The General Service Conference and the New Plain Language Big Book – Billy N.

Hello and welcome to the Bismarck Free Legacies group Thursday night meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is an open meeting and all members of the community are welcome to attend. My name is Ashley and I am an alcoholic. The format of this particular group is to take 24 weeks to go through the 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous, 13 weeks to study the traditions and 13 weeks for studying the concepts. At the beginning of the meeting we will pass an ask it basket please take an index card and write down any questions you may have during the facilitator's presentation. The basket will then be passed around again towards the end of the meeting to submit your question and for those of you online if you have any questions send them directly to Judith and we will get those answered for you. Tonight our facilitator will be sharing with their group his personal experience strength and hope on concept free. Please help me welcome Welcome, Billy. Good evening, everyone. My name is Billy. I'm an alcoholic. It's good to be here tonight. And I am beat. I was on a couple of plane rides today. So I will dive right into it. Concept three, I just want to review concepts one and two quickly. that we started with the conference charter which was adopted in 1955 which is a spiritual handshake between the groups and the board but the groups took over the role that bill and bob had played being the sounding board for the board of trustees kind of the final answer that they went back to um after 1955 bill w and bernard smith and a couple of people worked on what we now call the 12 concepts those were adopted in 1961 they really just break down the agreement of the conference charter the first concept the first line says it was given to the groups and it's clear given to the groups not to the members not the meetings first line says the AA groups today hold the ultimate responsibility and final authority for our world services how do those groups carry it out well that's concept two where the group selects a delegate some states have one delegate other states have two some have three and four but those delegates go and and participate at the General Service Conference, which just ended last week. Last week when we were doing this, the conference was going on. And so then we get the conference to Concept 3, and I want to again break down the three baskets I kind of divide the concepts into. Four if you want to separate out Concept 12. But Concepts 1 to 5 are really the Bill of Rights of the AA groups. really explains what rights the groups have what rights trusted servants have concepts 6, 7 and 8 really talk about the relationship between the conference and the board of trustees and then concepts 9, 10 and 11 really are kind of, I don't want to call them instructions, but definitely strong suggestions on how the trustees should carry out their duties and how they should, how things should maybe be divided between the General Service Board and the two operating corporations, being AA World Services and the A Grade Fund. And then the conference warranties in Concept 12. um concept three i'm going to read as a traditional means of creating and maintaining a clearly defining work in relation between the groups the conference the aa general service board and at several service corporations staffs committees and executives and thus of ensuring their effective leadership it is hereby suggested that we endow each of these elements of world service with a traditional right of decision now if you happen to have a big book near you Or you're familiar with the big book. I don't have one right in front of me, and I can't change you. I have one on my iPad, but I'm not going to go through that right now. But this sounds a lot like the end of the 10th and the 11th step in the big book where it says the occasional hunch now becomes our everyday thinking or something like that. it's sometimes and again how you do aa how your home group operates how you sponsor how you're sponsored all go in the bucket of none of my business um but i will tell you that sometimes often a lot of trouble that newcomers have i tend to deal with a lot young men who have burnt their lives down completely and then they dig themselves out slowly and one of the hardest things i think for the new person coming into aa when they go from six months to a year to two years to three to four and they've been through the steps and they're working with people is you don't need to call me to ask me what color your car should be i'm really not interested in helping you out with that decision um i don't need to know if you put ten dollars in your savings account or nine i really don't mean to be in that level of detail of your life but for many of us right from the start our brains are completely fried twisted we can't depend on our own thinking so we do have a sponsor and we bounce things, a lot of things off that sponsor but this right of decision is no different than that occasional hunch that's talked about in the big book what I want to stress first is your home group from election to your GSR of your GSAR to the format of your meeting you have a right of decision it's called your vote if you're a member of a home group you get a vote there and sometimes we don't think about that but voting is a decision and the reason you get to vote is because you have that right And so it's an important right of decision that's not talked about a lot, especially because when you elect that GSR, for the most part, maybe the rare occurrence there's two or three people from a group that go to a district. and maybe there's a couple of people from your group that go to your area assembly but only one of them has a vote from your group. There might be somebody else there who has another position who has a right to vote as that, but there's only one there from your Group who's voting on behalf of your Group, but the rest of you don't get to go with them and you don'T get to text them orders you know and you don't get to pass notes and whisper in their ear like when you elect that GSR you've made a big decision you're letting that person vote on behalf of your group and no matter what you tell that person it's their hand that goes in the air It's their decision to raise their hand for or against something. Now, I