Those Groups Ought to Be Consulted

Tradition Four gives a group the run of its own affairs and, in the next sentence, draws the edge of them. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted." Neighboring groups are the other A.A. groups in your town. Consulted means asked before, not told after. The rumour says autonomy means a group can do anything it likes. The Book says: anything with its own affairs, and when its plans reach into other groups' affairs, it asks them. Bill W. described how areas learned this (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 22): "Every area, sooner or later, realizes that such concerns as intergroup meetings, hospital arrangements, local public relations, a central office for interviews and information, are things in which every A.A. is interested". An intergroup is a committee the groups of an area set up to handle what they share. Today the edge gets lost when a group moves its hour onto a neighbor's, or opens a meeting across the street from one that is struggling, and nobody calls. And where a program's meetings fill the town, there may be no free groups left nearby to ask. Test it tonight: ask whether your group knows the other groups in your town, and whether anyone asked them before your group's last big change.