[Businessmtg] FW: Group Rep Report - Part 2 - What It's Like Today

[Steve Rankin]

From: Steve Rankin 
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2025 6:58 PM
To: ASP (asp at asp-afg.org) <asp at asp-afg.org>
Subject: Group Rep Report - Part 2 - What It's Like Today

 

Hi folks, this part of my Group Rep reports will be about what’s happened with our District 53 so far in 2025, as well as what is happening, or not happening in the GEA.  In other words, the good, the bad and the ugly.

 

First, the District – the GOOD!

 

The trusted servants of District 53 meet once a month via Zoom, so I've had the pleasure of attending three D53 meetings since the beginning of 2025.  I say "pleasure" because it has really been a pleasure as there is a sense of cooperation in our District which should be the norm in AFG, however it’s not.  We’ve had seven unique GRs attend our D53 meetings with 5-6 people at each meeting so far.  Angel from South Africa is our DR and she’s doing an excellent job.  

 

Issues we’ve discussed at our district meeting this year:

 

*	Cleaning House.  On ongoing project has been ridding D53 of inactive groups and/or groups that we’ve been unsuccessful communicating with.  We are now down to 16 groups in D53.  In March, we discussed the possibility of merging with District 54.  I’m sure that this will take considerable time to resolve, one way or the other.  
*	Group Participation.  Amazingly, out of our 16 groups, we have 8 GRs and 3 Alternate GRs.  We’ve been averaging 5 GRs/Alternates at or District meetings, which means that over 30% or the groups in District 53 are actually represented at our meetings. That is outstanding considering that 4 of the groups in District 53 are phone meetings and one is Spanish-speaking.  
*	GEA Responsiveness.  There seems to be a consensus in the District that the GEA is unresponsive to the Districts & Groups.  My personal observation is the GEA is very controlling, and generally unwilling to let the GRs discuss and issue and reach their own decisions.  However, since this falls under the Bad & Ugly part, I’ll elaborate later in this report so I can continue with the Good stuff – District 53.
*	Seventh Tradition.  District 53 discussed the issue of our finances and the need for District 53 to have a treasurer and all the good stuff that goes with being financially responsible through the Seventh Tradition.  Back in February, we elected a Treasurer and we now have a bank account and are accepting donations from the groups of District 53.  
*	Website.  Few things are better than a decent website for making information available to the groups, their GR’s and even the regular members of the district.  The GRs easily reached a consensus on our need to have a website, which is now live <https://www.serenitysys.com/district53/> .  The website provides a wide variety of info for the members of District 53: the groups of District 53 (group name, platform, GR name and email, how to contact the group and the WSO number of the group), contact information for all District and GEA officers, an archive of all District 53 meeting agendas & meeting minutes. 
*	District 53 has a mailing list for our GRs and District officers.  This makes it easy for any of us to communicate with the rest of the trusted servants in District 53.  With the mailing list, each of us only needs to know one email address for District 53 and the server handles the rest, and only the server needs to be updated.  
*	WSO Electronic Meeting Search Engine.  We discussed the issue of WSO’s electronic meeting search page not only defaults to listing the email meetings last, unless the user specifically selects ‘email meeting’.   Compounding this issue for ASP is that WSO’s system does not allow us to list our 7 meetings/week separately like it allows face-to-face and Zoom meetings.  Further exacerbating that problem is that electronic meetings are required to submit group changes online, while f2f meetings may submit a form via snail mail.  The difference is that the online form requires selections completed before moving on to the next page of the form – those selections may not be appropriate for our group.  OTOH, a f2f group has the option of submitting a paper form with blanks and explanations.  Our DR wrote the GEA about this matter in February, however no response has been received. 
*	District Treasurer.  The district elected a Treasurer in January; yours truly.  We don’t have a budget yet, but we have discussed the various expenses we may have.  
*	District Website.  The district also decided that establishing a website was a priority, as well as a mailing list for the use of the GRs and trusted servants.  The website is operational and includes a current list of D53 groups and their contact info, district trusted servants and their contact info, GEA trusted servants and their contact info.  Lastly, all of the District 53 meeting agendas and meeting minutes are posted on the website.  https://www.serenitysys.com/district53/
*	Choosing a Group Name Policy Change.  The 2024 World Service Conference (WSC) approved the amended text to the “Choosing a Group Name” Policy.  The language currently in the Service Manual reads:

