Tradition Three and Concept Three – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 25 of 27 – Billy N.

so is it 8 30 yet yep welcome everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic let me put my earbud in you can all still hear me awesome uh so um we're here tonight to discuss tradition three and concept three there was something that crossed my mind um that i wanted to mention tonight but i'll just mention the regular it's like march 20 something right that means it's six weeks to the general service conference if you don't know who your delegate is tonight is a really good time to start thinking about calling your dcm or somebody and finding out who your delegates if you don't who your dcm or your district chair is please reach out to somebody who is involved in service so they can help you with that i mention that because we take a lot of questions here but there is one type of question we don't take and that is on anything that is individually attached to a conference agenda item for this year we do not get involved than those. Those belong best with your delegate and your home group, and we stay out of any kind of politicking or lobbying of any type. It's just not what we do here. If you have a question about a principle, particularly the one we're discussing tonight, then we would be glad to answer that question or most likely tell you where to find your own answer in literature, which is much more useful and beneficial than someone just giving you an answer um but um i'm going to talk about tradition three first and then concept three i always joke around that these were not written horizontally they were written vertically meaning that there's no connection between concept one concept tradition step one tradition one and concept one there are people who weave their own individual stories about that but that's not a literature these 12 things three times were written vertically 1 to 12 separate and apart from each other that being said there's probably in today's aa no two principles you would want to talk about at the same time that could be more controversial meaning tradition three and concept three for various reasons so tradition three just for anyone who's new to the traditions let me just make d a co-host in case anything gets out of control or i lose power or whatever else just hold on one second so please go to the 12 and 12 please go to the traditions illustrated please go to a comes of age particularly hold on one second my book for another zoom call particularly page 102 in a comes of age and then this most important pamphlet problems other than alcohol so i'm not going to read those pamphlets or that literature for you not my job and what is that doesn't help anybody but i'm going to tell you a little history behind tradition 3. the most important thing to know is that it had nothing to do with drugs or any other problem when it was written today we go to traditions meetings three five and they go off the deep end about how people identify themselves in meetings not that that's not something we can talk about but they always focus on everything except why the tradition was written and i'm gonna have to mention a couple of historic facts tonight which in today's world which is super political and a bit extreme probably on both sides i could mention some facts that someone might say i'm being political so i just want to get that disclaimer aside for the 10th tradition i'm not being political i'm just explaining the United States of America around 1945, the year before the traditions first appeared in the grapevine. And I also want to mention if you're new to the traditions to get a language of the heart or go on the AA Grapevine digital archives and search the original essays on the traditions. I love the original essay they're not as quite refined as in the 12 and 12 but let's talk about 19 first of all there were big problems in aa so i know that we all like to think that you know god parted the sea on june 10th 1935 and we've never turned back and everything's been awesome that is not really the truth then some will think that in april of 1939 when we published the big book things were all great not really was it a miracle that we published that book yes thank god today we have it they discovered the recipe for recovering from alcoholism and they knew it was so important that it put it in a book but something happened between 1939 and 1945. It's been a common problem of Alcoholics Anonymous since then. It is called the alcoholic ego. The alcoholic ego has been the enemy of Alcoholic Anonymous since the start. Some of you know I've held a few service positions when i used to go to new york and i'd stay a day late or go a day early i would sometimes request to read some files out of the archives i loved letters to bill letters bill wrote to other people and you know one of them really fascinated me in the mid 40s because bill talked about in his response to a gentleman who wrote him he said one of the unique abilities of alcoholics is to destroy anything good in their life drunk or sober that we have an ability to blow things up like nobody's business And here was the one thing, finally, on God's earth that was helping alcoholics. And our human defects and egos were already busy at work, harming AA. Another two letters that really caught my attention. The first letter basically said, dear