don't know who's seen what happened at the General Service Conference last week. But there were some big decisions made. Really big decisions. A decision was made to print and publish a new fifth edition big book. so that's happening now based on past it'll be five years before we see one the trustees will form a subcommittee of the trustees literature committee for the fifth for the 5th edition they will start calling for stories sometime next year i'm sure over the next two years the conference literature committee will meet with the subcommittee for the big book it'll take some time but right now as we stand right now we're going ahead with a fifth edition now the first 164 pages and the doctor's opinion will remain the same so we're talking about stories but then another big decision was made the fifth edition is going to be published in both its current format and a new plain language edition now I am a pretty good student of AA Conference and I have my own crystal ball it is going to be quite an accomplishment to get get two-thirds of those 135 people to agree on what this plain language big book is going to say. You need 93 people or something out of 135? But all I'm saying is your GSR didn't get to vote for that, but your GSAR got to vote vote for whoever your delegate is. So we have to talk about that right of decision. You're electing your GSR to go to the assembly, and sometimes maybe they're voting on what hotels should have your state conference. Maybe sometimes they're voted on what they should do with their prudent reserve. Maybe they want to change the format of their assembly business meeting. but once every two years they're voting on who is your delegate and you don't get a vote there only your gsr does so when you're putting your hand up in the air to elect the gsR you can say to yourself well i don't want to go to the district meeting or assembly we just got to get somebody that'll go somebody that maybe will show up But the stakes are much higher. If AA saved your life like it did mine, then preserving AA, and I'm not talking about being against all change at all. But we voted last week to do podcasts on our website, on our YouTube channel. we voted last week for the grapevine to have an instagram account all i'm saying is you and i didn't get to vote i was scanning through here i don't know if there's any current delegates that i know but well you can safely say that 99 of the people in this meeting right now did not get to go so when you're electing that gsr you're putting all your faith that they're going to elect a good person to properly represent your area or state because when the delegate goes to the General Service Conference they're like your GSR just in the same way you can't go to the assembly with your GSAR your GSRS can't You can't go to the General Service Conference with your delegate. At the end of the day, your delegate is sitting there to make the best decision for AA. And your area might have told them how they feel if you feel very strongly or not strongly on something. But at the end of the day, it's your delegate. She or he is sitting there and gets to raise their hand or push the clicker for yes or no for electronic voting. That's how important that right of decision is. Now, inside the concept, it talks about groups and it says because they hold the ultimate authority, there is no doubt that the AA groups have the right to do this. If they insist, they can give directives to their delegates on any and all AA matters. It does say that in the concept. But it doesn't say, and you can go with them. It doesn't says that. So you can give your delegate a directive. You can make a motion at your assembly. We want our delegate to vote for the plain language big book no matter what. But you don't get to go with her or him. At the end of the day, you have to make sure that your right of decision to elect the best delegate was carried out, which starts with your righted decision to select the best GSR. are it talks about um there's a line that says therefore some traditional and practical principle has to be devised which at all levels will continually balance the right relation between ultimate authority and delegated responsibility and it talks a little bit about the conference and the trustees um and then you know in the second to last page right above a b and c it says There are reasons for my belief, so that means Bill W.'s belief, that we should forthwest invest in all our service bodies and people a traditional right of decision. In our structure of world service, this right of decisio could be practically applied as follows. And then it has A. Accepting the conference charter provisions to the contrary. The conference should always be able to decide which matters it would fully dispose of on its own responsibility and which questions it will refer to the AA groups, or more usually to their committee members or GSRs for opinions or for definitive guidance. guidance. Therefore, it ought to be clearly understood and agreed that our conference delegates are primarily the world servants of AA as a whole, that only in a secondary sense do they represent their respective areas. Consequently, they should on final decisions be entitled to cast their votes at the General Service Conference according to the best dictates of their own judgment and conscience at the time so there's a hint there you got to elect somebody who has good judgment whether it's a gsr or your delegate they have to have good judgment now what it's talking about there except the charter provisions to the contrary it's saying that in the current conference charter the general service conference cannot not change the steps, the traditions, the concepts, or Article 12 of the conference charter. Those require a poll in writing of all the registered AA groups, and 75% of them have to give their permission in writing for any of those to be changed. And then similarly, the trustees of the General Service Board should be at all times decide when they will act fully on their own responsibility and when they will ask the conference for its guidance, its approval of a recommendation or for its actual decision and direction. Then C says within the scope of their defined definitively defined or normally implied responsibilities all headquarters, service corporations, committees, staffs or executives should also be possessed the right of decision