“The WSO will register groups with names that designate them as being for men, women, parents, adult children, young adults, other gender identification/sexual orientation, etc. with the understand‑ ing that, in keeping with Traditions Three and Five, the groups will welcome anyone affected by someone else’s drinking.”

While I do not have the actual text approved by the 2024 WSC, my understanding is that it says something to the effect that (a) WSO will not register NEW groups with such language in their names, and (b) that existing groups will be addressed at sometime in the future.  This is quite controversial with some groups as they try to identify and limit attendance to their special interest vs. Al-Anon’s Third Tradition.  This will be on the agenda again at this year’s WSC.

For more information on this topic, please refer to the Delegate’s Report of January 25, 2025 on this issue here <https://asp-afg.org/members/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2025/03/Your-Delegate-Shares-Group-Name-Policy-2025-01-25-Notes-Eng.pdf> .

*	Alternate GRs.  We discussed the issue of Alternate GRs and how much we’d the groups to have an Alternate GR.  We now have three groups with Alternate GRs.   

 

Now for the Bad & the Ugly.  

 

As I described in Part 1, our Global Electronic Area (GEA) was formed 3 years ago.  The GEA is Area #98, which tells us there are now 98 “Areas” which can elect Delegates to attend the World Service Conference held every Spring.  The first “Panel” of officers in the GEA was part of Panel #62 and rotated out at the end of December.  The new officers of Panel 65 rotated in on January 1st.  

 

*	ALL Al-Anon groups, both geographic and electronic, have a Current Mailing Address (CMA) that WSO uses to snail mail stuff to.  Many f2f groups used a PO Box (they used to be cheap), or a mail slot in the church they met at, or a long-time member’s home address.  As you can imagine, many of these ‘Current Mailing Addresses’ used by meetings had nothing to do with any individual member of the group.  A few years ago, WSO sort of converted that into a service position.  Then WSO created a WSO-hosted forum for the people serving as their group’s CMA called AFG Connects, which became the electronic-only communication vehicle used by WSO to create our Global Electronic Area (GEA).  

The vast majority of messages on the CMA AFG Connects forum are posts from confused members trying to figure out what’s going on, where their district is, etc.  WSO says they don’t monitor the forum, however if a thread takes a path they don’t like, the lock it down.  

NOTE A:  The AFG Connect forum hosted by WSO is for the electronic groups exclusively; which in my understanding violates the group conscience of the World Service Conference.  

NOTE B:  The AFG Connects forum has been the sole source of information available to the electronic groups regarding the development of the GEA, the early Assemblies, and the first election of GEA officers.  

NOTE C.  The ‘Usage Policy <https://connect.al-anon.org/usagepolicy> ’ REQUIRES group CMAs accept before they are allowed to view the information provided by WSO and/or participate in the AFG Connects forum clearly violates Al-Anon principles, in my opinion.  Especially the second paragraph under Legal Stuff.  For your convenience, I have pasted the entire Usage Policy at the end of this post.

*	The GEA created a similar forum for the Group Reps on a site called “groups.io”.  It is important to note that there is no Usage Policy or implied consent requirement to join or participate in the groups.io forum for Group Reps.  However, the like the CMA Forum the groups.io forum for the GRs is overwhelmed by messages that have nothing to do with the GRs of 54 of the 55 Districts.  In other words, over 98% of the messages in the GR Forum have nothing to do with them.

