Space Coast Intergroup, Overeaters Anonymous

 

Report to Region 8 July 2007 Assembly

May 2007

Southeast Overeaters Anonymous Region 8

Delegate to WSBC 2007

Report:

First, allow me to state that there have been a number of good accounts of WSBC 2007 posted to the internet in the form of weblogs and emails. I have chosen to make use of one posted by an acquaintance and fellow OA Webmaster, Steve M. from Massachusetts. You can find the complete account of his WSBC 2007 at:

http://www.metrowestoa.org/wsbc2007/

Though I have been granted the use of Steve’s words, I will not identify them. If you wish to compare my report with Steve’s blog please go to the above address.

My Participation:

Monday

Arrived in Albuquerque, checked in at hotel and shopped for food for the week.

Tuesday

Registered at Conference and attended two workshops.

The Twelve Steps: Are They the Real Tools?

Presentation by two delegates. I thought it was very uplifting. I found many people that feel that the Twelve Steps are the true tools of the program. There was a real message to sponsors to ensure newcomers begin doing the steps soon after they come to program, and complete them quickly.

Making Footprints: Guiding Sponsorees Through the Steps, A Lifelong Journey of Spiritual Growth.

Again presented by two delegates. Their presentation focused on the Steps as the vehicle of recovery, ending with a spiritual awakening.

Wednesday

Forum: Embracing Diversity in OA

This morning we had a forum titled “Embracing Diversity in OA”, lead by Margaret Ann B., Region 6 Trustee. We were organized into about 25 working groups. To start, Margaret led us through an exercise where members of various “groups” would stand up and everyone would applaud:

• “All compulsive overeaters, please stand up”. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP.
• “All Anorexics and bulimics, please stand up”. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP.
• “All people married to men, please stand up”. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP.
• “All people married to women, please stand up”. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP.
• “All parents, please stand up”. CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP.

You get the idea. There were a lot more then these and it was good to stretch and clap. I guess the point is that there are a lot of different forms of diversity in our rooms.

There were three speakers. Speaking first a native French speaker shared on what it’s like to be a non-native English speaker in OA. He shared on the uselessness of English language OA literature, so his IG translates and sells French language OA literature world wide.

Our next exercise had us pair off and share a personal story of where we felt different. My share was of living in Sicily as a young married military man, living within a foreign economy. My cold-turkey weaning from TV. (This was the early ‘70s with no satellites, cell phones, internet, email, podcasts, etc.) Our initial decision was to live in the “American Village”, stick our heads in the sand, and hope for the end of the two year tour to come soon. Eventually we decided that being different was not a sentence to be served, so we decided to join the Sicilians. We moved away from the base until we found a town where no one spoke English, and settled there. To this day I remember what it felt like and what the place looked like. I also retain much of the language I learned, and can communicate, albeit in a basic sense, with other Italian speakers. I proved this yet again when I spoke briefly with the delegate from Italy.

Our next share had a member speak to being a part of a sexual preference minority. In her case, she didn’t feel she was treated differently and as long as the program focused on recovering from compulsive overeating, her preference wasn’t an issue.

The next exercise was “The Label Game”. We brainstormed and listed various sex based stereotypes such as “Men can fix things and women can’t” or “Women are emotional and men aren’t”. We then shared in our group on how we personally had been affected by stereotypes. Finally, we talked about how stereotypes affect recovery in the rooms. In short, anything which focuses on our differences works against our recovery. When we’re in the rooms, we’re focused on the disease we all share.

The final sharer spoke to program diversity, specifically how we work our program. She share about coming into program in the 90 day community, experimented and then came back to her roots and found long term recovery.

We ended with an exercise where we were given a scenario and we were asked for suggest how we might handle it. Our group’s story had us assume we were each leading a 90 day meeting. The problem came when we got to the part in the format where the meeting was opened up for sharing by anyone with 90 days of abstinence. We were clearly instructed that the format made no suggestion. This was to be taken as a rule. How were we to deal with this?