Bill. aaa is going great in our little city in america i'm not going to say what city our group is on fire the cops are dropping drunks off at our group meetings we're going to the courts and the hospitals and the detoxes everything is going good except for one thing this other group across the street We don't know what they're doing there, but it's definitely not AA. And then what happens like a couple of weeks later, the other group writes Bill like the same letter, like that's been going on since the start of AA. Bill knew that we needed to do something. It's clear based on how things were out of control in the 40s, that AA would have never lasted as long as it did i mean let's just look at the outside world around us imagine we took sides on political issues i can invite you to my home group on any given day where we have vast different people with very different opinions that we work really hard to keep outside of our meetings um and then there was the money and profit motive or dr silkworth i see some people from new jersey he's buried in west long branch i mean that poor guy he's considered one of the most important people in the history of alcoholism and AA. And yet when he was treating Bill in today's money, he was making like 30 grand a year as an MD. Like in 1934, taking care of drunks was not billion dollar empire okay nobody wanted to do it people like you and i were throwaways people like u and i i mean we forget about it today because you know we have the gift of aa but what happens to the human body and human brain if you keep drinking the way we all drink it leads to horrible physical ramifications and mental and you have to remember that, that back then they were doing lobotomies on alcoholics. I have the nurse notes from a lobotomy done on an alcoholic in Chicago in like the 40s or the 50s. And the first thing he did when he woke up after surgery was ask for a drink. So the lobotopy didn't work either, right? there's a few women in this meeting. There were many state mental facilities back then where if you were an alcoholic who was so bad, you were put in one of those facilities. Like the requirement to get out one of them was that you can't have children. Like we are talking about barbaric times in the history of the world regarding alcoholism. And so when we talk about AA and its miracle, it's nothing less than a miracle. But there were problems. And in 1946, when the tradition started to go around, first of all, I'm looking through the screen tonight we would not be allowed to have this meeting in 1946 if we were in like a church basement or a community center we would be mixing races that's not a political statement but in about eight states in 1946 you could not have a public assembly of mixed race it's not allowed i have a brother who's sober in a he happens to be gay he was married his uh husband passed away but uh not only was there no gay marriage in 1946 in many many states it was illegal just to be again not a political statement i'm just letting you know what was going on in the world in 1946 and we're talking about the third tradition tonight i mean how crazy is it i would be curious and if you've heard me ask this question before then you're cheating but uh for those who've read the 12 and 12 you know this line a newcomer appeared at one of these groups knocked on the door and asked to be let in he talked frankly with that group's oldest member he soon proved that this was a desperate case and that above all he wanted to get well but he asked will you let me join your group since i am the victim of another addiction even worse stigmatized than alcoholism you may not want me among you or will you first of all i would be curious how many people in this meeting don't raise your digital hand but if you want to raise your regular hand that's fine but how many People in this group tonight have heard this story before and have heard that that was a black man transsexual wearing a blonde wig okay so if we've served nothing further tonight you will no longer believe that wrong history that is factually historically not true now if you read pass it on the story of bill w you will read the story about the male black blonde wig cross dresser in a meeting but that happened in new york in the 50s okay the story in the 12 and 12 this is ohio in the 40s and this man's only stigma was that he was a gay man that's it just a gay man and so sometimes we talk we throw the words diversity inclusion around alcoholics anonymous a lot but it's super important um super important to know that like the third tradition was our original diversity and inclusion statement that we did not care what color you were we did not care what your sexuality was we did not care what your gender was we did not care about what religion you are we did not care if you don't believe in god and as i often say we didn't even care if you're a boston red sox fan the only thing that matters in alcoholics anonymous is that you're an alcoholic that's it nothing else now you can imagine in a decent parts of the country that was not good news for some of those members that did not make them happy i always like to say that aa as a spiritual organization has had high spiritual goals and tradition three is our goal that everybody um be treated equally and that every alcoholic be welcome but then you have the problem aa's biggest problem i uh have my big book