Tradition Four and Concept Four – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 24 of 27 – Billy N.

good evening everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic get a couple of things out of the way we'll start with the serenity prayer god grant me the strength to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things they can and the wisdom to know the difference um a couple things if you've never been here before there is a private facebook group where we put the recordings i will put my email and my whatsapp there if you need to get in that um if you don't have facebook we will try to find another way if you need recordings uh but we say this serenity prayer because it's a good way to start an aa gathering but let's just call it what it is i'm actually sitting in my backyard this is no different than all of you in my back yard it is not a meeting or a group or any official aa thing at all um the only difference is uh there's a bunch of people who don't have the camera on and you wouldn't be able to do that in my backyard so um and uh it's not a gathering um and i only do this because i happen to serve as a delegate for two years and below the level of the conference for 12 years at a regular at a very probably unusually young age than most people who serve in those positions so as such not wanting to be a thief from aa and rotating out a lot younger than most people i can give it back by passing on anything it does not mean i'm an expert it does not mean that i need anything else recorded it doesn't mean that i put anything on youtube myself because i do not in fact i spend time sending youtube notes uh youtube notes to take down things um when people uh i think you remember last week i talked about people love the quote literature except leave like the page before and the page after out or they love the quote a bill w letter and leave something out well the people who post to youtube sometimes do that they don't post the whole concept or the whole whatever was the aa convention they like take a snippet that works in their favor uh so i do not post on youtube um and i would probably honestly had a cigar lit i'd much rather have a cigar light right now and getting ready to watch uh ncaa basketball to be perfectly honest so this is not convenient um this is anonymous though so just a warning out there um do not hold your phone up in front of the screen if your camera is on you'll just be removed um from the meeting we just have to watch out for people's anonymity and i'll remind everyone that it's conference season the conference is in a couple of weeks the general service conference a lot of you have probably been to assemblies or district meetings we've gone over agenda items and everything else and because of that and because of my great respect for the people currently serving as delegates and the current conference no questions about conference topics are allowed here um it's very important that we honor that and that you work through your district and your delegate if you want to get your voice heard um which means you should have a home group you should have a whole group where you go to your business meetings and that's where you exercise your vote now tonight we're talking about a tradition and a concept that can bring up some challenging subjects we're talking about tradition four and concept four um i will share my experience of course i'm not perfect my opinion can get in a little bit but i try to just share my experience um but these are two often taken out of context principles they're in the top of the list of 12 if you had a 25 list of the ones that are most abused tradition for and concept for they fall right there so i'm sure you're all familiar with so let's in case there is anybody new here you'll hear it on the recordings but please have a 12 and 12 and please have uh traditions illustrated and an aa comes of age like have all them that's the only real place to learn about where this stuff all comes from but tradition four starts out problematic right from the go and it's because of the difference between the short and the long form the short form says each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or aa as a whole okay the long-form does not even use the autonomous word it just says with respects to its own affairs i want to stress that with respect to its own affairs each aa group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience but when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also those groups ought to be consulted and no group regional committee or individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect a as a whole without conferring with the trustees of the general service board on such issues our common welfare is paramount and then as you know i don't get paid enough to read to all of you so i don t read reading is uh reading comprehension comes from you reading it or me reading it um but i will read the first line of tradition four which points out the autonomy word which says autonomy is a ten dollar word now if you don't know what that is i would ask you to just go to google without putting your phone near the screen and just put 10 word definition so that you know i'm not making it up it's an idiom for a long uncommon or complex word used to appear sophisticated or knowledgeable in other words it's a artist word it's it'sit's a word to make you sound smarter than you are okay that's what it is and the long form is so much better i want to go slow a little bit so that we can explain this a little bit and give some examples the international convention is going to be in vancouver over july 4th weekend i'm sure a lot of you know and i hope a lot of you are going it's been planned for a long time 10 years at my home group business meeting next week i do not get to make a motion that vancouver is inconvenient and the tell it like it is group wants to move it to Dallas, where more people would be able to go. It's in the middle of the country. You don't have to cross a border if you live in the United States. And then the day after I'll call GSO and say, hey, just want to let you know, we decided down in Palm Beach Gardens that Vancouver is a horrible spot. We've moved it to Alice. Now, I think most of you would know that that is a pretty extreme comment. And you would hope the person at GSO, if I ever did make a call like