After Hurricane Katrina ravaged the area, Mississippi Gulf Coast residents were forced to come together to deal with the aftermath. Then, just as they were starting to get back on their feet, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster dumped millions of barrels of oil into the water just off their shores. Cumulatively, these events have made environmentalists out of a whole lot of Gulf Coast residents who may not have considered themselves as such… We tell an hour of stories about the fight for the natural world Gulf Coast bringing residents together, both with one another and with unlikely partners—and how, in some instances, that fight is turning out to be exactly what a community needed to survive… From Turkey Creek, where a historic African-American community fights for its survival with the unlikely allies of rare birds and the Audubon Society, to a residents combing the beach for sea turtle strandings they fear are related to the oil spill, to former spill cleanup workers fighting for recognition of what they believe are oil-exposure-related health problems.

For Nat Turner, garden rakes and shovels are tools for transformation.

He's transformed an old store in New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward into an urban Eden. Blair Grocery is now both a nontraditional school and an urban farm run by youth who’ve dropped out of mainstream education. Majora spends two days observing the teaching and training that makes the Blair Grocery Project a true innovation.

Still Singing the Blues: New Orleans and South Louisiana features musicians in New Orleans and South Louisiana who continue to perform the blues—often despite poverty, ill health, and the impacts of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. We have included two versions, one with a billboard and one without a billboard. The billboard version is 55 minutes long. The one without the billboard is 53 minutes and 59 seconds long. Timing and cues are given for the billboard version.

A first-time pet rescuer's tale. Music is blended with interviews with volunteers and returning residents to New Orleans just after the hurricane.

After the Storm is a feature-length documentary film that follows the production of the musical Once on this Island, including the story of each young actor's life in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

This is an oral history montage from Katrina evacuees about their experiences in New Orleans and the way they were treated by the police and other authorities.

New Orleans bartenders attempt to break land speed record with Katrina flooded car

Terry's cell at Orleans Parish Prison became a drowning cage as the flood waters from Hurricane Katrina rose almost to the ceiling. As his drowned cellmate floats near him and inmates are screaming, Terry tells us his thoughts as he faces his own ignoble, inhumane death. These thoughts are what continue to haunt him (and perhaps us) in this Katrina remembrance.

Amid the vast destruction and loss of Hurricane Katrina, Eve didn't want to forget what it is she values so deeply about the Crescent City.

One night High School band director Willbert Rawlins Jr. was walking through the French Quarter with his wife when he came across a group of his students hustling tourists. He felt like he had failed as a teacher to keep his students out of trouble so he helped them become professional musicians and today they are the TBC Brass band.

New Orleans police officer David Duplantier tells his wife, Melissa Eugene, about patrolling the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.

All the pieces in this series were edited from two long sessions recorded in the old band room of Colton Middle School in New Orleans. The school tried to open after Katrina but had to close after just two months of classes because the mold was too toxic. It sat empty for three years until it was lent to a group of artists who renovated the building and turned the classrooms into "art studios" Thaddeus came over with some poems and Sunni and Josh played the instruments that were in the room. Herbie and Joseph sat on the floor and listened.

Dr. Kiersta Kurtz-Burke tells her husband, Dr. Justin Lundgren, about caring for patients at Charity Hospital in the days following Hurricane Katrina.