right here to the right i have my 12 and 12 to the left as i look up a file just hold on one second um there's a problem with those two books my big book they correct it every couple of years and put a new asterisk in and tell me how many million members there are and how many groups there are but then my 12 and 12 in step 8 says let me not mince words here we go since defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes including our alcoholism no field of investigation could yield more satisfying and valuable rewards than this one imagine those two statements were in the same book we basically have two million people who don't get along with other people we have two million people, who don t play well in the sandbox with others. We have 2 million people who struggle at making relationships of any specific type so Bill knew all that but we have defective people that show up I'm the first one to admit that when i came to alcoholics anonymous again not a political statement i i did not like everybody for me to be a recovered member of alcoholics synonymous i can't have hate that's just me but if you think that it was fair that every alcoholic was getting the same help in aa i just want to hate to disappoint you but there were places where it was hard it was hard for women it was hard for gay people of color listen to this news article this is February 1944 two years before the traditions I'm reading it out of the Cleveland Central Bulletin, which was the newsletter for the Cleveland Central Office. Listen to what it says here. The topic or the subject of the article is minstrel show. If you don't know what a minstral show is, it's when white people used to put black makeup up on their face and do comedy parodies. Here's what it says. The minstrel show with its cast of 60 from the combined groups of Cleveland's AA is ready for its premiere at the Music Hall Wednesday evening. One of the largest productions of its kind ever attempted by an amateur organization this minstrel will offer a great variety of acts on its program i don't know i came to aa at 14 years old got sober at 23 i don'T KNOW HOW WELCOME I WOULD HAVE FELT IN CLEVELAND AFTER THE MINSTRAL SHOW IF I WAS A 23 YEAR OLD BLACK MAN THAT I WAS THE DOORS were wide open to me. And how about box 459? From January of 1957. In AA, the common welfare of all members comes first. If the admission of a member of another race to your group will cause distention and threaten the survival of your group, the common welfare of your group members would appear to be threatened too. Would we ever say that today? Never. We would never say that. Ever. And I'm not saying AA was wicked or bad. I get times were different. I'm just saying that Bill W wrote this tradition to make sure that every single human being that suffered from alcoholism had a seat in Alcoholics Anonymous. And then we go to the old, you know, short form of the tradition, the desire to stop drinking. I want to put that little myth away for a second. You just need to go to this book. Go to the last paragraph of the narrative in the 12 and 12 of Tradition 3. so the hand of providence early gave us a sign that any alcoholic is a member of our society when he says so any alcoholic so an alcoholic that has a desire to stop drinking now we have different meetings closed and open anyone can go to an open meeting it's just only alcoholics participate our literature says that non-alcoholics at open meetings go there as observers closed meetings is there is the meeting you can go to if you're not sure you're an alcoholic because the literature says two kinds of people are allowed to close meetings alcoholics and people that have a desire to stop drinking and a drinking problem both not just a desire but a desire not just the desire to stop drinking but a desire to stop drinking and a drinking problem our literature over and over says that you have to be an alcoholic to be a member of alcoholics anonymous sometimes that's a little controversial today um what we don't have and if anybody wants to go down the google rabbit hole for the rest the night join my have a good have at it because nothing i like better than a good google rabbit hole to see if i can prove myself wrong or right but like we only have qualifications not disqualifications we only Have a qualifier that you have to be an alcoholic you can't find any other organization on earth except for other 12-step fellowships every other organization has things you can do to get thrown out or to not qualify everyone we spend so much time focused on other problems we forget that our tradition doesn't care about other problems it cares are you an alcoholic we don't care if you have a food issue a codependency issue there's an art anonymous there's some isolators anonymous we don t care if your have an art problem or an isolating problem we don d care if we have a drug problem or a sex problem or gambling problem many of our alcoholic members have all of them but the one thing you do need to be in a member is an alcoholic. Now it's funny because my highlighted big book is in the car. If you read the forward to the second edition, there's a great note about Dr. Bob. Because I'll tell you, I have no problem telling you this. There's lots of heroin addicts dying in AA today that not alcoholic and that's not billy's arrogant statement i served as a non-heroin addict advisor on the heroin