that would do what we always do with alcoholics. Thank you for calling. Thanks for sharing. Hope you have a great day. But know that I'm completely insane, right? Like that's how insane that statement is that my group can move the international convention. And I say that Because the first thing you have to keep in the back of your mind for the fourth tradition is, does my group have the group conscience to change what I want to change? So let me give you a couple of examples that, for whatever reason, we just let go by. So we know that my group is not the group conscious for the international convention. Okay. What about the preamble? I know there are people who don't like the new preample, but the AA preamdle starts off Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of people. That's the group conscience of AlcoholicsAnonymous. Now you might not like it, but your group does not have authority over the preamble that belongs to the general service conference some groups don't like the closed meeting card they add things to it but that card is a service piece from gso that's who controls the group conscience there you always have to ask yourself because what it says is with respects to its own affairs each a.a group should be responsible to no other authority but itself it doesn't say with regards to the blue card or with regards to the preamble or with regards to the definition of the third or fifth tradition it doesn't say any of that it says your own affairs so what is the fourth tradition talking about it's talking about earl grey tea and english breakfast tea and god forbid your meeting wants to have decafs and it's talking about a cake with candles instead of individual cupcakes it's even talking about what time your meeting starts and is it an hour or an hour and a half meeting and do you have a fellowship break or not it's även talking about what kind of meeting are you are you an open or closed meeting that's a meeting that'a decision for your group it's taking about are you a big book study an open discussion a closed discussion a beginners meeting at 12 and 12 a great fine a traditions meeting all of that all of that stuff a group gets to decide but group consciences and i'll give you an example or just a little lesson to just put in the back of your mind and whether it happens in a couple of weeks or sometime during this year you can remember that i said this but it will happen that i guarantee you are going to hear someone this is one of those things that people love to throw out at a business meeting or a district or an assembly they love to like wait online or have their hand up and they say our fourth tradition autonomy lets us do this usually when you hear that a truck is backing up over a couple of other traditions that's usually what's going on and what's really important to know is that all 12 traditions are equal none is first among many all 12 are equal the fourth tradition is not a veto for any of the other 12 traditions it's a standalone tradition about local issues it does not apply and sometimes people get a little carried away with that now we always have the example of i have a seven o'clock meeting somebody else wants to start a seven o'clock meeting should they have to ask my permission i've read as much a literature as i can read and god knows i believe there are too many meetings and not enough groups that's my personal belief okay but i have not read anywhere where it says that you have to tell another group you're starting a meeting is it nice and polite yes but the wording but when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also those groups ought to be consulted well are you taking the same people that could affect them are you meeting in the same building this is one where a lot of aa groups and meetings step all over each other many different aa groups and meetings meet in the samethe same facility they have their own relationship with that community center or that church if you behave badly or you leave it in horrible shape or if you constantly pay your bill late, your rent late, you are affecting other groups. See, because for the outside world, I just got done, I was at a young people's event and I grew up in young people day, so I love it, but I also am very real about what goes on sometimes is if you talk to people who work in the hotel business, who rent us rooms and rent us convention space, we need those places. We have fellowship events, but do you know what happens when one AA convention goes the wrong way? the hotel does not remember it was the day at a time convention or the young people convention or the fellowship of the spirit or god knows what its name is they just remember that aa was not a good customer but they left the place in very bad shape they didn't listen to rules they vaped on the elevator they vaped in the meetings like nobody remembers anything except alcoholics anonymous and if your group does anything to give aa a bad reputation then they have gone too far i just talked about this this weekend because there is a group in my state that insists on being and they were taken out of the local meeting directory but they still exist and they insist on reading psalms and things from the bible in their group and that is a way over the line 10th tradition problem it's also a way over the line affiliation problem of tradition six that we don't have an opinion on outside issues but particularly alcohol reform politics and sectarian religion and when we don'T do anything to make it look like we're affiliated now for those of us most of us in this screen if we went to that meeting we would be just like wow this is unusual odd the best way i could characterize it um but it wouldn't stop me from going back to aa but if you're somebody with two days who didn't want to go to aa because you thought it was super religious or church if you go in and start hearing psalms read you're out you're gone especially as i always say from the podium sometimes i wish we would have a separate manual for people who are leading meetings chairing meetings speaking at meetings because if you're just in your seat at a meeting and you say that jesus is your higher power and you found that jesus as a result of the third step and becoming more in touch with your spirituality that's your own individual story and if you're not saying that someone else has to believe it who