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or inconsiderate decision by a close majority. Once set up and defined, this

right of appeal could greatly add to our protection.
Now we come to participation. The central concept here is that all

Conference members are on our service team. Basically we are all partners in

a common enterprise of World Service. Naturally, there has to be a division

of duties and responsibilities among us. Not all of us can be elected

Delegate, appointed Trustee, chosen Director, or become hired Staff member.

We have to have our respective authorities, duties and responsibilities to

serve; otherwise we couldn't function.
But in this quite necessary division, there is a danger -- a very great

danger -- something that will always need watching. The danger is that our

Conference will commence to function along strict class lines.
The elected Delegates will want all, or most all, of the Conference votes,

so they can be sure to rule the Trustees. The Trustees will tend to create

corporate boards composed exclusively of themselves, the better to rule and

direct those working daily at the office, Grapevine and AA Publishing. And,

in their turn, the volunteer Directors of the Grapevine and Publishing

Company will tend to exclude from their own Board any of the paid staff

members, people who so often carry the main burden of doing the work. To sum

it up: the Delegates will want to rule the Trustees, the Trustees will want

to rule the corporations and the corporate directors will want to rule the

hired Staff members.


Headquarters Experience:
Now Headquarters experience has already proved that this state of affairs

means complete ruin of morale and function. That is why Article Twelve of

your Conference Charter states that "No Conference member shall ever be

placed in a position of unqualified authority over another."


In the early days, this principle was hard to learn. Over it we had battles,

furious ones. For lack of a seat on the several boards and committees that

ran her office, for lack of defined status and duties, and because she was

"just hired help," and a woman besides, one of the most devoted Staff

members we ever had completely cracked up. She had too many bosses, people

who sometimes knew less and carried less actual responsibilities than she.

She could not sit in the same board or committee room as a voting equal. No

alcoholic can work under this brand of domination and paternalism.


This was the costly lesson that now leads us to the principle of

participation.


Participation means, at the Conference level, that we are all voting equals,

a Staff member's vote is guaranteed as good as anyone's. Participation also

means, at the level of the Headquarters, that every corporate Board or

Committee shall always contain a voting representation of the executives

directly responsible for the work to be done, whether they are Trustees or

not, or whether they are paid or volunteer workers. This is why, today the

president of AA Publishing and the senior Staff member at the AA office are

both Directors and both vote on the Board of AA Publishing. This puts them

on a partnership basis with the Trustee and other members of the Publishing

Board. It gives them a service standing and an authority commensurate with

their actual duties and responsibilities. Nor is this just a beautiful idea

of brotherhood. This is standard American corporate business practice

everywhere, something that we had better follow when we can.
In this connection I am hopeful that the principal assistant to the Editor

of The Grapevine, the person who has the immediate task of getting the

magazine together, will presently be given a defined status and seated on

the Grapevine's Board as a voting director.


So much, then, for the principle and practice of "participation."
Now, what about decision?
Our Conference and our Headquarters has to have leadership. Without it, we

get nowhere. And the business of leadership is to lead.


The three principles just described -- petition, appeal and participation --

are obviously checks upon our leadership, checks to prevent our leadership

running away with us. Clearly this is of immense importance.
But of equal importance is the principle that leaders must still lead. If we

don't trust them enough, if we hamstring them too much, they simply can't

function. They become demoralized and either quit or get nothing done.
How, then, are AA's service leaders to be authorized and protected so that

they can work as executives, as committees, as boards of trustees or even as

a Service Conference, without undue interference in the ordinary conduct of

AAs policy and business?


The answer lies, I think, in trusting our leadership with proper powers of

decision, carefully and definitely defined.


Trusted Executives:
We shall have to trust our executives to decide when they shall act on their

own, and when they should consult their respective committees or boards.

Likewise, our Policy, Public Information and Finance Committees should be

given the right to choose (within whatever definitions of their authority

are established) whether they will act on their own or whether they will

consult the Board of Trustees. (Our Headquarters can, of course, have no

secrets.)
Similarly, the Grapevine and AA Publishing Boards should be able to decide

when to decide when to act on their own and when to consult the full Board

of Trustees.
The Trustees, in their turn, must positively be trusted to decide which

matters they shall act upon, and which they shall refer to the Conference as

a whole. But where, of course, any independent action of importance is

taken, a full report should afterward be made to the Conference.