anonymous board you know who i met at all their events heroin addicts who were dying in aa meetings heroin addict who are not alcoholic i'm an alcoholic not a drug addict now am i stupid enough to smoke weed no you know why because people who smoke weed they make dumb decisions the dumbest decision i could make is to pick up a drink i met a young woman who is now finally clean in ha four years you know what she doesn't drink you know 왜 not because she's an alcoholic but because she heard people who get drunk do dumb things that alcoholics don't own the like it's not just alcoholics who do stupid things drunk it's everybody but in today's world like we have to get people to their right fellowship dr bob says in his story in the second in the forward to the second edition it says this physician tried spiritual methods meaning the oxford group and they didn't work you know why because the first 50 pages of the big book is dedicated to identification he said only when the broker meaning bill w shared his own story with him and he realized he was hopeless did he then have the conviction to go along with the program of action i have lots of sponsees that are alcoholic and god knows what everything else we all i think listen i'm not in the business of sponsoring women but if you sponsor a lot of men you know the gambling and sex problems that come along with that very active women in alcoholics anonymous they tell me they know the food and the codependency and relationship problems that with a lot of their newcomers that's not scientific but everybody has lots of problems and and problems other than alcohol is very clear it actually has some questions and if you buy the little one the blue pamphlet it has answers can a non-alcoholic pill a drug addict become an aa member no they cannot Can such a person be brought as a visitor to an open AA meeting for help and inspiration? Yes, they can. Can a pill or a drug taker who also has a genuine alcoholic history become a member of AA? Yes. And here's the kicker, and here's where we probably fall down on our duty and responsibility. Can AA members who have suffered both alcoholism and addiction form themselves into special purpose groups to help other AAs who are having drug trouble? Yeah, they can go to NA or they can have meetings in their backyard taking people through the steps. We do so much damage talking bad about other fellowships in AA. So much damage. I hear this. and a doesn't have a solution i don't know i'm looking at 124 people who are talking about the concepts at 8 30 on a monday night right so i'm guessing this is like the kind of passionate sometimes judgmental alcoholic crowd right i can't be the only one who's gone to a bad meeting right am i the only ones that's walked out of a meeting shaking my head like what the hell was that so are we just judging other fellowships by what happens to be a bad meeting there are 124 people in other fellowship's who love their fellowships just as much as we do who are meeting on zoom tonight and really what we need to do in the world today is make sure that in our phones we have some numbers i have a number for a really active na guy in juneau beach that's the next town over from where i live i have the number of an alcoholic i know who's very active and gamblers anonymous i have that number i have male and female al-anon numbers to refer people to it's so important that we get people to where their life could be saved but i want to stress i'm not about throwing people out of meetings i'm not about public humiliation i can find nothing in our literature that says that's okay and god forbid a newcomer call themselves the wrong thing i go by the john g rule because i used to get pissed off when someone said oh i'm an alcoholic and an addict or an alcoholic in this and he would like be billy i don't believe a thing a newcomer tells me for a year why are you getting so mad and he has a point but i've also come to the rule that i don't get to say anything to anybody privately in a share at a podium if i'm not willing to spend an hour a week with that person introducing them to what is alcoholics anonymous and what's not and offering to take them through the literature if i am not willing do that then i should be minding my own business and definitely not making people feel uncomfortable in Alcoholics Anonymous or judged. I mean, the greatest thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is that we welcome everybody. And let's face it, we're kind of like, you know, we're not religious and we're not church. But that doesn't mean we have things, don't have things in common with temples and churches. I mean let's face it the kind of people coming to Alcoholics Anonymous on day one other organizations are not banging down their front door asking them to join okay they're not the kind of broken human beings that wind up in AlcoholicsAnonymous that's the beauty of AA the unjudging sinners are welcomed make you feel comfortable and give you the time that you need to decide whether you're an alcoholic and whether we could help you. Not to be some judgmental moron who says something to make someone feel uncomfortable. And I want to stress that before I go on to concept three, that one of the problems with the traditions is that we all think about them from our point of view. i'm gonna say this i'm going to go out on a limb i can't be the only