when they will act wholly or on their own and when when they will throw their problems to the next higher authority. So what does next tire authority mean? And it's not capitalized. So we're not talking about God. We're talking about if a staff member doesn't want to make a decision, they might go to the general manager of GSO. If the general manger doesn't think they should make the decision, they may go to AA world services board. If the AA World Services Board doesn't think they should make the decision, they may pass it on to the 21 trustees, the General Service Board. And then if the General Services Board doesn't know what to do, and doesn't feel like they should take the decision they will pass it along to the General Servicemen Conference. Then we get to God. Then if the conference through their group conscience speaks weeks, then we may get to God. But before we get there, we could not have staffs of people who go to work every day, who have to wait once a year for the general service conference to tell them what to do. I mean, that would be totally ludicrous. Decisions like what brand of scotch tape should we buy? What kind of health insurance should we have for our employees? What bank should we use? What hotel should we add the general service conference at? I could go on and on. I always say when dealing with our employees at GSO, who I have the greatest disrespect for, do we want to treat them like a branch, a bank manager, or a teller? Well, I'll get to the concept next, concept four next week, the right of participation. We don't want our employees thinking they're robots. Why else would later in the concepts it tell us to hire the best and the brightest, to hire women and men who are the best. If we didn't do that, we could probably save a lot of money and just hire 80 clerks. And for 300 days a year, they could make a list of all the things we need to make a decision on. And then the general service conference could get together. Instead of a week, it would be four weeks and we would go through that list. so there has to be a right of decision but how come we always every couple years have a big blow up in AA? We always do In 1996 and 97 and 98 we had a huge blow up about the San Diego International Convention and taking money from the city of San Diego we had the same blow up in the 90s about other people besides the general service offices in Mexico and Germany printing our literature without a license that was a big blow up we had a big blow up in the mid 2000s about the length of service that a general manager should serve a couple years ago we had this thing called the manuscript litigation that was a pretty big blow up and then this year we had a blow up about the general chair of the general service conference last year exercising veto authority and not allowing a committee to present a report court, which obviously bled into this year of a letter of censure being sent to the conference, asking the conference to officially censure the board. All of these things have one thing in common. I'm going to read the next paragraph. i think this should almost be i'm not saying everyone needs to have a tattoo but if i was saying everyone needed a tattoo i almost feel like the next line should be tattooed on every trusted servant's arm because it says the right of decision should never for failure to render proper reports of all significant actions taken It ought never be used as a reason for constantly exceeding a clear defined authority, nor as an excuse for persistently failing to consult those who are entitled to be consulted before an important decision or action is taken. And then it says our entire program rests squarely on the principle of mutual trust. trust. We trust God, we trust AA, and we trust each other. Therefore, we cannot do less than trust our leaders in service. The right of decision that we offer them is not only the practical means by which they may act and lead effectively, but it is also the symbol of our implicit confidence. So I hear that catchphrase, trust the process thrown around around all the time, got to trust the process. That's almost half correct. From the great Harvard Business Review is a little bit more than trust the process where they coined the phrase trust but verify. There is nothing wrong with verifying what your leaders are doing. Worse than that is not being transparent, and that's what it says. The right of decision should never be made an excuse for failure to render proper reports. I could go through the history of all the big blow-ups in AA service since like 1980, where I've talked to people either I was there or I talked to people who were there. And they all come down to lack of transparency. They all come them down to poor communication. I'll give you an example, and I'm coming to you from someone who has served as an area chair, who has served in a group finance committee, who Who has served on the AA World Services Board, who has served on the General Service Board, and who has chaired the AA World Services board twice. You know, when people have asked me, what's it like to be chair of the AA world services board? I've given the same answer. Some days it's the greatest privilege that I've ever been been given in my entire life to see all the work to pass on a miracle-saving message and to see things that a lot of other people don't get to see that's an immense privilege however other days it's like waking up with the upside down triangle embedded three inches into your skull. Because you get to know a lot of things that other people don't know. I'll talk about the last international convention in Atlanta first, and then I'll go back to some examples. When most people left the international convention in Atlanta on Sunday, And all they knew about was, wow, they had a prisoner speak on Sunday morning. And the guards actually drove him out of prison that morning to the stadium and unhandcuffed him. And he got to speak and then he went back to prison. Or they thought, I can't believe how many people I met from other countries on the street. Or I can't believe that that guy from Scotland every day played the bagpipes in the morning at 10 o'clock. Or they can't belief that they were in some meeting at the convention center and they ran into somebody they haven't seen for 17 years since they were a newcomer. That's how it's supposed to be. Now, me? That's not how I left