am i to judge that's kind of your third and 11th step story but if you are however leading a meeting and the newcomer thinks you're the president of aa because they've never been to aa before they might think they have to believe that way so So a fourth tradition kind of focus on chair people and speakers has to happen, that we're not saying things that imply AA in other ways. But the fourth tradition is for our local matters. I hear this brought up all the time, and all I can say is the traditions, the steps, and the concepts were written vertically. they go up and down, not across. The traditions and the concepts were not written to have concept one match with step one and tradition one match would step one in the same for step six and tradition six and concept six. Now individuals, maybe even like myself, I will not do it anymore because it's historically inaccurate but i'm open-minded enough that individuals might weave their own connection to step one tradition one and concept one but it's important that they point that out that that's their individual take not that that's how bill w wrote them because they were written individually and vertically and not horizontally so i think i told everybody last week when we talked about concept four i think I mentioned to bring a pen in the calculator if you have a phone a calculator whatever um but i would ask you because it's important because this gets so confusing to open your book to page 12 and 13 in the concepts the concept four And if you have a pen, and I'll read it first, throughout our conference structure we ought to maintain at all responsible levels of traditional right of participation, taking care that each classification or group of our world servants shall be allowed a voting representation in reasonable proportion to the responsibility that each must discharge. I'm going to say one thing about tradition for before I go on here. This workshops about applying these principles today, but if I were to throw in one tradition for to applying to your life. It would be the thing I always say there's only two kinds of business my business and none of my business. problem i have like a lot of other people it seems in aa is i confuse the two i tend to make what's not my business my business and what i should be taking care of my business i'm totally irresponsible but that's why tradition 4 is so great local affairs like i should treat my life like that like my local business me that's what i have autonomy on i do not have autonomy on things like the speed limit stop signs driving regulations paying bills on time all kinds of things waiting in line violating how many packages i can have in the express line i do not have autonomy on any of those things it's very freeing to realize i've only on autonomy for the things that i control which is not a lot so let's go back to concept four if you have a pen this is what i'm going to suggest i'll read the concept again and i'm gonna stop throughout our conference structure we ought to maintain at all responsible levels a traditional rite of participation." Draw a line up and down right there between participation and the quotes before the word taking. Put a line right there. Then it says, "...taking care that each classification or group of our world's servants between the essence servants and the essence shall draw another line up and down then gal be allowed a voting representation or another line between representation and the word in and then the last part is in reasonable proportion to the responsibility that each must discharge so there is really four statements in concept four that are so important to understand what they're all saying and finally when someone did this for me a long time ago it finally clicked for me i was like why don't they make the book like that you know like you all know i say it like i tend to be a little neurodivergent in the way i read the way i learn um like why don't we put it there it drives me as crazy as how it works there are three pertinent ideas and then they letter them what who wrote that book right could be three pertinent ideas one two three but it's a so let's talk about the four parts i just divided for you to make things easy throughout our conference structure we ought to maintain at all responsible levels a traditional right of participation part one and then it tells us how we're going to do that taking care that each classification or group of world servants so there's four groups of world servents they're talking about at the conference level I don't know why they don't put it in there, but it's not in there. But it's four groups. Area delegates, about 93 of them. Trustees, and by the way, the bylaws say that every voting member is a delegate. We like to talk about us and them like it's the board versus the delegates, but the bylaws of the trustees say that every voting member of the conference is a delegate so we really have four kinds of delegates taking care that each classification or group of world servants so the first classification group is area delegates the second group is trustee delegates The third group is director delegates, and the fourth group is staff delegates, special worker delegates. 93 of the area delegates, 21 usually of the trustee delegates, 6 usually of the director delegates and about 15 to 17 usually depending on the staffing and who's new and who can't vote but let's just say about 17 members of gso and grapevine staff delegates those are the four groups area delegates trustees non-trustee directors and staff that's who votes at the general service conference that's what they're talking about when they say taking care that each classification or group of our world servants and then the next part shall be allowed a voting representation okay so what does that mean there's 17 staff members this year so i'm just going to go at 21 i'm just going to go with 93 plus 21 plus 6 plus 17 137 voting members of the conference right that's what we have this year shall be allowed a voting representation okay what's the delegates voting representation 93 divided by 137 they're 67 percent The area delegates are 67% of the voters at the General Service Conference this year. What about the trustees? 21 divided by 137. The trustees are about 15% of the voting members of this year's General Service conference. What about the non-trustee director delegates? 