This exercise was particularly interesting to me, since I learned my methods of OA recovery in 90 day rooms. I also learned much about the Traditions when I defended the 90 day meetings in my first service above the group level in South Florida. Understanding the autonomy given to groups by the Fourth Tradition on determining their meeting format, and the protection that the Second Tradition gives them from interference by other service bodies was essential knowledge in the early days of 90 day meetings. We took great pains to ensure our format made no restrictions on people who attended our meetings. However, we DID make suggestions. People who attended our 90 day meetings generally followed our group conscience and respected our wishes.

I shared in the workshop that I would have read the format as written, since it was the product of their group’s conscience. I also shared that I would take the earliest opportunity I could during the meeting to speak about the Traditions, and what qualifies as an OA meeting according to WSBC. I would leave no room for doubt as to whether an OA group may restrict people from sharing at a meeting, and probably not make many friends that night.

Committee Meetings:

First committee meetings began at 11:00 am. My assignment was the Bylaws committee. I was elected Committee Delegate Co-chairman. We also elected a Secretary and a Delegate Vice Chairman to back-up the Delegate Co-chairman. Our Trustee Co-chairman, Bob F., General Service Trustee, laid out the work of our subcommittees, and asked that we choose a subcommittee affiliation. The foci of our subcommittees were: Miscellaneous changes to the Standing Rules; The issue of Intergroup, Region, and Service Board bylaws mandatory conformity with OA Bylaws Subpart B; and Reducing the WSBC Sample Bylaws to something usable by a small intergroup. Then we adjourned for lunch.

 

 

Back at work at 1:00 pm we broke up into our respective subcommittees. My choice was the conformity issue. We determined to bring a motion to WSBC 2008 that changes the intent of OA Bylaws Subpart B making the conformity requirements as flexible as only requiring a Statement of Purpose that includes “to aid those with the problem of eating compulsively to overcome that problem through the Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and Twelve Concepts of OA Service as stated in Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. Bylaws, Subpart B, by servicing and representing the OA groups of which the Service Body is composed.” We determined to change current OA bylaws language to reflect that intergroup, region, and service body bylaws “not be in conflict with” OA Bylaws Subpart B. We will have this motion ready for a committee vote by mid-October.

The other subcommittees determined their goals and deadlines for the year as well. Members of the Bylaws Committee serve until the seating of a new Bylaws Committee at WSBC 2008. I hope to be able to return to WSBC next year representing my intergroup.

Bylaws Reference Subcommittee:

In addition to the three bylaws subcommittees referenced above, there is a special subcommittee of the bylaws committee made up of one or two delegates assigned by their region for that subcommittee. The Reference Subcommittee functions only during conference. It exists to be an informal forum to explore motions scheduled to come to the floor of WSBC. The subcommittee usually meets from 7:00 am to 8:15 am Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the business sessions, over lunch between sessions on Thursday and Friday, and sometimes twice on Thursday and Friday evenings ending around 10:00 pm. That makes for a couple of 15 hour days of solid work.

Region 8 Meeting/Dinner

Region 8 delegates met for dinner and an informal meeting at the hotel restaurant where we all got a chance to talk a little about our intergroups and what activities we are involved in at conference. In addition to my being elected to delegate co-chair of Bylaws, Cheryl S., from Central Florida Intergroup was elected as delegate co-chair of Twelfth Step Within.

Workshop: Parliamentary Procedure

I figured I should attend, since I would be reporting to the Chairman of the Board Of Trustees from the floor of the convention as to the activities of the Bylaws Reference Subcommittee regarding each motion on the floor, and introducing the motions amended by the Reference Subcommittee to the assembly. In short, I would be at the podium of WSBC 2007 any time the body considered a motion previously proposed and evaluated by the delegates prior to conference. Another late night, and the real business hadn’t even started yet.

Thursday:
Ref. Subcommittee at dawn.
We eschewed the two motions regarding new pamphlets and went right into debate over Proposal Item A., the proposed Public Awareness Campaign. There was discussion about source of funds and a cap on funds, but no amendments from Reference at this time.

