[Businessmtg] GR Report. Comment on Cleaning House.

Thu Apr 3 01:07:54 PDT 2025

Hi Jerry,

I believe there are several issues at play here.  

First, I am quite familiar with the issue of delisting groups.  There was an issue of the districts/Intergroup in the Santa Clara Valley delisting 6 groups.  My sponsor (an At Large Trustee at the time) and I (an Area officer) attended one of those groups regularly for over a year in an attempt to find a resolution to that hot mess.  Unfortunately, neither side was willing to color inside the lines.  The groups had a long history of intentionally elected GRs that were members of AA, and the district responded by refusing to recognize the AA GR.  It might be worth noting that the AFG/AA couple that led those 6 groups had been doing things their way since before Al-Anon was founded, and had run afoul of AFG HQ many years earlier.  To make it even more interesting, the last time I went to that meeting, the Al-Anon with over 50 years was drunk, and her sponsees were hysterical.  Sigh.

"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."

In reviewing recent Service Manual policy changes as approved by the WSC regarding service entities not having the authority to close or punish a group:

"...local, Area, or WSO service entities have no authority to close a group or engage in punitive actions against a group because they disapprove of the manner in which a group practices the Al-Anon program."

---

- SM, p.110. Autonomy of Groups, Policy Update of Dec 18, 2024.

It’s true the Service Manual tells us that we have no authority to close a group or engage in punitive actions because we disapprove of the manner in which they practice.  Please note that District 53 is not closing these groups, nor are we punishing them.  What *I* know is that four groups have been removed from District 53.  As I recall, at least one left on its own accord due to language, and the others have been determined to be inactive.  How were they determined to be inactive?  I don’t know those details, nor do I care, nor am I going to challenge the DR when she informs me that X group is inactive and asks me to remove it from District 53’s list of groups.  

How did we get in this situation?  

I wasn’t the GR then, but as I recall it was early last year (2024) that the GEA presented their districting “plan” to the GRs.  It started out with a slide show, then an Area officer made a motion to accept the “plan” and the GRs were essentially given a choice. . . take it or leave it.  When the Assembly is so short and the agenda front loads the Assembly with admin, there’s precious little time for any discussion anyway.  Combine that with roughly 100 GRs that don’t have a clue about Al-Anon service, and the result is an Al-Anon railroad train wreck.

The “plan” was to divide the GEA into many small districts of less than 20 groups each.  Generally, assign groups to districts by the UTC time zone their meeting met in.  Built into the districting plan was:

“Mixing platforms in a district will promote harmony, unity and understanding of each other. This will also prevent feelings that one platform is superior to another. By mixing platforms in a district members can feel the spirit of being equal to each other. • Likewise, we do not believe that creating a district solely by language promotes harmony nor unity either. The whole idea is to unify the globe using Al-Anon principles and legacies when districts are formed.” 

In conclusion, the formal recommendation to the districting plan was:

“Recommendations of the GEA Districting Task Force 

• All groups registered in the GEA, regardless of whether or not they have a GR, will be placed in districts. 

• Groups will be assigned to districts. Groups will not choose their district. 

• Districts will, whenever possible, consist of up to 20 groups. 

• DR terms will align with the terms of the current panel. Thus DRs elected during this panel will serve until 12/31/24. 

• Because 57% of the GEA groups do not have a GR, it is recommended that districts include a mix of groups that have and do not have a GR, so as to avoid inadvertently creating districts in which none of the groups have a GR. 

• The UTC meeting start times displayed in the electronic meetings list on al-anon.org are to be the primary consideration for sorting groups into districts. Language and platform will have the next highest priority followed by language. 

• To promote unity and understanding in the GEA, each district where possible will include a mix of at least two platforms.”

In other words, every district would consist of 20 groups or less.  Of those 20 groups, most would not have a GR resulting in a maximum of only 8 GRs per district.  Additionally, most districts would intentionally include groups using other platforms and language, theoretically to force diversity and harmony.  