one in the last let's say 60 days who is minding their own business in an aa meeting and heard somebody say something where like my head snapped like did i just hear that in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous i can't be the only one in this group of people it happens but like here's the deal i love Alcoholics Anonymous it saved my life i don't care what you say i'm coming back tomorrow i might even be coming back tonight but not so for the newcomer the newcomer your words and your language and your tone and you're rolling your eyes and god knows what else could have a real devastating effect on their life and they might not come back this might be the only time they've ever been on this side of god's window once you're on this slide you're not guaranteed back again so we always have to think about that when we're talking about all the traditions is like what does it feel like to be a newcomer who knows nothing about aa and if we say the wrong thing there's a chance we could give them a negative impression that they're welcome when we are supposed to be sending the opposite message so that's enough for tradition three i'm going to go to concept three I will read it right out of the service manual. As a traditional means of creating and maintaining a clearly defined working relationship between the groups, the conference, the AA General Service Board, and its several service corporations, staffs, committees, and executives, of thus ensuing ensuring effective leadership, it is hereby suggested that we endow each of these elements of world service with the traditional right of decision. so we have all kinds of people in this meeting who have served all kinds of roles and currently do and i thank anyone for their current service position and alcoholics anonymous and the time you sacrificed out of your life and your family's life i can share my experience i've been a gsr i've been a dcm i've been an area chair i've been a delegate i've been an appointed committee member on the general service board's corrections committee i've been a non-trustee director on the a world services board i've been a class b trustee and two years during my term as trustee i served as chair of the a world services board so over that time the right of decision has become important to me because a is an odd place if you didn't really you know there's a line in aa comes of age that actually has a question mark after it i feel like we should update it because it says won't all kinds of odd people show up I don't think that's a question anymore. Like, I'm pretty sure we know the answer to that question. Like yes, millions of odd people have showed up, millions, right? The right of decision, you know, AA is the kind of place where if you're chairing a meeting and someone is acting completely off the wall or sharing like it's you ask people to share for three minutes and at minute seven because you're a people pleaser like me you finally say uh you should wrap it up we got to get to other people right only in aa when i'm doing my job as a chair person does the rest of the group gang up on me that i'm picking on somebody and all i'm doing is embracing the group conscience. But we need the right of decision. We can't elect leaders who can't make decisions. And the way to speak up about the right-of-decision is at your group business meeting, at your district meeting, at your area assembly it might even be at the general service board or the grapevine board or aaws board or that or the general services conference but all of us at least have voted a group and looking at a lot of you a lot you have groups have votes in a district or an assembly and a couple of you have a vote at the General Service Conference this year that's where we discuss and sometimes debate and vote but we're alcoholic we'd rather go behind the scenes email gossip in a diner god knows what else we'd Rather discuss it every place except where it needs to be discussed and if you want your trusted servants to be informed you got to be discussing in front of them the right of decision is not an excuse to go around any kind of delegated authority you've been given um it says in the concepts uh it says one example is for example knowing that theirs is the final authority the groups are sometimes tempted to instruct their delegates exactly how to vote upon certain matters in the conference because they hold the ultimate authority there is no group doubt that the a groups have a right to do this so here's an urban myth than aa the concept says if the groups want to they can instruct the delegate but it goes on as if they insist they can give directives to delegates on any and all matters but is that wise the most important right of decision affecting the general service conference that's ignored is electing good delegates your group gets to elect a gsr mine does that's the only place now i get to exercise my right of decision i vote for the best person to be gsR because that person is going to vote for district chair and is going to vote for the delegate at the assembly at the quarterly if i vote for wrong person they're gonna vote for the wrong person if i think my delegate is not really doing their job then maybe i elected the wrong delegate maybe i voted for a friend instead of somebody who would really do the job. And the other thing out there, and this rule works all the way up