6 divided by 137? They're only 4%, give or take a fraction of the voters this year and then what about the staff 17 divided by 137 the staff are about 12 percent now it might be off by one percent or so because of fractions but that's basically what you have because then what it says is the most important line in reasonable proportion to the responsibility that each must discharge so what does that mean each group is allowed a voting representation proportionate to the responsibility they discharge so there's two important things to look at at the general service conference as far as voting goes the 137 individual voters are equal to each other Each have one vote. But the classifications are not equal to each other. They're very unequal, and it was started that way for a reason. The groups have 67%. The next largest group is the trustees at 15%. the reasonable proportion means it's reasonable since bill and bob left aa to the aa groups that the area delegates who represent the aa groups have the largest proportion that's what's reasonable the trustees have the next most reasonable proportion because they are responsible for the voluntary contributions they're responsible for the two corporate boards and naming the directors on those corporate boards they're responsible for the day-to-day activity of AA between general service conferences the directors the three non-trustee directors on each corporate board the six I was talking about they're not trustees they're non-trustee directors so they have a very small proportion four percent and then the staff have almost the same as the trustees the 17 to 21 people um compared but the reasonable proportion um uh someone just asked me i'm going to put it in one more time and that's it send me an email if you want to find the recordings or send me a text or whatsapp okay so that's what that whole big convoluted paragraph means those are our classification of service workers that's who make it up and the reasonable proportion is that the groups are not equal to each other but each individual voter is equal but at the end of the day the aa groups have the biggest chunk of voters now the right of participation is super important because it happens all over aa it says in the first paragraph the principle of participation has been carefully built into our conference structure the conference charter specifically provides that the trustees and directors of our service corporations together with their respective executive staff shall always be voting members of the general service conference we like participation and we have to give people who have authority the right to participate or i shouldn't even say authority is the right-to-participate people who have a job to do we can't not give them the authority to do it i learned a lesson like this at work a long time ago my division was having a big event a couple of us noticed that one person we worked with was in a bad bad state of mind like a horrible attitude somebody who's usually a bright shining star and at the end of the day we found out no wonder they're like one of the most important people in our division and we didn't invite them to this big event we were having like how disempowering is that and you know inside groups and areas and districts and even at the board level if you want people to participate you got to let them participate you can't just tell them do a lot of work and not have a vote or not have a voice, you got to like give them a way to participate. Now, some people say we are not going down the road. There are the last couple of years, the general service conference has faced a lot of issues. And it's caused some division and some sides. But the two things I would point out are this. There is a line in here, it talks about on page 14 about, well, isn't it unfair that the trustees and staff vote? But Bill W put a caution, a stop sign here. and recently a couple of years ago there was a motion to censure the general service board and a few of those trustees have said they made an error at that time i'm not putting words in them out they said it at microphones and the error they made is they didn't take bill w's suggestion in concept four it says one argument for taking away the trustee vote at the conference is this it is urged that there is a danger if we allow the trustees to vote on their own past performance for example their annual reports but then bill says this to a certain extent this argument is sound as a matter of tradition there is no doubt that the trustees and service workers alike should refrain from voting on reports of their own past activities now i think the reason the trustees the some of them that said they made a mistake said it is because a censure is like a slap on the wrist that don't do something again that's what a censor is but it has to be for something in the past unless we have some like clairvoyant alcoholic delegates who want to censure the board for something they think they're going to do in two months but a censure is for past behavior it's very clear here that the trustees and staff should not be voting on things that involve approving their own past activities now let's go on to what i think is one of the most important things and that is your right to have your own opinion in aa service now hopefully your opinion is based on your experience and hopefully it's based on aa literature i hope all of that but one of the things that i see common sometimes is that we confuse unity for unanimity a unanimous vote does not mean unity in alcoholics anonymous a group conscience an informed group conscience means unity in alcoholics anonymous and it says here because people talk about i hear so many things said about the boards and trustees and so many of them are just not they were not my experience for sure and i'm I can be opinionated and I have no problem quoting from literature and standing up for what I think is right, but I never felt like I wasn't allowed to do that. And sometimes in AA Today, I think at all levels of service, district, area, conference, if you ask questions, you get labeled a troublemaker. and that's not what concept four says now if you ask questions like a jerk if you're a jerk at the microphone if you sit at the back of the room roll your eyes shout out without going to the microphone kind of person then you're jerky we're not talking about that but if