Nearly a decade into my writing career, as an Atlanta-based journalist, I’ve become accustomed to national media turning a blind eye to the South.

As one of the first journalists to report on Cop City and the Stop Cop City movement, mostly through Atlanta-based outlet Mainline, I spent many hours over the last four years reaching out to bigger outlets, mainstream news reporters, and writing pitch emails, which largely met with silence until the violent police killing of 26-year-old climate activist Tortuguita in January 2023.

It showed me what the country thinks of us in the South and “our” problems. In the words of W.E.B. DuBois said, “As the South goes, so goes the nation.” Like Cop City, each horrific headline in the news maps onto one that had already occurred in the South and was ignored.

Last month, President Donald Trump said American cities should be used to train the military — the same purpose reporters, researchers, and organizers identified in Cop City, which included a mock city for militarized police training. Over 80 similar facilities are now being planned across the U.S. after the first multi-million dollar one was built in Atlanta, sitting on hundreds of acres of destroyed forest land.

On October 15, the Justice Department brought its first federal terrorism case in the administration’s crackdown on antifascist protesters (colloquially called “antifa”) — a path significantly carved by the Georgia Attorney General’s sweeping racketeering and conspiracy indictment, which included domestic terrorism charges, against 61 protesters. (Prior to the indictment in August 2023, over 40 people were charged with domestic terrorism for their protest against Cop City.)