and down the triangle. It works with alternate delegates and it works with ultimate cookie and anniversary cake people. If you are a bad alternate cookie and Anniversary person, you're not going to be a good Anniversary and cookie person. You're not gonna magically all of a sudden do the job like we have to elect people that do the jobs and the best people but we also have to let them do their job and there's a lot of people active in general service today and as you know over the last couple of years the conference and the board have had some very trying issues i will explain to you that probably the most as a former board member and a former chair of aws I would tell you that for me, what became the most important was the second to last paragraph of Concept 3, which says, The right of decision should never be made an excuse for failure to render proper reports of all significant actions taken. It ought never be used as a reason for constantly exceeding a clearly defined authority, nor an excuse for persistently failing to consult those who are entitled to be consulted before an important decision or action is taken. In other words, if you have time, wait for the group to get together. if you don't have time and you have to make a decision then you have a duty per the concepts to let those groups know right away the groups could be the delegates the groups could be at your area assembly the next time you get together but i want to make this clear based on the charter and the 12 concepts there is no individual anywhere in alcoholics anonymous who does not report to a group conscience there is never a statement to make i have the ultimate authority right of decision it's just not true the conference is a spiritual entity the board is a legal entity but the concepts make clear that the spiritual is always over the legal sometimes leaders make mistakes because they think it'll cause trouble if they report it doesn't say that it doesn t say if what you're going to report is going to upset the gsrs don't tell them nope it does not say that i've been in an assembly where a treasurer reported that six months before the treasuer and the area officers had a meeting at a diner or a chinese restaurant and they had discovered that the previous treasurers stole some money or lent it to himself and then tried to pay it back slowly But they decided not to tell the groups that it would cause too much heartache. I was at that assembly when people asked for those officers to resign. Like, we just don't have that kind of authority in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've okayed the tax returns for AA World Services, but i have the right of decision as the chair of aws and a member of that board to vote on the tax return we don't need to check that with the groups that's why they elected us now i will say the one thing is there's the board took its inventory i guess two years ago that inventory report has traveled all around do i have one disagreement with i i don't know i have at least one and i love the current board i thank them for their sacrifice but there is a line in there that says that the word transparency is not in any aa literature here would be my response to that transparency wasn't a buzzword in 1950 and 1960. it wasn't a corporate buzzword like it is today the whole service manual is about transparency all 12 concepts are about transparency i've talked to enough trustees to know that if there was one line they could have taken out of that report it would be that one because i do not believe the trustees hide anything from the fellowship i do not think as a person who has seen all the secrets there really are none about three percent of what the board does has to be confidential for legal purposes to protect employee personnel files to protect medical conditions of employees to protect workers comp claims and individuals there certain things that the law says as an employer we need to keep confidential but i am telling you it's less than five percent of the overall business the board deals with there is really nothing that can't be communicated to the groups um the pendulum swings back and forth in a service sometimes we We being the board, maybe make a decision or two we shouldn't have made without going to the conference. And the conference gets mad. And so they push back hard and they start micromanaging the board which that's not good either. If you elect leaders you have to micrormanage, you're electing the wrong leaders. And another principle that's important to learn an aa leader is just because you do have the authority to do something doesn't mean you have to or you should i'll give one example of that in 2009 when i became a director on the aws board my first assignment was to be chair of the aa world services publishing committee now a good amount of the work that aws does is publishing so it was like trial by fire and the board right before me decided to put the big book on the kindle now we're talking about 2009 16 years ago a lot of people in their 50s and 60s and 70s were still not technology savvy like they are today You know what the board forgot to check before they put the big book on the Kindle? That on Amazon, you can leave comments about the book. And boy did the fellowship go crazy when people who hated AA wrote some great classic comments on the Amazon website. And the pushback was so bad that