you simply have a difference of opinion and state it in a dignified way at the microphone or if there's not a microphone just state it and you accept the group conscience because what it says here is it says on page 15 perhaps some will object that on close votes in the conference to combine trustees and service worker ballots may decide a particular question meaning the trustees and the gso and aaws staff and then it says but why not certainly our trustees and service workers are no less conscientious experienced and wiser than the delegates is there any good reason their votes are undesirable clearly there is none hence we ought to be wary of any future tendency to deny our trustees or our service people their conference vote and then it reminds us again except in special situations that involve past performances job qualifications money compensation or in the case of a sweeping reorganization of the general service board itself in none of those situations should the trustees be voting or the service workers but then it says this and i want to share with you i share with this because i even share this for the trustees um who might get mad at me if i have a different opinion but this is my experience on the general service board i'm not a trustee today i don't know if the experience today but it's my experience it says right here however this should be can never be construed as a bar to trustees vote on structural changes and then the important line it is it is also noteworthy that in actual practice our trustees and headquarters people have yet never voted in a block their differences of opinion among themselves are nearly always as sharp and considerable as those to be found among the delegates themselves that is the general service board that i served for four years that is the aaws board that i served for eight years a group of smart people who loved aa who are not afraid to have their own opinion but not all the same i ask people all the time or i get my answer because i get asked a question a common question a lot and it usually comes from people who love a service and think about wow maybe someday i could be a trustee and i don't think there's anything wrong with someone wanting to be a and i want every member of aa to know that you have the ability to be but whenever somebody asks me billy what do you think the number one quality is to be or a non-trustee director and i'll tell you what the number quality is If your daily peace of mind and serenity are dependent on you always getting your own way, don't become a trustee. Don't become an non-trustee director. And I would also say, don't becomes an area delegate. If you have to get your own ways, otherwise you're going be miserable and pissed off you know what breaks my heart when i run i love running into people who are so passionate and they have an opinion on everything in service i love people like that but you know it breaks my when I run into people like that who didn't get their own way and they're pissed off at the world and they are angry at the very organization that saved their life and they're super resentful that is not a way to go through aa service listen scott the chair of the general service board was here a couple of weeks ago i think he brought up a situation that me and him got into in front of a bunch of world service delegates who were there for the weekend they were spectators like in a cage fight, you know? And Scott and I did not agree whatsoever on this particular subject. Scott and i are friends. Scott loves AA. 90% of the time we agree probably. But the line here, it describes Scott and eye on that particular issue. The differences among them are as sharp and considerable as the delegates themselves and you know if i say anything about the aa of today the conference the boards or anything the more you can appreciate that you're not always right that the group conscience knows better than you the freer you will be who wants to be involved in something that's going to make your aa life worse who wants go through the big book and be resentment free and maybe you're current on your amends and maybe your the best big book thumper in the history of big book bumpers and yet you're all pissed off because there's some vote at aa service it makes no sense whatsoever respect of the group conscience is the ultimate most important thing that we have in alcoholics anonymous we are a constantly self-correcting organization what we voted on one time we don't vote on again but it all comes down to the right of participation now what i'll say here this is where all the area delegates are going to get mad at me um and i know um because i've seek professional help um it's true i've had a resentment or two against aa service it's happened And I had to have somebody explain to me that people who really love an organization, like sometimes I'll be sitting at a meeting or something like when I was a trustee or director and I'm like, wow, how did they vote that way? If they were like, had a conscience, they would never vote thatway. How could they say that? Like I've my mind is gone. but you know this person helped me understand that people who love an organization like alcoholics love aa sometimes we get blinded and we say something or do something because we love it so much we want to protect it so many times we don't want to be a part of it so much we never want to admit that an area or a district or a board or the general service conference could be wrong like we're so out there um and and and those things do you know happen from time to time but what i would tell you is that it's very freeing to not let that upset you it's very free to understand that you know let me not piss off the big book thumpers but there's no such thing as alcoholic thinking the big book calls it other human problems like we have human problems right on top of our alcoholism but one of the things that areas don't like me to talk about because it's a problem in many of the 93 areas and i'm not saying this is an opinion i have personally been to 87 of the 93 assemblies okay in the last 30 years 83 87 out of 93. if you open up the service manual to the chapter on the assembly you'll see that they have the voting percentages to match up with concept 4 like the conference except instead of delegates having 66 percent of the vote it's gsrs and then dcms and then aerial officers