Business Session I:
Today was our first business meeting. We had 198 voting delegates and trustees from around the world. Each session begins with the Serenity Prayer, lead first in a language that isn’t English and then repeated in English. This morning started with the Serenity Prayer sung in Flemish.

We then got into the mechanics of the meeting with introductions, adoption of credentials (who can vote) and the standing rules. We adopted the agenda and then we had a briefing on the procedures for motions and floor debate. Finally we adopted the officer reports. All of this was supposed to take until lunch but we were done by 10am. I think this was due to darn good organization AND a very well prepared Chairman of the Board (Dodie H. from Albuquerque, NM).

After a break there was an opportunity to ask questions about the region and trustee reports. All of this was pretty mechanical. There was nothing much in the way of questions but I did learn some good stuff. Did you know:

• There is now a suggested OA Meeting format for a Step Study meeting (http://www.oa.org/pdf/StepStudy_Format.pdf).
• OA’s 50th birthday party will be in 2010 at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton (LAX Hilton).
• There are funds available from WSO to reach out to professionals. The details of the program are important and these are documented on www.oa.org.
• A Professional Outreach kit is available from WSO for use at professional exhibits (Central Florida Intergroup and Space Coast Intergroup has used this at professional conventions in Orlando).

We moved on to Trustee nominees. We had Region and General Service nominees. Each gave a brief pitch for the job and we all had their applications in our packets of information (and well ahead of WSBC via mail and the web). All open positions had only one applicant so there were no contests. After speaking there was a question and answer period and all the candidates did very nicely. We’ll actually vote on these nominations tomorrow.

During this period, one thing that caught my ear was the continued interest in reaching out to young people, in particular, discussion of how to make it safe for members under 18.

Reference Subcommittee at lunch:

We gave an initial look at Proposal Items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, which we determined should be debated individually, but voted on as a package. They deal with virtual-groups, virtual- intergroups and intergroups, service boards in general and a virtual-service board in particular. We kicked around some wording changes to allow virtual-groups to more fully take advantage of OA’s existing service structure. No amendments just yet.

Business Session II:
We essentially finished all general business in the morning so we moved on to the New Business motions. The first motion (Proposal A-A), to adopt a new piece of OA Literature did pass with a very large margin. I think I saw 5-8 people vote no. This new Literature, titled “BLACK OA MEMBERS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCE, STRENGTH AND HOPE” had 3 people speak PRO (in support of adopting the literature) and no one spoke against it. Just so you know, to limit debate, a maximum of 3 people may speak pro and a maximum of 3 people may speak con to any motion (amendments are 2 pro, 2 con). This literature should be available in the fall. A price has not been set yet.

Motion A-B, was to adopt an updated “A GUIDE FOR SPONSORS”. The main change to this was the addition of 30 questions to help newcomers work the first three steps. These are different from the H.O.W. questions or the Westminster questions and were created specifically for OA newcomers.

There was more discussion on this literature then the previous piece. There was concern that the questions were called “Questions for Newcomers” and not “Suggested Questions for Newcomers”. Frankly, I agreed that suggested was better BUT I also thought it was better to have it the way it was then wait another year to publish this. Progress you know. I voted against this motion because of a wording change from “God” to “Higher Power”, and that there was no reference to using the Big Book Alcoholics Anonymous in the advice to sponsors when taking a sponsee through the Steps. I may have been the only dissenter in the room, but we must remain true to our ideals.

At this point we came to Proposal A which would authorize the board to do a special fund raising campaign to make money available for a professionally produced Public Awareness Campaign. This proposal had 3 Pro speakers and 3 Con speakers. I believe the essence of the Pro argument was that we need the professional help to get our message out in a coordinated and concerted effort. The Board of Trustees would be responsible for making sure that the message is in keeping with our traditions.

The Con side made a strong argument that this 12th Step work is ours to do and not the job of a professional organization.