If you think I’m the only one bothered by this chaos, consider this post just a few minutes ago…

    “For the thousand time please remove me from this thread.”

*	GEA Calendar of Events.  The GEA has posted a calendar of events on the groups.io forum.  However, it is quite incomplete.  For example, what was described as the January WSC Meeting is listed as “Symposium: Choosing a Group's Name Policy”, last month I was also told there was an Assembly in February, but it is not on the calendar. Ditto for the next WSC meeting in August that is not on the calendar.  However, there is another Assembly scheduled for June that is on the calendar, although there is no agenda listed.  
*	GEA Website.  It does not exist.  I had an opportunity to meet with one of the GEA board members on Zoom last month, and I brought this up.  Instead of taking my comment and trying to make something productive out of it, the response was the excuse that the GEA is only 3 years old, yada, yada.  

As a direct result of the GEA’s failure to create a website where individual members, GRs and DRs can figure out what district their group is in, a large portion of the messages are from GRs wondering what district they are in, and how to contact their DR.  Yes, the GEA does have a list of groups and what district they are in on the groups.io forum, though it isn’t that easy to find, and worse, the only way for a member to know which of the 12 groups named “Keep It Simple” is theirs is if they know their group’s WSO number.  Or the 20 groups named “Courage to Change”?  How many of you know ASP’s WSO number or where to find it?

*	Several of us have sent emails to the GEA, either asking a question or making a comment..  The most common response is no response, next are ‘Thank you for your service” response.  
*	I’ve had two opportunities in the last month to communicate directly with a member of the GEA Board; first one of the unelected board members (appointed by the elected officers), and the GEA Chair.  

*	First was in response to my inquiry about an announcement that the GEA was looking for members of the Board.  Digging into the GEA Bylaws, I discovered that the GEA “Board” consists of at least 7 but not more than 11, four of which are the elected officers.  The other 3+ are elected by the GEA officers, not the GRs.  My questions eventually led to a Zoom meeting of the current chairman of the board (sic) elected by the officers, that turned out to be an interview for the position.  I guess I asked too many pointed questions, because a couple of days later, he wrote to say he selected someone else.  😊
*	Second was similar, except this began with my asking the GEA Chair (elected by the GRs) regarding her post about needing a GEA Treasurer.  Again, this led to several Q&A emails.  The conclusion was that I was passed over because I wasn’t available to meet with the GEA officers on some unspecified date.  Yeah, that confused me too.  FYI, this discussion was NOT about serving as the GEA Treasurer for the duration of the panel.  It was merely about serving as Treasurer until the next Assembly in June – just 2-3 months – but it meant doing all the work that hasn’t been done since last year to get the position up to date. 

*	When confronted on an issue, the GEA is generally dismissive and excuses these issues by noting how the GEA is only 3 years old and how hard working the officers are.  
*	GEA Assemblies.  I’ve attended over a dozen Area Assemblies and even more Area WSC Meetings (Area business meetings) in the face-to-face fellowship.  My Area Assemblies in Northern California typically involved 12 hours of staff reports, discussion & decision making by the GRs. The GEA schedules the Area Assembly for 4 hours.  Not only are the GEA Assemblies extremely short, an extraordinary amount of time spent on administrative items, Al-Anon readings and presentations leaving negligible time for the GRs to discuss the issue, develop a consensus, make a  motion from the floor, followed by more discussion and fine tuning of the motion, followed by a vote of the GRs.  Instead, the GEA officers present a PowerPoint slide show, then without any discussion, one of the GEA officers makes a motion, followed by a very short discussion (if any), before the GRs vote.  

 

I could go on ad nauseum about my take on the GEA; what it’s been doing and not doing, but I suspect that most of you think I already have.  Instead, I’ll refer to my report on our District 53. . . District 53 is alive and doing extremely well, and taking care of business responsibly.  I’m glad to have been a part of it for the last three months.

 

Love and SERENITY,

Steve

 

 

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