The dramatic demonstrations in late August in Indonesia have prompted important debates among activists about the significance of a renewed culture of street protest that has emerged since 2019.
These mobilisations have emerged largely outside of Indonesia’s acknowledged reformasi social movements that, since the mid 2000s, are often organised in NGOs with access to funding and recognition by the government as “legitimate” representatives of civil society.
Many of the new street protests have a distinct class character, involving students and gig economy workers from poor backgrounds, as well as workers and farmers, many with previous experiences in conflict with state and private companies.
Activists from the 1998 movement against the New Order and political observers refer to these mass protests as spontaneous mobilisations with a “rhizomic” character (ie diffuse and with leaderless patterns of organisation).
Much of the analysis of Indonesia’s new social movements focuses on the capital, Jakarta, to explain the dynamics of this youth-led movement. In this special feature, һƷ̽’s Rebecca Meckelburg speaks with two youth activists from the Central Java province — Dera from Maring Institute in Semarang and Akrom from the Indonesian youth struggle front in Salatiga — to get their take on this new youth-led movement.
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How did you get involved in political activity?
Akrom: When I was a high school student, there were actions in Magelang city against the omnibus “job creation” law [which weakened labour, indigenous and environmental protection laws to make favourable conditions for capital investment] in early 2020.
I joined university and many technical high school students in a demonstration. It was my first experience of being chased by police and teargassed.
I was arrested for two days, interrogated, stripped naked and beaten. This opened my eyes to what is meant by the social movement.
We didn’t understand everything about the reasons for the protests, but it was real life education about how we had power to stand up against those who just want to give us orders. We developed an understanding of who the police are, how the police protect political elites against citizens they should be accountable to.
I got the chance to go to university in 2020, but life was hopeless — because of COVID-19 I had no money at all. My friends in the student press organised to pay my boarding house and gave me food — even though they didn’t really have much.
This experience made me think about social action, how people act to make a difference.
I joined the Indonesian youth struggle front [Front Perjuangan Pemuda Indonesia — FPPI]. Here I was exposed to political ideology; we studied Marxism, historical materialism. Many of the ideas made my head spin, but then I found it easier to explain why people suffer injustice and exploitation. Struggles for justice and better lives for the rakyat (little people) became part of our everyday lives.
Through FPPI, I joined solidarity mobilisations with fisherpeople and local farmers at Pening Lake, then with farmers in Dieng plateau, in Semarang coastal kampungs [low-income settlements] with residents experiencing land subsidence due to large-scale water extraction and rising sea levels due to climate change, and in Pati district with residents resisting the cement factory.
Through these solidarity actions, I met activists from the legal aid institute, the WALHI environmental campaign group and youth groups from other cities and regional towns.
What do you think of the analysis that this Indonesian hashtag movement that has emerged since 2019 has a rhizomic character; that it is spontaneous and largely leaderless?
Dera: This view has been argued by the 1998 activists. They have been saying to us after the demonstrations [in August] that it’s time for the movement to be led with a central command. They say the movement we have been organising for several years in Semarang is leaderless, sporadic and unsustainable. But we say it is well planned.
It is true there is no consolidated national leadership for the large mass actions since 2019 but there is a long process of organising underlying our Semarang mobilisations. We have [Marxist] reading groups, markets for free sharing of goods people need, collective discussions. We bring campus students interested in politics to meet grassroots communities in conflict with government or corporations — here they learn about the importance of solidarity.
We organise soccer matches with high school and university students in front of the provincial police headquarters to show police we’re not afraid of them — these are just some of the ways we plan and organise.
In Pati district, the mass demonstration of 50,000 people [against land tax hikes] in August emerged, in part, because of the confidence of ordinary citizens who fought in their everyday lives against the cement factory and limestone mine over the past 20 years.
One of the common features of our movement is we move in daily activities that support people’s ability to survive.
The 1998 generation consider this kind of movement non-political. We don’t agree. We call it “care politics”.
It is precisely this series of small everyday actions that allows us to encourage people to come to the big mobilisations. These small actions support people, including activists, to survive — we support communities struggling against evictions from their land, against the pollution of their rivers and to survive rising sea levels that take their homes.
We go through social and political experiences together, we make political analysis, we counter the brainwashing we received at school from all the teachers trained during the dictatorship.
Social solidarity and social-political action in the everyday then make it possible to mobilise people in these large street protests when the political conditions are right.
Akrom: People are entitled to their opinions. But we view these large-scale street protests as the fruit of comrades’ everyday, often very boring, work of continuously fostering people’s anger and frustration against the government. The street protests are important in themselves but they should be understood as the fruit of comrades’ everyday resistance politics.
