MISSOULA — An online group planted the seed to keep Missoula connected for years to come in March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people apart.
Missoula Community Organizing Action is a Facebook group created during the pandemic to connect Missoulians.
Now, it serves as a tool for mutual aid.
With 6,000 members, Community Organizing Action is a safe place to ask for help- whether it’s $10 for gas or a ride to the airport.
For Janet Roper, who has been an admin since close to the group’s inception, the online platform is a way to move towards a more collective community.
“So many people find it hard to ask for help, and understandable because we are in a hyper-individualistic society — a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’,” she says. “There are no more bootstraps.”
Roper posts on the group dozens of times a day, informing the community about upcoming events and resources.
For example, every two weeks she posts information on upcoming pet support for families.
Her post on Feb. 21 read: “Basically, this is an extension of our already established mutual aid practices to include mutual aid for pets. We help each other with pet-related challenges — and in doing so, keep families together and pets out of animal shelters.”
Roper’s engagement is about more than just helping her community; it’s about a bigger movement of relying on each other.
“It's my way of contributing to the community,” she says. “It's my way of just sticking it to the system– it's built to other people, and it's built to divide people and to make people feel less than, and what we can do as people is come together in community and support each other.”
Those in need of help will either post a request under an anonymous user or leave their profile visible.
Either way, it’s rare to see a post without comments from others willing to help.
While Missoula has several organizations and non-profits dedicated to helping the community, the online group can give people an easier path towards help, one without the barriers of transportation or paperwork.
“It's accessible, you know? It's a great way, it's the best way to not have to, you know, fill out a bunch of intake paperwork, it's not really scary, somebody can just leave something at your doorstep,” Nick Shontz, a long-time member of the group, says. “So that's sort of like breaking down barriers and creating an accessible way to connect folks. I think it's important.”
Shontz replies to posts when he can, sending money to those in need or offering services like lawn mowing. He also makes posts himself — including when he will be picking up people’s trash on his bi-annual dump runs.
While no ask is too small for the group, sometimes the online platform can completely change someone’s life.
Kristina King and her family found themselves homeless after their landlord sold the house they were living in. She posted on the Community Organizing Action page and quickly found support. The community helped her get into housing, furnish her new place and even pay for a month's rent.
“I have seen nothing but kindness in the community,” King says. “They have offered outside of what I've asked. People who helped me in the beginning reached back out to make sure I was still doing okay and didn't need anything, which really inspired me to want to do the same for others.”
King now delivers food to the several community pantries around Missoula.
There are currently five pantries with free food:
- 735 Howell St.
- 516 N 2nd St. W
- 237 E Front St.
- 732 S First St. W
- 2045 Kensington Ave.
King and her friend, Maria Garcia Poyle, pick up leftovers from the Missoula Food Bank — items that are still good to eat but would have otherwise been thrown out. They also grab deliveries from peoples’ homes around Missoula.
King is grateful to live in a community where mutual aid is so prevalent.
“We also are really appreciative of people having the kindness in their heart who want to do that for the community,” she says. “There's a big need here, and it's nice to know that people who aren't experiencing all of these issues that, like, the majority of Missoula are experiencing, have the heart to want to reach out and help in any way they can.”
