JD Dixon had a good answer Sunday morning.

The Belleville activist and more than a dozen others spread out across the 1800 block of North 39th Street with two goals: to clear out the piles of trash and overgrown vegetation along the road for neighbors, and to attract attention from federal authorities who could investigate illegal dumping and the broader issue of environmental racism throughout the predominantly Black city.

“We care about our community,” Dixon said, “and we’re not going to stop until we get equity.”

East St. Louis can use all the help it can get. The city is one of the region’s poorest. Vacant, dilapidated properties line many streets, and where they don’t, there are often vacant lots instead. They’re all liable to attract unscrupulous haulers who can save money by dumping there rather than in landfills, and a cash-strapped city government struggles to do much about it.

So on Sunday, volunteers stepped in. Euree Northington, 52, who lives a block over, surveyed the scene from his backyard.

“This is a blessing,” he said.

He remembered what the block looked like 40 years ago, when the red-brick church shrouded by the overgrown trees was still occupied and the building next to it housed Head Start, the federal program offering preschool and child care services for the poor. He remembered playing ball with other kids in the space behind the buildings.

But he also recalled something about a problem with the roof that the owners couldn’t pay to fix. They moved out, and soon enough, vandals moved in, stripping the building of anything they could sell.

“They took everything out of there,” Northington said.

When they were done, nature took its turn, growing until it overtook the sidewalk. The same happened on the other side of the street.

But in recent months, Dixon and his group, Empire 13, and other community organizations have been trying to mitigate the decline as part of a series of cleanups across the city. They cut down the excess trees and piled their limbs 4 feet high. They carried away the accumulated garbage, including what appeared to be construction waste.

And on Sunday, they came back for more, heaving load after load of dead tree branches into pickup trucks and stuffing bags full of broken liquor bottles, cardboard and other detritus.

It was no panacea, and organizers didn’t pretend otherwise. There were no grand plans presented to redevelop the old church and school or the slew of collapsing houses around the corner. One of the volunteers dug up a revolver during the cleanup, a grim reminder of the city’s reputation for violent crime.

“It’s not the first time,” another volunteer quipped.

But Dixon said the cleanups are just one piece of the puzzle. His group is gathering signatures on a petition for the U.S. Department of Justice’s environmental arm to come here and help with the dumping. It’s also advocating for East St. Louis to get a piece of a bill passed through Congress last year set to spend $100 million on environmental issues in struggling communities.

And Dixon said he’s seeing progress locally, too. People are starting their own cleanups without his group having to come around.

“We know it’s not all going to change tomorrow or in a year or two years,” he said. “But we have seen change.”