it got taken down in August of 2009. And then we tried to build our own app, which was a disaster because the amount of people and time and dollars to keep our own apps was just astronomical. But finally, a couple of years later, we voted to put the big book in AA literature on Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple iBook, and Kindle again, Amazon eBooks. the aws board had the legal authority to make that decision some people would say it was no more than a format change the book was approved by the conference we were just giving it in a different format for people to read it but the awos board voted unanimously that year it's our big book the con the fellowship cares about it let's send it to the conference literature committee and the conference literature committee approved it and sent it to the floor of the conference and they approved it another good example of this is the preamble the copyright of the preamble is owned by the aa grapevine board if they wanted to change it they could have but when a lot of letters started coming in they decided this is too big of a policy change the groups need to be involved in this decision and so it went to the conference and then it became a floor action and over two-thirds of the members present voted in favor of it and so today we say we're a fellowship of people now did 100 people call me who don't ever listen to their gsr that's not my problem or people who said they slid this in on us at the last moment now we've been talking about it for a couple of years but the grapevine board did the right thing they decided to take a wider audience and i would just stress that my last comment that you can never go wrong as an aa leader when you consult widely the concepts talk about consulting widely a lot even if it's something that doesn't require a vote that you're expected to do in your job you can get a sense of the meeting you can talk to people the right of decision was never supposed to be an abuse of power but in the same way the conference's right to approve things was never supposed to be a micromanaging experiment there should be a middle of the road which for us people is very difficult we go back to the alcoholic you know the greatest thing about Alcoholics Anonymous are members the worst thing about alcoholics anonymous are members it's pretty simple when you get down to it no organization needs 36 spiritual principles to keep us like to keep a tent around the aa circus i mean that's really if i was going to design the cover of a new pamphlet it would have a tent with a sign that says 36 principles with the alcoholic circus going on inside it um but we do our best so i will take a few questions before we close at 9 30 um was it barrielle who wrote living sober yes it was barrieelle who wrote living sober next question can you explain why some conference agenda items are for committee eyes only how can the groups discuss items when we don't have access to the information Oh, yeah. That's an easy one. First of all, only a very small percentage of items are for committee eyes only. If I sent out a poll right now, like how easy is it to keep a secret in Alcoholics Anonymous? We don't think any of us would be shocked by the results. It's impossible. Can't keep a Secret in Alcoholic Anonymous, right? if we were to take literature that's under development that's not copyrighted yet and send it out to too many people we know what'll happen it'll end up online it'll end up in a mass email and we really have to embrace the committee process the right committees are looking at it Now, except for a very few items, if the committee recommends it, the delegates get to see it before you vote to approve it as a conference. Only very few amounts of things do you not get to see and just have to take a committee's recommendation. Is there a growing amount of work each year for conference delegates? How to manage the items for discussion? i'm not sure this is about the right decision but if i had the right of decision yeah there's too many agenda items we should have a limit each year and it should go to the next year it's very simple i also would say that we have an equitable distribution of work to give some items to other committees but we have committees that get no agenda items every year cpc corrections agenda policy and admission maybe we need to re-look at how many committees we have maybe literature and pi need two committees i'm saying there are a lot more agenda items we need to come up with some solution we can't just like say we want everybody to work late till two o'clock in the morning that's not a solution was barriel the person in the example of the tradition no he was not that was a gay man in ohio let's see if only three to five percent of the board deals with this secret and the re i prefer confidential and the rest is transparent then what is the point of the code of secrecy i don't know of a code of secretcy i know of a coat of confidentiality and the code of conduct why would there need to be those things beyond the principles they're already following that's a great question number one i voted against that policy not because i don t believe we need a confidentiality policy but i believe we named it after like five percent of what we do i wanted it to be called the transparency policy and we are a legal corporation we have three of them and we need to have a