There were a lot of questions from the floor about this. Most of the questions would have been answered by actually reading the motion. Example: How will this be funded. Answer: It’s part of the motion itself: Expenses connected with this campaign will be supported by member contributions to a special public awareness campaign fund established by the Board of Trustees. There were questions about how the Traditions would be protected. Again, it was in black and white in the Implementation portion of the proposal.

Questions came to a screeching halt when an amendment to the Standing Rules was proposed to cut the question time down from 20 to 10 minutes. The way it works now is all proposals, after the Pros and Cons, can have questions asked, from the delegate, for up to 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the delegates voted to close the questions or continue for another 10 minutes and then vote again. The amendment to the Standing rules would have cut that down to 10 minutes before calling for closure. It was an attempt to speed things along but we wasted a lot of time voting down this amendment. My experience at conference is that some questions are critical to really understanding the issues. In the past I have changed my vote on a number of proposals based on what I heard in the Q&A.

Questions resumed until an amendment to the proposal hit the floor. The amendment would cap the expenditure annually at 20 Grand. This also lost. In short, it was made clear that a cap wasn’t needed. Funds come ONLY from the special donations and that will be the cap. If we get 20K in donations we spend that. 100K we spend that. Pretty simple. It doesn’t touch our normal funds from literature sales and 7th tradition.

After another 10 minutes of questions, the closure vote passed. We’ll either vote on this first thing tomorrow or deal with another amendment I head is stirring in the wings. After the Serenity Prayer was said, away we went to dinner. Yippee. But WAIT!

Reference Subcommittee before dinner!
We took up the urgent business at hand. An amendment has surfaced to Proposal A. as described above. We needed to examine the amendment to cap annual expenses at $20,000.00.

Reference Subcommittee after dinner.
More work on Proposal Item A. A second amendment has now surfaced dealing with the source of funds. One more amendment and the whole thing gets kicked back to committee (That’s US. We’ve already spent hours on this!)

Don’t eat no matter what. No matter what don’t eat.

Friday:

Reference Subcommittee at dawn…AGAIN
We needed to put some more work in on Proposal Items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Business Session III:
We ended today’s business meeting at 3pm. I’m not sure if that’s because there was another function planned for the space or if they knew, well in advance, that it would turn into a challenging business meeting. Things started out pretty quietly.

I forget the exact order of business but I believe we started with the votes for the Region Trustees. All trustee positions had a single candidate and therefore ran unopposed. Votes for trustees are taken on a secret paper ballot. A majority vote is required for election. All candidates won though none got unanimous votes. When the results were read we were given the total number of ballots and the number of votes for each candidate, for example 201 total ballots and 193 votes for the candidate. There is no opportunity to vote NO for a candidate. Any mark other then an “X” in the space provided makes that ballot a spoiled ballot and no vote on it counts. Our new or re-elected trustees are:

Region Trustees –

• Angela J. – Region 2 Trustee (Trustee since 2005)
• Raymond Craig R, (goes by Craig) – Region 5 Trustee (1st term)
• Charles A. – Region 8 Trustee (Trustee since 2004)
• Di C. – Region 10 Trustee (1st term)

General Service Trustees -

• Idolia (goes by Dodie) H. – General Service Trustee (2nd term)
• Cheryle T. – General Service Trustee (1st term)
• Vicki W. – General Service Trustee (1st term)

I know some of the board and some of the new/re-elected trustees. I know we’ll be well served.

On to the new business motions for the day.

Proposal Item 1…You remember that one from the questionnaire, right? Well, it passed, I think unanimously. I think. We voted by raised hand and I didn’t see any No hands. This motion moved a couple of Intergroup service areas into Region 3 from their prior region because they are closer to region 3’s annual assembly and convention.

Proposal Item 7 and 8 also seemed to pass unanimously. This approved changes to the by-laws that will enshrine the de-facto reality that the incorporation of Overeaters Anonymous is being moved from California to New Mexico.

Lunch? NOT SO FAST! Well, actually we had lunch off because they were using our conference room for the Strategic Planning Session later.