And last, but not at all least, the Conference itself must have a defined

power of decision. It cannot rush back to the grassroots with all its

problems or even many of them. In my belief the Conference should never take

a serious problem to the grassroots until it knows what their own opinion

is, and what the "pros" and "cons" of such a problem really are. It is the

function of Conference leadership to instruct the Group Conscience on the

issues concerned. Otherwise, an instruction from the grassroots which

doesn't really know the score can be very confusing and quite wrong.


Informed Groups:
Therefore Conference Delegates must have liberty to decide what questions

shall be referred to the AA group and just how and when this is to be done.


The conscience of AA is certainly the ultimate authority. But the grassroots

will have to trust the Conference to act in many matters and only the

Conference can decide which they are. The Conference, however, must at all

times stand ready to have their opinions reversed by its constituent groups

but only after these groups have been thoroughly informed of the issues

involved.


Such, I think, are the several powers of decision that our Conference and

Headquarters leadership must have or else fail in their duty. Anarchy may

theoretically be a beautiful form of association, but it cannot function.

Dictatorship is efficient but ultimately it goes wrong and becomes

demoralized. Of course AA wants neither.
Therefore, we want leadership that can lead, yet one which can be changed

and restrained. Servants of our fellowship, however, our leaders must always

remain trusted. We surely want leaders who are enabled to act in small

matters without constant interference. We want a Conference that will remain

extremely responsible to AA opinion, yet a body completely able to act alone

for us when necessary -- even in some great and sudden crisis.


Such then could become the AA service principle of decision.
If we now begin to incorporate the words petition, appeal, participation and

decision into our service thinking and action, I believe that many of our

confusions about AA's service functions will begin to disappear. More

harmony and effectiveness will gradually replace the service gears that

still grind and stick among us.
Of course, I am not now announcing these as permanent principles for

definite adoption. I only offer them as ideas to ponder until we meet again

in 1957.
Therefore I don't see why we should delay trying the experiment I have just

outlined above. If it doesn't work, we can always change.


AA has often asked me to make suggestions and sometimes to take the

initiative in these structural projects. That is why I have tried to go into

this very important matter so thoroughly.
Please believe that I shall not be at all affected if you happen to

disagree. Above all, you must act on experience and on the facts, and never

because you think I want a change. Since St. Louis, the future of AA belongs

to you!
P.S. Some AAs believe that we should increase our Board from 15 to 21

members in order to get the 10 alcoholics we need. This would involve

raising the non-alcoholics from 8 to 11 in number. But, might this not be

cumbersome and needlessly expensive? Personally, I think so.
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++++Message 1649. . . . . . . . . . . . General Service Conference - 1957

From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/9/2004 3:05:00 AM


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General Service Conference - 1957
The Need for Authority Equal to Responsibility
By Bill W.
The Tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous in its present short form suggests

that AA shall forever remain unorganized, that we may create special boards

or committees to serve us -- never governmental in character.
The Second Tradition is the source of all of the authority which, as you

know, lies in the group conscience of which this Conference is the

articulate voice worldwide.
Those are the basics on which our structure of service rests, whether at the

group level, the Intergroup or AA as a whole. What we want of the service is

primarily to fill a need that can be met in no other way. The test of any

service really is: "Is it necessary."


If it is really necessary, then provide it we must, or fail in our duty to

AA and those still to come. Experience has shown that certain necessary

services are absolutely indispensable at all levels. We make this

distinction: The movement itself is never organized in any governmental

sense. A member is a member if he says so. He cannot be coerced. He cannot

be compelled. In that sense we are a source of benign anarchy.


When it comes to the matter of service, the services within themselves

obviously have to be organized or they won't work. Therefore the service

structure of Alcoholics Anonymous and more especially of this Conference is

the blueprint in which we, as flesh and blood people, operate, relate

ourselves to each other and provide these needed services. And it is the

evolution of this blueprint within which we function that has been my chief

concern for the last dozen and a half years.
The usefulness of AA to us in it, and more particularly to all those still

to come, even the survival of AA, really depend very much on the soundness

of our basic blueprint of relating ourselves together so A.A. can function.

