Growing up in the Southern United States, climate change was not a distant threat but an everyday reality for Amelia Southern-Uribe. Silence defined her childhood, long before she understood the politics of extraction or the corporate negligence that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The ocean she loved was muted by crude oil spills, and the once vibrant beaches of South Florida were marked by the carcasses of poisoned sea animals. Her family’s relocation to Arkansas exposed her to yet another struggle: poor air quality from the stench of factory farms that disproportionately harmed her Latino neighborhood. Poisoned water deprived a majority-Black community of reliable access to clean drinking water, and an oil pipeline threatened the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta, where Indigenous and Black communities have lived for generations. While silence was her first lesson in environmental injustice, her mother taught her that silence is not protection. In response, she co-founded Roots magazine, because stories from the South deserve to be told and the intergenerational knowledge of those who have long fought for clean air and water must be preserved. National narratives often erase the struggles of Southern communities, dismissing them as collateral damage. Through art, storytelling, and investigative reporting, Roots Magazine is a reclamation of power.