Atlanta. I can't wait to go to Vancouver. But when I left Atlanta that Sunday morning, which I didn't get to leave on Sunday, I thought about the three people that fell in the stadium Saturday night and all had to be transported to various hospitals because when we get together with 50,000 of our best friends, I thought about the fire marshals saying that there were too many people in certain meetings. I thought about Thursday and Friday, the registration process completely breaking down and people on lines for hours. But inside that long weekend end of Wednesday to Sunday, I had to make decisions along with some other people, the chair of the general service board, the general manager. But that's how it's supposed to be. That's how anything is. If you go watch a parade, I'm sure you'll appreciate the parade. parade. If the next day you talk to the person who ran the parade, they probably have a very different view of the parade than you do. Go back to 1995 in San Diego. Why in 1999 were we still talking about money in San Diego? Why did this blow up and almost rip apart our fellowship? ship. I'll tell you why. The story is actually a simple one. You have to realize that the AA convention is the single largest piece of convention business in the United States and Canada. The single largest convention piece. It brings more money to the city than than the Democrat and Republican national conventions combined. We bid on it 14 years ahead. We're going to Vancouver in 2025. We're gonna St. Louis, we already know, in 2030. And we'll be bidding on 2035 any year now. And we know that's going to be, I can't say the first word, a blank show. Because you know everybody wants the 100-year anniversary, right? I mean, let's face it. AA is 100 years old. We're in distance now 14 years away from AA's 100th birthday. So we bid it far in advance. And a lot of times we're bidding on places where we're betting that the hotels projected to be built in the next 14 years will actually be built. So what happened in San Diego? Well, if anybody here was in Saniego, you know the San Diego Convention Center is downtown, close to what they call the Gaslight District, right on the bay. Beautiful. But at that time, the baseball stadium was not right downtown. So for the Friday, Saturday night and Sunday morning meetings, that was being held at Jack Murphy Stadium. Now, when they were signing those contracts in the late 80s, San Diego was building a light rail. And that light rail was going to go from downtown to the football stadium. Inside the contract that they signed, the city of San Diego made a guarantee that if the light rail wasn't completed by the International AA Convention, convention, they would supply buses for free so that everybody could get out to the stadium. That seems perfectly reasonable. I sign contracts every day at work. That just seems like somebody was thinking to make sure that we had a backup plan. So what happened six months before San Diego? The city of San Diego notified the general service service board, that their light rail would not be finished and that they would be getting buses. And then what happened five months, a month later? The city of San Diego informed the trustees that because they are a municipal corporation and a government, that they just can't use nepotism or hire bus bus companies from their friends, they have very strict procurement rules to be fair, to let any bus company bid on the business. But as some of you know about government, there's a lot of red tape and the city of San Diego told the general service board, we're just letting you know, we can't get that done in five months. this is too long but we have a way to solve that you don't have all this red tape you should hire a bus company and we'll just pay you again that seems perfectly logical it it seems so logical it blows my mind that we blew it 10 minutes, I got it. So what happened was after the convention, somebody decided, I don't know if we should let the fellowship know that we took that money from the city of San Diego. So when they posted the financial report, the final report of the conference, instead of showing that our buses cost instead of cost showing that our transportation total was 1.4 million and showing a receivable from the city of San Diego for 600,000 instead we netted it out and just made the transportation cost 800,000 so that the 600,00 and didn't show up anywhere that the fellowship sees. Well, one trustee, Gay Garner, the Southeast Regional Trustee at the time, she's passed away now. She noticed it and she wrote a big appeal letter and said we should not take cash incentives from anybody. And she said, if what you were doing was right, why did you try to hide it? Now we resolved it by the board coming out with a policy that sometimes you'll see out there we do all we can not to take cash incentives anymore directly to the board and we do not take discounts just because we're aa what we will do is take a business discount if it's offered to anyone else so an example of that would be if your local convention guarantees rooms to the hotel if they give every other group who rents rooms one free room out of 50 well then we'll take it but if they said you know because you're aa we're going to give you 10 free rooms at every 50 we have to say no But the right of decision was poorly, poorly executed back then. Because it was executed properly, I'll read the line again. The right of decisions should never be made an excuse for failure to render proper reports of all significant actions taken. it. The fellowship is funny when it comes to this. I'm going to give another example. Every once in a while, somebody steals money from AA. Could be from a group, could be from a district, could me from a convention. It happens. There are some people out there who misquote the 12th concept and say that we don't ever press charges it doesn't say that in any of our literature in fact it says the opposite in our big book in our Big Book it says under the ninth step that you might have done something where your amends might lead you to jail so whether you press charges or not that's an individual group conscience decision up to the the group but i'll tell you what's not a group conscience decision not telling the aa members that money was stolen that's an issue of properly rendering reports back at an assembly i was at 1994 In 1994, an area treasurer informed