That is the primary thing. That is what we have come to call the structure.


Let's have a brief overall look at our structure again. Then see at what

point it may possibly need refinement and improvement. I hope we never think

that the cathedral of AA is finished. I hope that we will always be able to

refine its lines and enhance its beauty and its function.


Very obviously the unit of authority in AA is the AA group itself. That's

all the "law" there is. Everything that we have here in the way of authority

must come from the groups.
To create the voice of AA's conscience as expressed in the groups, we meet

in group assemblies. And then to obviate the usual political pressures, we

choose Committeemen and Delegates by the novel methods of no personal

nominations and use of a two-thirds vote.


Now arrived here, how are Delegates to be related to the Board of Trustees?

It was the original parent of the groups and a hierarchy of service quite

appropriate to our infancy, but one which must now become directly amenable

to Delegates and those closely linked to Delegates.


That question was responsible for a great deal of thought and speculation in

time past. And I think our seven years' experience has suggested that, in

broad outline, we are somewhere near right.
The Board of Trustees as a hierarchy had certain great advantages, which we

want to keep. For the long pull, it had immense liabilities. It was a law

unto itself. Now, it must become a partner. We have the Board, which is more

or less of an appointive proposition, and the staff members and directors of

services, largely appointed, subject to your consent, of course. We had the

problem of how the electees are going to relate to the appointees.


In the first place, in this Conference, we put all of ourselves in the same

club. The Trustee, for example, becomes a Conference member with one vote,

and a custodial duty. A Director of a service agency becomes a Conference

member, with a service duty. At the level of this Conference, we are all

equal; we are all in the club. Mid you note that the appointees have been

set in a great minority to the electees to insure that Area Delegates will

always have adequate powers of persuasion.
The Board of Trustees, you remember, is a legally incorporated entity. It

has to be that way first of all to transact business. It has to be that way

to give its several members and committees appropriate powers and titles

which denote what they do. We have to have that much organization in order

to function.
Theoretically, as Bernard Smith has pointed out, the Board of Trustees has

been legally undisturbed by all the recent change. Nevertheless, in a

Traditional and psychological sense, the Trustees' relations to the groups

and to you has been profoundly altered, not because Delegates have legal

power but because Trustees know that Delegates are their linkage to AA as a

whole. They also very well know that if you don't like what they do, you can

go home and cut off Area support.
In order to have anything functional, people have to have an authority to

act. Very obviously there are all kinds of questions arising where the basic

problem is "Who should act? And where should the committee or board or

individual act, and when should he act?"


A Conference, a movement, can't actually run anything. A Board of Trustees

really can't run anything. We operated on that mistaken idea for a while. We

have to classify the kind of thing that each worker, each Board, does -- and

the kind of thing the Conference does and the kind of thing that AA must do

to keep this Fellowship functioning. In other words there must always be an

authority equal to the responsibility involved in service work.


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++++Message 1650. . . . . . . . . . . . Development of Online General

Service


From: John Phipps . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/9/2004 6:42:00 PM
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*Online General Service -- A

History for Representatives to the Online Service Conference

*

******************************************************************************************************


*Forenote:
*
The purpose of this document is to provide a basis of history as

background for Online Service Conference members. The online AA

groups share a common history both of Alcoholics Anonymous service

structure and of AA development on the internet. It is this unique

combination of shared histories which led to the Online Service

Conference.


*Development of General Service.
*
The general service structure of Alcoholics Anonymous sprang from the

early success and spread of AA throughout the United States and Canada,

then across the world. The founders, particularly Bill W. and Dr. Bob,

realized that the program of recovery which they had founded in the late

1930's had become a "movement" only a few years later. After the

Jack Alexander article of 1941 in the Saturday Evening Post, the number

of groups rapidly quadrupled and continued to grow rapidly. As AA spread,

it began to change to adapt to new areas, then new nations. The

need for a unifying structure soon became obvious.
Some means of gathering the group conscience of all the groups was

needed. The increasing age of the founders made it clear that their

term of leadership was nearing an end. Early attempts to answer

group questions and policy issues were handled one-at-a-time by Bill W.,

aided by Ruth Hock, using the US mails as the principal glue which held

the growing movement together.