code of conduct for our trustees and our directors and it is good in writing to remind people what you're allowed to say and what you not allowed to say but i don't believe in this super restrictive atmosphere i believe there are executive sessions of the board where confidential discussions happen and they should remain confidential any other session of the boards should be open and i should be allowed to say what you said or um there are people who feel is too much secrecy today i feel like there has to be certain things confidential but most things should be transparent and i hope that the board and the conference can work this out let's see page 103 of a comes of age says the experience through the years now distilled this tradition three says you remember if you say so after what you have done or still will to do or you remember if you stay so no mention of an alcoholic yep i get it but that's not what it says in the 12 and 12. and there's other literature that says you have to be an alcoholic can you give examples when the right of decision is used in a positive way at the group level in your humble opinion we had a past delegate that was a trusted servant in our home group and decided to use the right of decision when most people in a home group probably didn't understand it to cancel a business meeting because he couldn't attend it and a few other members without first conferring the group so here i've answered this question a million times if you have to cancel the business meeting on an emergency the room got flooded there was a fire in the church whatever then use your right of decision. If you knew in December or January that your business meeting was going to be on the Super Bowl meeting, then bring it as a motion. Nothing that's known should ever be a righted decision. if you knew about it a couple of months before, then bring it to the group and ask for a motion, but I've seen issues where they asked me what you know an example i'll give you a good one that happens all the time a group treasurer doesn't pay the rent but has been reporting they've been paying the rent and all of a sudden a chairperson gets a phone call from a church secretary and says if you guys don't pay your rent you can't meet this week and the chairperson tells it you know take some money and pays it like certain things have to be done name the three legal corporations the general service board of alcoholics anonymous inc alcoholics anonymous world services inc the aa grapevine inc those are the three corporations when groups districts of areas of the conference ask people to resign from positions are we using concept five to do that um we'll talk about that in concept five the 2014 and 2022 member surveys both show that about 88 percent of members are white is it possible that the survey process is faulty if not can we better reach people so of course we have to reach more people and we have to reach people we're not reaching do i think the survey process was broken for a long time yes and i know they're trying to fix it if you want an example of why it's broken i can give you one easy in the 93 areas they pick a certain amount of groups per area to survey So look at Southeast New York, Suffolk County, Nassau County, all five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Rockland, Sullivan, and Dutchess. Well, the geographic makeup is big. the percentage of people of color in the five boroughs is much bigger in aa meetings than it is in the suburbs for sure but we only we don't break down our survey by population we only break it down by geographic area so when we send it out to a couple of districts in the area and we're not reaching the urban groups we have to find a way to properly service those to survey those groups but i think it's clear we have work to do no doubt about it and i'm not scared by those numbers but i'm not arrogant either if people of color and other groups were not as welcome to aa as white men then of course they're lagging behind in joining alcoholics anonymous and we have to do whatever we can to get the message out any other questions otherwise next week we will be reading concept four uh let's see what this says can you explain censoring i will in concept five if you want to be added to the facebook group where the recordings are i am gonna put my text whatsapp whatever you want to use, um, email. We have a secret Facebook group. Um, we post the recordings in there every week. If you email me or text me, I will gladly add you to that group. um and it's an easy way for us to distribute uh the recordings so next week concept four i'll give you one piece of homework oh it's not concept four it's something else next week okay hold on i'll tell you right now what it is next week next week it is the aa group pamphlet in my top five of pamphlets i went to my own lunchtime meeting today where somebody asked me if it was canceled last week because of saint patrick's day um it was not i just want to let everyone know um no saint patricks day day off it was another conflict so thanks everybody uh you might want to bring a calculator next week most phones have a calculator on them but a calculator will become a big part of concept four we'll close with the responsibility statement i am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of a always to be there and for that i am responsible thanks everyone have a great night