While all of this might sound wonderful, like most forced solutions, it doesn’t work well at all in practice.  To say nothing about our Al-Anon principles and letting the groups make their own decisions.  Personally, my take was that this plan was doomed for failure.  While the “plan” showed 2 Spanish-speaking “overlay” districts, the reality was that the one district had several Spanish-speaking groups, but the the other Spanish-speaking groups were scattered around over 30 other districts in the name of diversity.  Groups with members speaking other languages had similar problems, although they didn’t have the numbers that the Spanish-speaking members had.  If I belonged to a Spanish-speaking group where no one spoke English, and the GEA unilaterally decided to put my group in English-speaking District 53 instead of a Spanish-speaking district, I’d be more than a little annoyed.  Ditto for other groups that speak other languages or use other platforms.  

Frankly, I’m inclined to believe that the districting plan was designed in part to ensure districts were small and weak, making it difficult for the members to challenge the autocratic leadership of the GEA.  If districts are arbitrarily limited to 20 groups, of which it is known that 57% do not have a GR, and it is also well known that only a minority of groups with GRs actually participate in the district, it is virtually guaranteed that the districts will be small and weak.  Yes, Al-Anons are well known for being controlling, and like my sponsor (a Past Delegate, Regional Trustee and At Large Trustee) often said “The sickest rise to the   

There is another important facet to the issue of cleaning house in what is known in Al-Anon as Group Records that has to do with new and visiting/traveling members .

New members, as well as members that are traveling and wish to visit other groups in their travels depend on the accuracy of Group Records.  The reality is that extinct or dead meetings have been a major problem in Al-Anon for many years.  Back when I was an Area Officer in the late 90's, I had access to the Group Records database.  The database contained all of the details about all of the 700+ meetings in my Area (Northern California).  My wife was the Chair of the AA Area, and part of her responsibility to attend District meetings all over Northen California, and since I was retired, it was appointed to be her chauffer.  While she was in her AA meeting, I'd try to pick up an Al-Anon meeting.  Except that the majority of the meetings I tried to attend were defunct.  Meetings are relatively quick to register with WSO when they get started.  However, very few bother to report that they are inactive.  When I was a District Rep in the 80’s, the ONLY way our Group Records Coordinator discovered that a group had folded their tent was when some other member reported it at a District meeting.  

This is an even bigger problem with electronic meetings.  IMHO, if our district leadership makes a reasonable effort, and in the end determines that a group is inactive, then there is nothing wrong with reporting that to the Area and hence, WSO.  To do otherwise would be a disservice to the member looking for a meeting.

As for ASP’s getting clarification from the Policy Committee, I’ll pass.  In my opinion, that is outside the scope of the GR’s responsibilities.  If you wish to pursue this with the Policy Committee at WSO and follow up with the leadership of the GEA, that’s your prerogative.  

Love and SERENITY,

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Businessmtg On Behalf Of Jerry via Businessmtg
Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2025 9:20 PM
To: steve at serenitysys.com
Cc: ASP Business <businessmtg at asp-afg.org>
Subject: [Businessmtg] GR Report. Comment on Cleaning House.

Thorough report Steve. Thanks.

>From your report:

"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."

In reviewing recent Service Manual policy changes as approved by the WSC regarding service entities not having the authority to close or punish a group:

"...local, Area, or WSO service entities have no authority to close a group or engage in punitive actions against a group because they disapprove of the manner in which a group practices the Al-Anon program."

---

- SM, p.110. Autonomy of Groups, Policy Update of Dec 18, 2024.

How can our District justify delisting or eliminating a Group just because they don't communicate? They may well be out there doing their Al-Anon thing detached from the service entities except for being registered and having a CMA - the only requirements for being a meeting?

~ I understand the difficulties when they are being unresponsive, but wherefrom comes the ability to officially drop them?

~ By dropping them from our District's information does this not break the links of service from the WSC, the WSO, our Delegate on "down" to dropped groups?

Seems to me this is an overreach and against approved Al-Anon Policy. Can you get a clarification from the Policy Committee please?

Hugs,

Jerry

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