we know that if the victims of the original sins of this country can get together and form a united front, we can actually change this country. - Colette Pichon Battle

our coastal location and low-lying land also makes the Gulf South ground zero for this nation's climate disasters.

Creole people were free people of color, and they could own land before many Black folks could. And so my family had been there before it was America, before it was the U.S.

It was a crack in the universe to come home and see the destruction of Katrina, and it was in that moment that I said I was never leaving home again. You see that kind of destruction, and your life will change whether you want it to or not. That was my moment of career change. I was going to have to take a much different advocacy role - not standing in front of a court, pointing to particular pieces of law but instead standing in front of my community and convince them of what I knew deep in my heart, which was that climate change was going to come after all of us and that it was going to take what we love the most, which is where we're from.