that if each area applied concept four to their business we'd be in a lot of trouble If the voting representation had to be 66% GSRs at a lot of area assemblies, there'd be a lot of business not going on. And that is something that worries me for sure. Like how's the triangle flipped upside down a little inside areas? And remember, we've created all these positions the last 30 years, 40 years that we didn't have. We didn't have alternate deputy registrars. We didn't have many for a long time. There was no alternate delegate. The area chair was the alternate delegate Now we have a whole table full of positions and alternates and all I'm saying is if you read the original conference charter and you read original service manual area assemblies was supposed to mirror the conference as far as a reasonable proportion of voting um and sometimes we don't see that in certain areas some areas we do so that's it i am going to go to questions i am gonna remind everyone no conference topics if you've seen the letters to the board or anything about trustee and director resignations those go directly to your delegate that is who to bring them to i'm not saying that you don't have a right to have a question i asked my delegate six trustees or direct or directors have resigned been asked to resign or been removed in 24 months that's never happened before six in 24 it makes me think like i don't care about the individual issues i care about what's going on between the conference and the board that's creating people to leave um i have a right to ask that question to my delegate you have a right to answer that question of your delegate just not to me so there's a question here please elaborate on how unanimous voting does not equal unity and the dangers of group think sure i mean let's just talk about at the board level and the conference level. If you have a totally hot topic with strong feelings, we're supposed to have the best and the brightest that are serving in those positions. If all of them agree 100%, it seems impossible to me based on our history like give and take and flexibility is what made aa stay here for all these 90 years when i think that something is just unanimous like are people just rubber stamping now some things are easy to be unanimous i'm not saying there should never be a unanimous vote but i don't think there's anything wrong when the trustees or the conference or the boards have a hot issue and they reach a group decision a group conscience by two-thirds and there's some people who don't beat the same way i don'T THINK THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THE BOARD REPORTING HEY WE HAD A VOTE WE HATTA GROUP CONSCIENCE THERE WERE SOME PEOPLE WHO in the minority but the group conscience prevails i like to think that people are really not afraid to speak up and i see it happen i see what happened at all levels of service i see dcms and area people who are more worried about becoming delegate than doing the right job and have i probably seen delegates who are more worried about becoming trustee than being delegates yeah of course um no doubt about it let's see why am i holding out on the last six areas that is a very very good question um i just have timing has not been right um but hopefully i will uh get to those areas um let's see what does a block mean a block means that like the trustees here's what a block means like in the ultimate illuminati spirit conspiracy theory gatherings okay it means that the trustees are all getting together and deciding how they're going to vote at the conference and they're all going to vote the same way i just it does not happen it does Not happen I've never seen it happen bright individuals who have their own opinions on many things let's see Second paragraph, page 13 concept for us as staff members can participate but cannot vote. Does that mean paid staff workers? That's only for the trustee committees and that's only for the conference committees that a paid staff member doesn't have a vote. The paid staff members who have AA Grapevine has three, the general service office has like 14. The people who have the AA staff positions, literature, CPC, treatment, group services, international conventions and regional forums, corrections, staff coordinator, all of those positions have a vote. So at AA World Services, there's nine directors, four are trustees, three are non-trustee directors, and two are paid staff people. The general manager of GSO and the staff coordinator are members of the AAWS board. But all the staff members attend the board meetings, just not the confidential sections. um gso does a really good job at getting staff to participate for sure let's see okay yes somebody has their camera off for health reasons listen you do whatever you need to do for your own health absolutely i visited an area business meeting this past weekend it was impressed by the resemblance of the conference room to a roman arena the gladiators on the floor were observed by the many nobles on the dais wow i don't know where that was but all i know is i was very worried about the letters that came out the last two weeks so i checked how many area assemblies there were last this past weekend and thank god there were a lot so no one knows what area assembly they're talking about i'm sorry it looks that way as you know i'm not a big believer in deuses it is nothing against any particular area i think one podium for who's ever speaking but lots of areas do it differently i'm also against past delegate tables A lot of areas do it. I just don't know why we would want to put all that brain power and all that experience at one table and not spread it around to help the people who are trying to understand what they're hearing. Let's see, when should a group in my district consult with another group um let's see maybe if you were gonna have some kind of workshop you might want to tell them just so that you could invite them maybe if he wanted to meet in the same building at the same time you might want to Tell them maybe if you were meeting in the same building, but at a different time and day, you wanna let them know that they have nothing to worry about, that you're gonna take care of that building like they take care it. Billy, what were the four places you separated in this concept? Okay, last time, here we go. Throughout our conference structure, we oughta maintain all