NO Reference Subcommittee over lunch!
Whatever! It just would have been more work on Proposal Items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 anyway.

There WAS a meeting of the OA Webmasters during lunch that I was able to attend. Another of my passions (Yep…I’m a geek.) I met a lot of new friends and put faces to names I had been looping with over the past couple of years.

Business Session IV
Depending on your definition of fun, this is where it began. A brief review is needed. Some years ago, OA established a policy defining the sort of on-line and telephone meeting that could register as an official OA meeting. These meetings must be interactive and meet in “real time”. This has worked well I hear from members who participate in these meetings. What these OA groups cannot do is join existing or form their own Intergroups or Regions. Since these groups give money to World Service through the 7th tradition you could think of this as Taxation without Representation. We all know what happened the last time we ran across this!

Proposal Items 2-6 moved to amend the various section of our OA bylaws to both incorporate these “Virtual Groups” (today this is on-line and telephone meetings) and to change some language defining changing “National/Language Service Boards” to just “Service Boards.” The heart of the debate though is around these virtual groups.

The chairman of the meeting had the discretion and made the decision to vote on items 2-6 in a single vote: adopt them all or reject them all. So the process looks like this (simplified!):

Proposal Item X:

• Introduce the main motion
• Debate the motion (3 pro, 3 con)
• If there is an amendment, stop the debate on the motion
  • Debate the amendment (2 pro, 2 con)
  • Answer questions for 20 minutes
  • Vote on the amendment
• If the Amendment passes, continue debating the amended main motion. If it fails, continue debate on the original main motion.
• Answer questions for 20 minutes.
• Vote on the motion.

It’s tedious but it’s a process (Robert’s Rules of Order) and it works!

So far we’ve been through just the first two of these. The first, Proposal Item 2 defines “virtual media groups”. Through the amendment process, these became Virtual Groups and what little definition there was disappeared. In essence, anything that is not a face to face meeting becomes a virtual group. Today that means telephone meetings and on-line meetings. The intent of the maker is to have a definition for virtual groups that is broad enough so that any new means of meeting will automatically be included.

In the debate and discussion, it was pretty clear that the Pros felt we needed an open and flexible definition. The Cons were uncomfortable with an un-clear proposal. In fact, the Cons support bringing virtual groups into the service structure but they feel these proposals we are looking at today are not the right proposals to do so. What nobody knew, and I had no way to tell them, was that the Reference Subcommittee was considering just this, and we had assured ourselves that existing OA structure could handle the inclusion of virtual groups and intergroups.

The next proposal item we discussed, Item 3, modifies the bylaws so that virtual groups can form their own Intergroups, but in the process of amending the original motion, virtual groups were given a choice: Form new Intergroups or join existing Intergroups in any physical location. In short, this amended proposal gives virtual groups greater freedom to associate than face to face meetings. A meeting in Florida must associate with an Intergroup in Region 8 (But did you know that it doesn’t have to associate with a local IG? If a meeting doesn’t like the way it’s being represented, it can vote with its feet and find another intergroup it likes better!)

That was all the business we could get to on Friday. The discussion on virtual groups took a long time and it will resume on Saturday morning. There is a lot of business remaining and my bet is we don’t get to all of it before we close the business session tomorrow.

Strategic Planning Session:
After the business meeting we had a strategic planning session where we broke into 5 break-out groups to brainstorm ideas in 5 areas:

• Abstinent members
• Strong meetings
• Committed service bodies
• Public/professional awareness
• Financial health

I was part of the Abstinence group. We brainstormed different ways to promote abstinence. I publicly promised to speak of abstinence and the solution each time I share at a meeting. There were many other ideas including an idea to try to amend meeting formats to include a blurb on what abstinence is and for sponsors to qualify. We also want to try to quantify abstinence, and abstinent sponsors. That will materialize as we go along. Last but most exciting, is the abstinence virus. Airborne! Catch it! As a group, about twenty of us agreed to support each other’s abstinence and spread it!

Reference Subcommittee after dinner.

