Join historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom and scholar Sasha Razor on June 28, 2025 at 2 pm for the Southern California launch of Wasserstrom’s timely new book The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing. Wasserstrom offers insight into the transnational solidarity movement linking young activists in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Burma, all united by their fight against authoritarianism and symbolized by a shared love of milk tea.
The Milk Tea Alliance began as an internet meme and evolved into a decentralized network of pro-democracy activists across East and Southeast Asia. From the streets of Bangkok to the protests in Hong Kong, the movement blended pop culture, digital satire, and political resistance in inventive and courageous ways.
Wasserstrom will be joined in conversation by Sasha Razor, a scholar of Eastern European and diasporic cultures, whose writings on the 2020 Belarus protests draw parallels to the youth-led uprisings in Asia. Together, they’ll explore how global protest movements borrow from each other through memes, music, literature, and humor, while facing very real threats of repression.