responsible levels or traditional right of participation, one. 1. Taking care that each classification or group of world servants, 2. Shall be allowed a voting representation, 3. In reasonable proportion to the responsibility that each must discharge, 4. the concept mentions that we shouldn't have any participation participants as second-class citizens do you have any suggestions on how areas and districts could address this if the issue arises or maybe prevent it sure make sure everybody who should have a vote has a vote no second-class citizens there should be never any second- class citizens in Alcoholics Anonymous which trustee could I stand for not having been a delegate well if you want the letter of the law If you're an alcoholic, you could stand for any of the three alcoholic Class B positions. You do not have to be a delegate to be at trustee at large, a regional trustee or a general service trustee. Now, practically speaking, a high percentage, like between 99.9 and 100, of trustees at large and regional trustees are past delegates but if you've not been a delegate then you have a lot of service experience maybe you want to apply to be a non-trustee director on one of the corporate boards aws or a grapevine because those um those you have to be an untrusty director in order to be a general service trustee that's the way it works um so those four positions are out there and i would tell you uh that you should make yourself available if you think you're qualified i don't think we do a good enough job spreading the message about non-trustee director applications and the people and what we're looking for um do you see a correlation between the flipping of the triangle at the area level related to members revolving around the dais and service positions like rotation has become diluted and there is not enough new blood coming through um this is my honest opinion based on all areas i've lived in area 19 area 44 area 15 it is nothing to do with any of those areas This is my personal feeling. We have so many positions now that it would take like 20 years for the average person to hold most of them to become a delegate. I do not believe in promotions. i do not believe that there should be a a service path that's in stone i do not believe anything like the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone is disconnected to the knee like if you don't think you would be a good secretary don't stand for secretary but i mean i think we should elect the best people now if someone shows up and decides they want to stand for delegate and they've never done anything else well you know use your judgment when you're voting but i know some very good delegates who are never alternate delegates why do we have a third legacy election if there's not a promotion It's to make sure that the right person. Now, I'm not saying most alternate delegates shouldn't become delegate. But my friend Tom M. in Northeast Texas, he was never an alternate delegate. He was a damn good delegate. I know lots of people like that. I just am against any kind of promotion or any kind of you do this, you do that. and what i am really against and this is where service sponsorship has kind of destroyed alcoholics anonymous if i could you know maybe mention something from uh i see one person here who probably knows this but like john q who passed away while he served as a service sponsor to many he had a different view of service sponsorship it wasn't to tell people exactly what to do It wasn't to tell people what font size should be on their flyer, and it definitely wasn't tell them what they shouldn't or should stand for, but simply to give advice and share experience. When I hear people have been told by people not to stand for something because they didn't hold the right jobs, it's not our job. There's only two questions at elections. are you qualified and are you willing and available if you meet those two prerequisites then you let god sort it out not somebody who thinks they should be playing god for your area let's see since the traditions are written for groups to meetings at the file the traditions the traditions were not written for groups. They were written for all of AA. The concepts, the charter says that Bill and Bob left AA to the groups. And the groups carry that out through their concept to right to elect a delegate. But meetings are just as much AA, but they have decided to not participate in the conference structure. Groups are who Concept 1 and Concept 2 talks about. So is next week Concept 5? Yes, it is. Next week is Concept 5 and Tradition 5. So we will go through that. I'll give one more minute if anybody has any last-minute questions. I'll take one more. Please go to your delegate about any current issues in AA. Do not be afraid to tell them you'd like to give them your two cents. They might be willing and open to hear it, as long as you're willing and opened to believe that they don't have to believe the same way you believe. and that they're the one getting to vote this year not you as long as you can accept that you should be able to um have a good conversation if uh so I'll answer this question two ways because the question that's asked what they describe happens in my area i know it happens in other areas too but it happensin my area and the question is simply um if a gsr can't make motions are they a second class citizen and not of the right of participation if you asked me that sitting in a waffle house at two o'clock in the morning you know going on my second pad a pack of marlboros or newports for the day 10 or 20 years ago i probably would have told you absolutely it's garbage it's crazy how could a gsr not have emotion making ability but yet has a right to vote on things however in the areas that do that including my own that's their group conscience and if somebody doesn't like it in any area they should find a way to get emotion in and i gotta believe there must be other people who can make motions in all of the areasthat don't let gsrs make motions and that's the other thing and let me you know close on this it's really important to understand all 93 areas do business differently there are some areas that only let gsrs vote dcm's aerial officers do not have votes on motions up until recently there was still one area left it changed a couple of years ago where they had city and country or urban and country