Brewed for Battle
The organization of activists within the Milk Tea Alliance (MTA) emerged organically through shared experiences and relationships, blending digital and offline mobilization. MTA has no formal structure or singular leadership, instead functioning as a decentralized movement driven by activists from across Southeast and East Asia. Activists like Marc Batac (who recently spoke to us on the podcast), along with his peers focused on building trust and solidarity, meeting regularly to share updates and strategize responses to unfolding events, such as the coup in Myanmar. This platform provided space for activists, artists, feminists, and scholars from a wide range of countries—including Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—to coordinate protests, share information on digital and offline activism, and offer mutual aid. Despite its decentralized nature, the MTA became a crucial network, facilitating concrete actions like organizing protest events, providing mutual aid (such as sending SIM cards and housing refugees), and fostering a sense of regional solidarity against authoritarianism and state violence.
“From now, simply being dedicated to Myanmar, it became a platform for information sharing and events and protest actions across the concerns of this region, but also for people asking for tips and information on how to do digital activism and offline activism better.”
“Relationships that we've built through the years, that was over a dozen youth activists, who now have more experience, are quite more well-connected, have more resources not simply in a financial sense, but in social capital, not only in their movements but also in their organizations. We have more information now. Some of them have already graduated or have more networks. They were the ones we reached out to. And the ask was simple, ‘We don't know what's happening, and I'm pretty sure our Myanmar friends will have to figure out the specific ask, because this is developing. But what we have to do right now is simply just show up, and we will figure it out together.’
So, on the Monday immediately, exactly a week after the coup, that was the first meeting of Milk Tea Alliance Friends of Myanmar. And we have not stopped. For three years and how many months, we have met regularly, every Monday evening, to exchange notes, to understand what's happening in Myanmar. There is always news on what's happening in Myanmar, but what's really needed, what's not written in the news, is the access to that information. That's why we built the space. But also, we wanted that space for trust building. We will check in on what's happening in Myanmar and what's happening in our respective countries. But there is also stuff that we would just play among us. We would do some online screening of documentaries. We would joke with each other. We would cry together.
We didn't want this to be a usual type of NGO-to-NGO transactional [space]; this is real solidarity-building, built upon relationship, around figuring out, crystallizing, understanding each other’s experiences, and therefore, weaving together what is our dream. What then we should we replace this broken system with? We knew that this won't be a one off, one month, one year process; this would be a continuous process. From over a dozen individuals, we are now more than 150 activists, artists, feminists, abolitionists, scholars, researchers; mostly 20-year-old to 35-year-old, spanning from Mongolia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong; Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, all over Southeast Asia. Some of us are also in India. In South Asia. Diaspora groups as well, Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese diaspora groups all over, in Australia, in Europe and Canada, and in the US. Also student organizations that would usually, in the meetings, take a step back, because it's our space. It's primarily those who come from Southeast Asia, but who are in solidarity with the Milk Tea Alliance.
From now, simply being dedicated to Myanmar, it became a platform for information sharing and events and protest actions across the concerns of this region, but also for people asking for tips and information on how to do digital activism and offline activism better.
We did use the platform during the first weeks of the coup to look to for mutual aid, concrete mutual aid. We would send top-ups and SIM cards from Thailand to Myanmar. We would also - when Myanmar friends find themselves in Thailand, escaping back then the closing of the borders and the armed conflict - we would look for houses of friends, where they could stay for a few days. Then we would look for a local organization to host them for them for weeks, up until we could find that more long-term asylum for them.
We knew that there is a gap in how the bigger organizations would respond. So, we are in the front lines, who have a little bit of resources that we could, that's what we mobilized, so that we could bridge that.”