Erma Susanti

Mass evictions have deprived thousands of Indonesia’s urban poor of their homes, clearing the way for developments that the government perceives to have higher social value. Erma Susanti works to build and publicize the social value of poor communities on the banks of the Surabaya River, positioning them as protectors of their environment and advocates for their rights.

In large cities across Indonesia, government authorities routinely evict poor families from their homes to make room for “urban beautification” or profitable development projects. Media reports tend to portray these families either as helpless victims or as criminal elements deserving eviction. Defying such portrayals, Erma Susanti helps residents of urban slums to become advocates for their communities and protectors of their environment. With her support, they renovate their neighborhoods, restore their environment, and publicize the key role they play in securing Indonesia’s social and economic health.
As poor residents assert their social value, they build their power to negotiate with the government and seek alternatives to mass eviction. Erma recruits teams of scientists and policy professionals to lend rigor to environmental restoration efforts and to mediate between the needs of the poor and the desires of government. Her network currently unites dozens of communities along the Surabaya River, and is now spreading to other urban poor communities across Indonesia.

Many of Indonesia’s urban poor live on abandoned land on the banks of a river, near railroad tracks, or in another space not intended for residential use. Poor families often choose these locations because they are the only affordable option for living space, or because their other options lack the basic resources they need for survival. Without support from public or private construction efforts, they tend to build shacks with whatever materials are available. As a result, poor neighborhoods are unattractive, and their residents are stigmatized by government and citizens alike; they are labeled as eyesores, spreaders of disease and pollution, and even criminals. Although these families often work hard and play important roles in the informal economy, their access to basic public services is extremely limited.
The government’s policy toward the people living on the banks of rivers or in other slum areas has so far been both straightforward and cruel: evict them. In March of 2002, government workers destroyed the homes of 816 families in Surabaya in a forceful eviction, leaving thousands of people without shelter and hundreds of children with uncertain futures. A further five thousand families along the Wonokromo and Surabaya Rivers have received threats of a similar fate.
Forced evictions in cities throughout the country have been exposed in the media, gaining support for the families whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. In support of these families, activists have organized mass demonstrations to block bulldozers from destroying slum neighborhoods. Others have tried to stop evictions through legal channels or pressure the government to change its policies. So far, these approaches have met with only limited success.

In early 2002, as thousands of people living on the banks of the Surabaya River faced the destruction of their homes, Erma established a network organization called JERIT (Network for Oppressed People). The founding members were activists and university students concerned about the plight of the urban poor. Erma and her allies strengthened existing citizen groups and encouraged the establishment of others, eventually combining the groups to work together in one network, the Association of Citizens from the Riverbanks of Surabaya.
Erma leveraged this network to attack the problems of the urban poor on diverse fronts. Her first solution was to position slum communities as protectors of the natural resources around them, complete with the scientific tools they needed to guide programs of restoration. When government officials broke their promise to include slum residents in the process of drafting laws on the Surabaya riverbanks, Erma helped the residents build a coordinated response. She recruited a volunteer team of experts to undertake a rigorous study of the river and its problems, involving residents in all stages of their work. With study results now in hand, the team of experts helps the residents to offer an attractive alternative to evicting them from their homes: community-based renovation.
On July 27, 2003, the members of the Association of Citizens from the Riverbanks of Surabaya declared themselves River Protectors. With technical help from the team of experts, they now hold themselves responsible for guarding, caring for, and restoring the river as an ecosystem. Citizens clean the river, remove the floating communal toilets and streams of household garbage that have kept it dirty, and investigate industries that illegally dump waste into its waters.
By proving and publicizing their social and environmental contribution to Indonesia, residents make it nearly impossible for the government to justify its policies of eviction. To further strengthen their position, Erma helps citizens to renovate their homes, in one case even moving homes back from the river to allow access for an inspection road. With her support, they build local recycling and composting centers, install communal rainwater collection tanks, and use filtration systems to control their liquid waste. To foster the potential beauty of the riverbanks as open green spaces, the residents seed plants to prevent erosion, help water absorption, and produce clean oxygen.
In another effort to banish stigma against communities, Erma helps people revive traditions related to river culture in Indonesia. One of these traditions is the ceremony of nglarung, a procession in which residents clean the river area and give offerings for the spiritual well-being of the river. The planning and implementation of this annual event has united communities living near the rivers, who come from widely varied socioeconomic and religious backgrounds. The nglarung event includes processions combined with various performances which attract a good deal of media attention. As journalists gain interest in river communities, Erma connects them to a coalition of newsworkers she has gathered to help dispel public misconceptions about the riverbank communities.
Through years of work, Erma and her allies laid the foundations for a thrilling victory: the annulment of the law that authorized forced evictions on the riverbanks of Surabaya. The government agency in charge of housing and settlements has acknowledged people’s rights to their homes, and has agreed to create a new policy with the participation of riverbank communities.
Based upon this success, other groups have come to Erma to seek assistance in facilitating similar processes. So far she has worked with groups from Madiun, Malang and Sidoarjo, all cities in East Java. Academics who have been engaged in the Team of Experts or those who have learned about Erma’s work often send students to research and become involved in the activities with the communities. They have also been helpful in documenting this work. Erma has been actively spreading her ideas through her intensive networking with the Urban Poor Consortium in Jakarta and a national network called UPLINK. The Urban Poor Consortium—which is internationally known—has begun to adopt Erma’s strategies.

Erma’s career in the citizen sector began in high school, when she joined the Nature Lovers Club. She continued her involvement in Nature Lovers during her college career, soon expanding her work to a program serving groups of women living in a slum region of Surabaya. She was deeply touched by the experiences of the women she worked with, and together with other activists on campus she resolved to do all she could to aid them. The students created an organization called OMEK—the Organization of Students Beyond Campus Activities—to coordinate and foster advocacy for the rights of women.
Upon graduating, Erma and her colleagues continued their work on women’s issues, eventually founding another advocacy group called KPPD. Erma gained critical skills in lobbying and negotiation at KPPD, and as she learned more about the grave impact of mass evictions on the urban poor, she developed a desire to apply her skills to that issue. She brought together activists from ten organizations for a summit on mass eviction, and they established JERIT, with Erma as the coordinator. Since then, her network has expanded to include representatives of urban poor communities throughout Surabaya and areas of East Java.