Oh yeah! And Clancy was there too!
Our correspondent writes:
“Hey fellas,
I was at the 80th anniversary AA International Convention this past weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. I attended several panels. One noteworthy one was on "Our Critics Become our Benefactors" which attempted to address the large volume of "bad press" we are receiving. Two of the speakers stayed on task but were pretty neutral when it came to causes and possible corrections. My personal opinion is that the cause is that we do not practice the Traditions and that results in many people attending the fellowship who do not meet the primary purpose. People who do not have a desire to stay sober will not be successful. Then they want to blame the AA program instead of the fact that they should have been in some other program or no program at all. When you have the internet at your disposal you have a worldwide soapbox for your views. If you are not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous you are under no obligation to practice the Traditions. This goes for attendees and for referral parties such as doctors, judges, treatment centers and others.
Then I attended another one, it was on "Cooperating with the Courts". This panel featured 2 judges, neither one is an alcoholic. One is a Sobriety/DWI/Drug court judge who took over the court from a judge who was an AA member (so much for his anonymity). Having an AA member who is a judge is the same scenario as occurred in Maryland in the late 1980's. There an AA member who was a judge flooded local meetings with mandated attendees. Fortunately for the Maryland Groups they revolted and had a Call for Unity. Please see attachment. [DWI's and Court Slips in AA Meetings, Maryland General Service, February 9, 1987]
This speaker went on and on praising her AA volunteer (Ralph) who shows up at court four times a week to provide assessments of how the probationers are performing, what meetings they should be attending, who their sponsors should be and even providing rides funded by the local groups. No affiliation there though!
The other judge is a Federal Judge and a Non Alcoholic Trustee on the GSO board (can you say "there goes our claim of non-affiliation?"). Please understand that here in the states a Federal Judge generally handles High Crimes that are more "white collar" with a high percentage of drug dealers who have gone to prison over their choice of vocation. Simply put, he would see more drug addicts than alcoholics. He was abetted in his court by some kind of "re-entry probation/parole department head". This assistant was not an AA member so he involved local AA members to discern who should be given the great opportunity to cut a few years off their sentence by going into his re-entry program. They were actually cackling when telling us how they coerced inmates into accepting a deal that was not always in their best interest. This coercion was clearly designed to get around the 22 higher court rulings that parolees could not be sentenced to AA because of its religious nature. Mr. Re-entry was proud that they found a way around the court rulings. He also bragged that he used the threat of more prison time to give them an offer they couldn't refuse. He justified this by saying it's okay to break the rules if you are doing it for someone's own good.
Again putting aside how hard it is to claim non affiliation when your board has a Judge as a Non Alcoholic Trustee, the whole thing reached the level of absurd on many other points. Chief among my personal issues with their process was how condescending their attitude was to the people they were trying "help". Talks of letting them sit up on the bench and fist bumps were the order of the day. The Lady DWI/Drug Court Judge admitted she was happy to report that while in her court they did not drink. With a wink and a nod she seemed to be implying that even she knew that most went right back to drinking once they were off probation.
Still she forged on, asking us to please seek out the sobriety courts in our towns and attempt to replicate what her and her dear "Ralph" had done. Volunteer 4 days a week and collect money from his groups so that the system could "keep on keeping on". She tried to close the deal by saying all her 4 main volunteers had indicated that they kept doing it because of the great feeling they got when lives were turned around. Since there was no question and answer session after the panel, I didn't get to ask the obvious question "if the sobriety court is so successful why don't the masses of success stories just come and volunteer??" It would seem with all the fist bumping, bench sitting and graduation robe wearing there would be a list of volunteers so large that you couldn't find your way to the front of the line!
Mr. Re-entry specialist regaled us with stories how one convict had a gun charge and was thereby usually ineligible for the "great deal". However, his local AA advisor interviewed the soon to be paroled criminal and deemed him safe enough to be coerced into going to meetings. Mr. Re-Entry specialist said it was against his normal protocol but he went with the AA volunteer's call and it all worked out. It never seemed to cross his mind that had it not "all worked out" gun play could have occurred at an AA meeting.
One final note that I am sure you'll get a kick out of. The world famous Clancy was speaking practically next door at another recovery organization's meeting. Well on Saturday night they had the old timers panel in the Georgia Dome. This is a huge American football stadium and 60,000 AA members had gathered to hear a panel of 12 AA members with 50 years or more of sobriety speak. The twelve were chosen by pulling their names out of hat. Then they were each given 5 minutes to speak. This was very fun when one of the first old-timers to speak started his talk by saying, "All I know is that I'm up here and Clancy is out there!!!" And a large portion of the crowd howled. Seems the old timers still see through the nonsense of circuit speakers. I told one younger member who asked why the statement was made and about the response it generated, I explained that not every AA member agrees with the cult of personality that can be reached by the "anointed ones". I went on to say, most of us wouldn't cross the street if Clancy was speaking at a free cookout. Let alone pay $10 a head.
Let me close by saying there was plenty of good fellowship to be had attending an event where there are 60,000 like minded people. Not only was there was great fellowship, there was much inspiration to be gained. Even the odd events I have detailed above were worth the trip. I would rather have an idea what was going astray than to live like an ostrich and stick my head in the sand.
Many say our program is self-correcting. Myself, I believe it will self correct if we follow the Traditions and keep our collective egos in check.........
As usual, please feel free to use any part of this missive in any manner you find fit.
Sincerely,
….....”
(edits to preserve anonymity)
Comment: None other than to point out the date of the Maryland report: 1987! And we still haven't learnt from our mistakes! We just keep on repeating and repeating and …..... What's that called? Ah yeah! Plain insanity!
Cheers
The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
PS Our thanks to the US member for their correspondence. We're always interested in such contributions
PPS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here
PPPS Plymouth Intergroup corruption
No comments:
Post a Comment