The first International Convention celebrated AA's fifteenth anniversary

in Cleveland in July 1950. The first General Service Conference

convened in New York City in April 1951. Both the International

Conventions and the General Service Conferences have been used to express

AA's collective group conscience over the years. The "three

legacies" of recovery, unity and service were adopted at the

International Convention of 1955, the year of publication of the second

edition of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.


Development of the general service structure in the United States and

Canada is chronicled in some detail in AA Comes of Age, published in

1957, the year in which membership went over 200,000. It is recommended

reading for those interested in early AA history. However, very

little is available concerning the development of general service

structures in nations other than the US and Canada.


Bill W's suggestions for the continuation of the Fellowship were written

as the "Traditions" of AA in 1945, published in the Grapevine in 1946,

and not at all enthusiastically received by the Fellowship. Bill

and wife Lois traveled far and wide in an attempt to persuade the members

of new groups across North America that the Traditions were

meaningful and useful. Finally, they were adopted at the

International Convention of 1950 at Cleveland. In that same year, Dr. Bob

fell seriously ill, and the trustees authorized Bill W to lay out a plan

for a General Service Conference, to insure continued guidance for the

Fellowship .


On the heels of his difficult experience with "selling" the Traditions,

Bill struggled with the Conference structure. He wrote, "... how on

earth were we going to cut down destructive politics, with all its usual

struggles for prestige and vainglory?" He also wrote, "Though the

Conference might be later enlarged to include the whole world, we felt

that the first delegates should come from the US and Canada only."


We know now that the expansion of the Conference to the world did not

come in Bill's lifetime, and is yet to be realized. There is no

"World General Service Conference" of Alcoholics Anonymous which

addresses policy issues and expresses the collective conscience of the

worldwide Fellowship. In its place, some 52 General Service Offices

and a growing number of General Service Conferences have sprung up to

meet the needs of Alcoholics Anonymous groups around the world.

Some of these emulate the US/Canada pattern closely; others are more

unique to the locale in which they exist. The boundaries of the

Conferences usually follow national frontiers, but there are linguistic

Conferences which flow over the borders of nations, as did the original

General Service Conference of the United States and Canada.


A World Service Meeting was begun in New York City in 1969, with 27

delegates from 16 countries, and has been held biennially since; however,

the meeting is not a part of the general service structure of the

Fellowship, and does not attempt to express the group conscience of the

world's AA's. It is an information-sharing meeting for attendees.
*AA on the Internet*

====================


Little is known of the first AA members to contact other members using

computer-based communications. It is likely that AA members among

the first users of email sought out others to share experience, strength

and hope. There are fragmentary records and oral histories of AA

members using the earliest bulletin board systems (BBS) through local

telephone connections via modems which were both slow and limited in

reliability. Hardware concerns were in the forefront, and communication

among computers over distance was possible, but difficult.


By 1986, there were AA meetings, or at least meetings of AA friends, on

bulletin boards in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, and

probably other American cities. A few staff members in the

New York General Service Office were aware of AA members meeting

electronically, and began keeping contact addresses in the late

1980's. According to the AA Grapevine's "From Akron to the

Internet" timeline of AA communications, "Q-link," one of the earliest

online AA groups, began in 1986, grew to 200 members in two years,

and GSO began keeping a partial list of online AA groups by 1988. A

meeting for online members was provided at the Seattle 1990 International

Convention, which may have been the first face to face meeting of AA

onliners from a wide area. It was well attended, but did not result in a

lasting organization for online members.
The internet developed rapidly into an international communications

system, and facilitated written communications at long distances.

Local bulletin boards and small access providers added newsgroup and

email capabilities, which soon made the local net technologies

redundant. Early internet AA groups used multiple addresses (cc:

lists) for email to reach all member mailboxes with a single post.

When a member changed email addresses, or internet service providers, all

members had to change the address in order to keep the system up to date

and whole. Early members remember this as a constant headache.
Mailing list technology was a breakthrough in providing a suitable online

home for email-based AA groups. Listserv and Majordomo software

"reflected" a message sent to a single common address onward to a

multitude of recipients, and greatly eased maintenance of address lists,


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