout Africa and Black revolutionaries in the United States. Yet much has changed in Algeria over the last half century. In this special interview commemorating the battle for Algerian independence, author, activist, and TRNN board member Bill Fletcher, Jr. sits down with Brahim Rouabah to discuss Algeria’s history since independence—from the 1965 coup to the civil war of the 1990s and the recent Hirak Movement—and to examine how colonial interests have continued to shape Algeria’s politics and history into the present.
Brahim Rouabah, an Algerian activist and scholar, is the cofounder and former leader of the UK Algeria Solidarity Campaign. He is currently a doctoral student at the City University of New York and the author of the 2020 essay, published in the Review of African Political Economy, “The Colonial Counter-Revolution: The People’s Revolution in Algeria.”
Bill Fletcher Jr (born 1954) has been an activist since his teen years. Upon graduating from college he went to work as a welder in a shipyard, thereby entering the labor movement. Over the years he has been active in workplace and community struggles as well as electoral campaigns. He has worked for several labor unions in addition to serving as a senior staffperson in the national AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; and in the leadership of several other projects. Fletcher is the co-author (with Peter Agard) of “The Indispensable Ally: Black Workers and the Formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, 1934-1941”; the co-author (with Dr. Fernando Gapasin) of “Solidarity Divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice“; and the author of “‘They’re Bankrupting Us’ – And Twenty other myths about unions.” Fletcher is a syndicated columnist and a regular media commentator on television, radio and the Web.
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