voting style and if you don't know what that is states that only have one delegate where there's big urban areas that have lots of groups the rural farming communities in those states felt like they never had were they would never really represented so there was one area where if you were a city GSR you got one vote and if you were rural GSR your group got two votes but my point is there's lots of different rules and it's so important for you to know your area's guidelines, or your area handbook, or your area current practice, so that you know how your area does business. The service manual, by the way, the concepts are conference-approved literature, approved through the Conference Literature Committee in 1961, if you were curious where that happened. That's where the book, The Twelve Concepts, was approved. went through the Literature Committee, approved by the conference. The short form of the concepts did not go through a committee, was not really a floor action because the conference was a little looser at that time, but was introduced by the chair in 1971 and the conference voted to accept them. But the front part of the service manual, the actual service manual is not a policy document. people get all up in arms you're not doing it like this you ever see someone at line you ever been at an assembly and someone's at line with the service manual like opened paper clipped highlighted ready to just go to town when that microphone gets called on them like i'm just letting people know the service module is a suggestive prescriptive document to explain how service gets done. It is not a policy document. That gets found in other things. At the General Service Conference, there's a description of conference committees in the service manual. But at the General Surface Conference, you know we love acronyms. we love csps composition scope and procedures every conference committee has a csp that's a policy document every trustees committee has a csp a lot of trustee committees like nominating have procedures nominating procedure number two nominating procedure number 14 nominating procedure number 12 those are all policies like when you vote on something at your area but the service manual is a helpful guidebook but not to be used as policy so that's it we will be back next week i hope that you all are going to your conference whatever you have in your area however you give feedback to your delegates i hopethat you all if you see your delegate thank them for taking the time out of their life taking a week is not easy i know everybody talks oh they get to go to new york believe me it's not like Like you just want a trip to New York with like eight Broadway plays and six games and everything else. If you go in a little before or a little after, maybe you get to go to a play or so, but those six days it's like being at bootcamp. You get up early, they tell you where to go. You have to eat the same food as everyone else. They tell you what to go in the afternoon. have to eat where they tell you at night for dinner then you have to go back into the room then maybe you go late it's if you see your delegate and i stress this even if you don't get along or don't agree with your delegate about most things you could thank them for taking the time you could think your alternate for being ready to go if your delegate can't go um I think it's even more important to do if you think you don't agree with your delegate a lot. I always say that about people that I don't agree with in AA. If there is a person who I disagree with the most who I know says horrible things about me, the one thing i have to admit myself is for about 20 years in a row that person loves aa so much that two years at a time they held a new commitment in service to alcoholics anonymous two years after two years at the two years of the two and whether they like me or not or whether we agree i have to respect them for that commitment to the fellowship that saved my life more than anything else i just wish more people maybe would i think about people like don p and john s and john q and some others uh john s from washington dc another john s arnold r from maryland And I think about some of my heroes out there, and they always were respectful of the group conscience, even if they disagreed with people. And they never looked like AA made their life miserable. Like if you knew the John, the first John S. I mentioned, he drove a truck for the phone company. when his trustee application got submitted he was still the owner of an irish bar in south orange new jersey he spoke with an iris brogue when he was sober he was the grand marshal of the south orange saint patrick's day parade but you know where you would find him at the shuralan club in belmar across the street from the boardwalk like shaking newcomer's hands on the way into a meeting when he was a past trustee like if service is not making you love alcoholics anonymous i would just ask you to really get in touch with what's really causing that and you know the other day the other day i was not too far from where i'm sitting right now a couple of miles away listening to a fifth step from a member of alcoholics anonymous and i thought to myself like i don't care if you're a gsr a dcm a corrections chair a delegate a trustee you want good you want to prepare well for your service commitment listen to a fifth step that'll give you most of the training you need and why would you want to be so resentful against the organization that saved all our lives so that's it i am going to close the responsibility statement i'll just say this before i say the responsibility statement it's one of those things that's misquoted all the time people have their own definition of it anywhere whatever it means we help everybody please if you have an as bill sees it story a book it's divided up by numbered stories like a page each the last page not of daily reflections, but of as Bill sees it is the story of the responsibility statement and where it comes from. And I guess it's in daily reflections. But it's definitely an as Bill sees it. And you got to read it. You got to know where that statement comes from and what it has to do with so I'm going to close with that. I am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of aa always to be there and for that i am responsible have a good night everyone thanks for your service to alcoholics