the area that the prior treasuer had loaned themselves some money, a substantial amount of money. And the prior treasure had redirected the bank statements so that no one would see that he lent himself the money. and actually over a two-year period paid the money back i'm not saying that makes it okay i'm just giving you the facts the problem with it was it had been discovered six months ago and the area officers had gotten together in a chinese restaurant and decided, I see it, let's not tell the groups. Let's get our hands around this. I've even heard a couple of past delegates lately, it breaks my heart, talk about how sometimes you don't need to tell the groups. I don't know where it says that. The right of decision has nothing to do with withholding information. information. The right of decision has given me as a trusted servant, a lot of ability. And I will tell you in my last five minutes that I've been in a couple of these situations and my experience is transparency is best. When I was AWS chair, I was brought into an emergency meeting because of an algorithm in a publishing software for buying books. We made an extra order of 75th anniversary first edition big books. It was nothing on purpose. It was because the algorithm said it's time to order a new book and somebody just ordered the book. Look, the problem was it was about a $900,000 problem, give or take a million dollars. And I can tell you that my decision was clear. We'll find out what happened. We'll do something to make sure it never happens again. But we are going to let the board and the groups know right away. way. Now, at that conference where I was chair of AWS, was there some heat on me during the question and answer? Yes. But that's why AA leaders should expect hard questions. Trust but verify is okay. But after all those hard questions, the one thing I felt the best about out was the one thing they couldn't question me about was not telling them that I followed the third concept and I rendered a proper report timely so that's it thank you for having me out tonight okay our normal question person is not on so I'm filling in Billy say you are a GSR and there is something being voted on that you don't understand understand. Should you still vote even though you're not sure what you're voting on or should you just not vote at all? Could you just repeat that one more time? Say you are a GSR and there is something being voted on that you don't understand.Should you still vote even know you are not sure of what you are voting on, or should you just vote at at all um if you don't understand it because you're brand new then i would not vote at all if you don't understand it because you haven't done your job being prepared then you should not vote and resign okay um um question are the delegates accountable to share how they voted on gsc agenda items for transparency as billy discussed um i will tell you there is different opinions on this but the way i read the service manual and the concepts There is no such thing as an executive session of the General Service Conference that you should be reporting back to your area how you voted. That is not the same for the General Services Board. About 99% of what the board does should be fully transparent. transparent. There is 1% of legal issues and employee issues and things that affect the HIPAA law and other things where that should be handled in executive session, but I can't find one thing in the service manual that says a delegate should not be completely transparent parent with their area. When you read the concept, what are you reading from? The service manual. Okay. Another question. I attend an in-person group that does not have a GSR or or an IGR, they don't seem to care. What is that telling me about this group? To get another one. To either change it or get another because I would just tell everyone to get a load, to get look at what happened last week at the General Service Conference. And I am gonna guarantee you that maybe 80 percent of it you could have handled either decision but you're going to look at some of those decisions and your group needs somebody there thanks all right uh one last one um what is what are the big differences between the service manual year over year the new service manual was approved last week and is coming out i'm told it's much easier to read and user friendly and laid out nicer and maybe some better visuals which is good i mean i've been making powerpoint slides of the makeup of the the conference and the board since powerpoint was invented because it's easy to explain to people than the complicated paragraphs in the service manual so i look forward to the new service manual i also feel based on what i've heard do you know how when you buy a car even if it's not new. Usually the owner's manual is still with it. It might be in the trunk. It might be on the spare tire well. It may be in a glove compartment. That's what the service manual was meant to be. It was the owner manual for a new GSR. It is not a policy document. Sometimes people get up to microphones and they're they're like, well, the service manual says this. Well, the service manual is not policy. It's informative. So I am hoping that the service module is returning to what it once was, which was a really helpful tool for the new GSR. Not a place for our traditions and concepts experts to want to keep adding footnotes and asterisks and re-editing. I'm hoping that then it's really going to become a useful tool for new GSRs. Thanks. Okay, last question. Do you know when the new service manual will be available? In an AA typical timeline, it was approved at the conference. Over the next probably three months, Once editors in the publishing department will be going over it and over it for a second and third set of eyes to make sure no, because when the people who are working on it, anybody that works on something themselves, you're not a good second set of ice. So once they have all the thoughts from this year's conference in it, it will go to publishing a couple of different editors will look at it over a couple of months and they will get it into final form but I would tell you probably the first thing that will come out is the conference report which usually comes out in August or September so I would say probably towards the fall to the end of the year we will see the new service manual Alrighty, thank you so much Billy