But Government, No

Tradition Four answers the oldest threat to a group: somebody outside it deciding how it should be run, and one of the first to try was A.A.'s own co-founder. Bill W. wanted to manage the whole movement from New York, and he told what happened (A.A. Comes of Age): "But I soon found that I could do no such thing. Neither could anybody else at A.A.'s Headquarters." The groups answered him plainly: "We are not going to have a personal government in New York, or anywhere else. Services, yes. But government, no." The Long Form wrote their answer down (Big Book, p. 563): "With respect to its own affairs, each A.A. group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience." Its own affairs means its own business: when and where it meets, how the meeting runs, who serves, what the basket pays for. No other authority means none at all: not the founder, not the office in New York, not the landlord. If the man who helped start A.A. couldn't run a group from outside, nobody can. Today the outside manager is usually the building: a facility that sets the meeting's time, format and chair, and can end it when its program changes. Test it tonight: ask who decided how your meeting runs, and when the members last voted on it.