For example, one of our comrades’ parents were evicted from their street stall, so we all put in whatever small money we had and bought them tools they needed to make their living. This we count as an act of resistance. But others reduce these acts of resistance to something apolitical.
Some view the mass protests as the most important thing, but demonstrations alone are not our end goal. How we understand the world and how we make our future in the everyday, how we reject the culture that [elite] “politicians know best” and how we make our own political priorities is what matters.
We reject the idea that Jakarta is the centre of politics. Our solidarity struggles for survival at the grassroots level are part of building new politics for the future.
How important is solidarity in this new youth-led movement and what is your analysis of its class character?
Dera: The long-term struggle against the Pati cement factory in Centra Java educated new generations of activists, both from Pati district and wider Central Java about solidarity and class conflict.
Many collectives have emerged in Central Java districts mobilising around local issues and in support of people resisting [capitalist development] in other regions. Through this we have formed an ecosystem network.
In Semarang, I work in Maring institute, kamisan [Thursday] action collective and at university I was active in the university press [group], Dinamika [Dynamics].
I routinely invite university and high school students to visit grassroots communities resisting the state and private companies to inspire them to organise solidarity.
The recent August demonstrations were possible because of networks of solidarity and mutual trust built between groups. Semarang is a big diverse city but networks are well established between students from several campuses, workers and communities who are organised in everyday forms of solidarity.
We are well networked, with many technical high school students [usually schools for working-class and poorer youth]. We first met them as football supporters and organised with them when they clashed with police — now they attend kamisan solidarity actions and coordinate mobilisations for the big demonstrations with us.
We have built strong relations of trust between many groups over several years and we coordinate mass demonstrations through this network.
After the massive repression in late August, people were disoriented about how to do politics. We organised a concert on campus with political demands, including solidarity with the activists still detained.
Many turned up and the event went ahead without disruption from police or military. This gave people confidence that the government recognises the strength of our organised groups and how we act together — so it was better politically for the state to let us have our event than to try to repress us.
Akrom: My experience at the Islamic state university in Salatiga is that questions of class are critical. My university friends come from backgrounds like me: poor farmers, workers, labourers, fisherpeople, contract teachers — there are no children of government officials. It is people’s everyday life struggles that brought us together in Dinamika and Student Solidarity for Democracy [Solidaritas Mahasiswauntuk Demokrasi — SMUD].
Compared to other state universities, Islamic state universities in Indonesia are affordable even for poor families. We pay [the equivalent of] A$170 per semester.
I thank God that the affordable option brought me into contact with other people from the same class. At a more privileged university, I probably would have not become the activist I am. Through recognising our common situation, we began to understand that what the “little people” [orang kecil] can do is gather together, strategise, discuss politics and everyday solidarity, while monitoring political developments [at local and national levels].
How important is organisational identity and do you think a coordinated national-scale network or organisation is needed?
Dera: We do need national coordination, but we don’t like attempts by Jakarta activists or nationally based organisations to try and direct what we do.
Recently, the Greens party tried to push us to attend a meeting to form a central Java [Greens] branch. But they did not extend an invitation to the many different groups in Semarang and surrounding areas to meet and discuss the way forward for national coordination. It was a directive to a handful of Semarang activists to bring all these different local groups to meet national Greens leaders to form a provincial Greens party branch — without any discussion. So, most activists didn’t attend.
Akrom: FPPI is a national youth organisation and on campus we have the student press, SMUD, and an environmental group. These groups were established in the 1990s and FPPI was founded in 1998 by activists from the 1990s including from the People’s Democratic Party. Some of these older activists still maintain contact with young activists today.
I’m active in these organisations because they provide important forums for new generations of youth activists and because they have connections with radical youth movements from the 1990s — which we learn from, studying Marxist and other ideologies.
Beyond this, we try to build broad alliances around [often single] issues that emerge at both local and regional levels. Our principle is non-sectarian and inclusive — we reach out to any groups that have an interest in issues we organise around.
We do need national-scale coordination. This should involve all organisations, where we can agree on common goals. We should be open to listening to criticism and feedback from comrades from other regions and different organisations. We should provide mutual support — whether they are anarchists or have conservative Islamic politics — [and] we should engage in critical discussions of our politics, our strategies.
This can’t take place if this network is not deliberately formed. This includes networking with organisations that don’t see themselves as part of a “movement” but are nationally-coordinated student or mass religious organisations that a lot of young people join.
Making these relationships is part of what we see as the “care work” of building a movement that creates spaces for us to connect with young people who don’t yet have political understanding of the importance of building social movements for change.
[Rebecca Meckelburg is a research fellow at the Institute for International Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada and the Indo-Pacific research centre at Murdoch University.]