JEANERETTE — Sometimes it takes perspective to realize change is simple.

That’s what Dallas transplant Erica J. Banks started to understand recently. She moved to Jeanerette with her husband three and a half years ago, thinking the adjustment from the city to semi-rural Louisiana would be easy.

Boy, was she wrong. She said it felt like she was going through her days like she was a zombie, and everyone else around her was a zombie, too.

Then she got active. Her efforts started a chain reaction that resulted in Saturday’s Jeanerette Matters cleanup effort that saw more than 50 people show up to scour the town’s streets, picking up trash and debris.

It’s a great first step, and one she is already planning to follow up. The Daily Iberian caught up with her Sunday afternoon to talk about the efforts.

So how did you get involved in Jeanerette Matters?

I would walk around talking with people and see the garbage and wonder, “Why don’t you care?” and then I didn’t care, either. Then one day I snapped out of it. My husband showed me a dash cam video from after Hurricane Andrew. It showed what Jeanerette looked like the day before and the day after. When that police car went over the railroad tracks on the day after, I couldn’t tell the difference between that and what it looked like today. It looked like the exact same trash. So I said, “Ok Erica, go outside and start picking up trash.” I did that up and down my street. Then I went around the back side and picked up trash. Then I saw the Jeanerette Matters group on Facebook and reached out to them.

What happened then?

That was on March 8. I saw the group on Facebook and asked them what I could do. All of a sudden everyone came. People I don’t even know started talking to me. Even though I had been here, I didn’t have relationships in the community, I didn’t have relationships at my church. All of a sudden these people started calling, saying, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. I’ve been having dreams about cleaning up Jeanerette.” That led to meetings at Cooper Street Coffee, which led to yesterday, which was amazing.

How did that make you feel?

We had like 50 people registered, and even more people who were just doing their own clean up as well. We filled seven or eight long trailers full of trash and junk, and it was all a community effort. It shows that I was wrong. I was walking up to people and apologizing. “Sorry, it was not y’all.” It was almost like we all had PTSD. Between “Ugh, our water is yellow,” to the storm damage to the political upheaval and the economy — it was all just too much. People get overwhelmed.

Where do you go from here?

We’ll probably look at meeting in a couple of weeks. We did notice some things that may need backup from city officials, like ditches that are overgrown or blocked. Luckily it wasn’t wet. Jeanerette matters because it is where we are. Eventually, I’d like us to look at things for children, helping fix the things we have control over. But it’s a community effort. We need everyone involved. It doesn’t mean we can dwell on the past. We need to look forward, get people who care about the future of Jeanerette involved. We need to have boots on the ground.