MAroon
InfraStructures
Colonial, racist, and capitalist systems are designed to scale and spread. They rely on rules, tools, and designs meant to apply broadly and uniformly — imposing their metrics and measures regardless of who we are, what we need, or what we’ve lived through.
But people who have had to survive within them — especially those pushed to the edges — have always built different ways to live. Often, these alternative systems must operate below the threshold of detection, beneath the radar of capture. They are emergent products of fugitive planning, direct action, and collective care. Built in hard times, by people with limited means, they hold life together when official systems fail or turn hostile.
Often, they begin with something simple: a meal.
A meal is more than food — or if it is only that, we must remember there is food for the body, the spirit, and the mind. A meal is how people share what they have. It’s how they stay connected. How they teach, protect, and plan. In a world designed to divide, the shared meal becomes a structure for holding people together.
From this practice — feeding each other — entire systems emerge:
Systems for surviving. Systems for learning. Systems for staying free.
The Maroon Infrastructures project explores how alternative systems of care, autonomy, and resistance take shape — not as abstract blueprints, but through grounded, adaptive practice.
The project draws from and reanimates historical examples of:
Counter-territories: Quilombos and maroon settlements, established in difficult terrain to create autonomous zones of refusal and regeneration
Counter-logistics: The Underground Railroad, where routes, tools, and alliances enabled movement and escape under constant threat
Survival programs: The Black Panther Party’s life-support systems — providing food, healthcare, and protection beyond the reach of state control
But this is not research into what has been. It is an invitation to think together about what we must now build — under pressure, in motion, and in relation.
RECENT WORKSHOPS
Building Maroon Infrastructures: Counter-Territories, Counter-Logistics, Survival Programs
Tuesday, July 22, 2025 • 6:00 – 8:00 PM
@ Co-Prosperity, 3219 S Morgan St
Presented as part of the subVersion Summer Camp