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. This week on State of the Re:Union, we tell an hour of stories about the fight for the natural world 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.

We'll travel 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.

Learn more about State of the Re:Union.