Aa history Lovers 2004 moderators Nancy Olson and Glenn F. Chesnut page
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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.
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.
danger -- something that will always need watching. The danger is that our Conference will commence to function along strict class lines.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
when to decide when to act on their own and when to consult the full Board of Trustees.
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.
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.
definite adoption. I only offer them as ideas to ponder until we meet again in 1957.
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.
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!
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.
From: NMOlson@aol.com . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/9/2004 3:05:00 AM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII 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.
know, lies in the group conscience of which this Conference is the articulate voice worldwide.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 1650. . . . . . . . . . . . Development of Online General Service
From: John Phipps . . . . . . . . . . . . 2/9/2004 6:42:00 PM IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII *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.
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.
==================== 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.
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.
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, Download 4.17 Mb. Share with your friends:
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