More work on Proposal Items 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. But we packed that in when we heard that the third amendment came in…To REFER TO COMMITTEE! The only question now remains as to which committee. We in Bylaws don’t feel it’s appropriate for us to craft whatever comes next. We’ll see….

We turned our attention to Proposal Item 9, the one about gender-neutral references to God in the Steps. We kicked around changing the wording to “Higher Power” but couldn’t seem to make it work. Then again, nothing much about our brains seemed to work right just then. We decided to let it pass or fail without our input.

DONE! No more Reference Subcommittee meetings! We get tomorrow morning off and I actually got to eat a leisurely breakfast and drift in to the conference at 8:30 am.

Saturday:
Business Session V:
This will be the last business related meeting of the week.

Summary: The delegates approved funding of a national Public Information Campaign. The campaign will start-up with reserve funds( no more then 20k) which will be replaced by special contributions requested from the fellowship. Look for news on this coming to a meeting near you. We’ll spend as much as gets contributed on this campaign. It’s likely to start on the web. This got a pretty good majority. I voted against it because I felt there was no oversight beyond that given by the Board of Trustees. I made the last argument of the conference from the CON mike indicating that we argue periods and semicolons into the ground when it comes to the literature we publish for our own consumption. But we leave it up to an advertising agency to craft what we give to the world without a second look by the conference of delegates. Just before the close of this business meeting, a suggestion was made to do the first collection for the special fund from the members at WSBC. The report later was that over $1000 was collected (average probably about $5.something per person).

Back to the future and after much wrangling, we decided to send Proposals 2-6, to create a service structure (IGs, Regions, etc) for telephone and on-line meeting, back to the drawing board for a re-write. I think that was the right choice. These proposals were confusing as heck and the motions we were going to be asked to vote on were substantially different then the motions brought forward originally. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees (Dodie Hawkins) will form a subcommittee (probably of the board’s technology committee) to work on new proposal recommendations, I hope for next year. These groups need to be part of our service structure. We did, after all, fight a war in 1776 about taxation without representation.

Remarkably, we made it to Proposal Item 9, to replace Him with God in Steps 3, 6 and 11. Right off a motion was introduced to extend debate to 6 pro and 6 con. This didn’t win. Shortly after, an amendment was introduced to change Step 3 to read: Made a decision to turn our will and life over to the care of “the God of our understanding”. I sort of liked it, but was against it because I felt that big a change was outside the boundaries of what we had proposed to the fellowship. After a fair amount of debate, the Chair actually made a decision to rule that amendment was out of order for the same reason I just mentioned. She ruled that it represented a change outside the scope of a change permitted by the amendment process on a bylaws motion because it changes the Steps, and the Steps must be changed with extreme attention to due notice.

With that we moved on to the question period, until…a motion to reconsider the Chair’s ruling was introduced. We then debated that motion. If the motion to reconsider passed, the delegates would have effectively overruled the Chair’s decision. The motion to reconsider failed and we continued with the question period on the motion. A motion came forward for a paper ballot but because of the late hour the Chair asked the floor if there was no objection, we would vote on that paper ballot motion without debate and questions. Before the vote a member asked the Chair to instruct the delegates to show no display of emotion when the result was announced. That was a good reminder that this is about principals. Wining and losing isn’t part of it. Finding a group conscience is the point. We finally had a vote by show of hands. Proposal Item 9 didn’t pass (needing 2/3 vote) but it got more then I expected. I saw about 1/3 of the delegates rise in support.

We adjourned for 2007 and I had a plane to catch. I didn’t stay for the festivities or the final committee meeting, welcoming the incoming Trustee Co-Chairman to the bylaws committee. I had a chance to meet with him on the phone, though and I have a better idea of what I and the committee will be doing throughout the year as a result.

On a personal note, I arrived at conference this year full of the fear that our fellowship is doomed to failure. I will not explain why right now, but I wouldn’t mind a call or two about it. Anyway, I was able to speak to some friends of mine I get to see so seldom now. The combination of talking it all out and the furious pace I had to work during conference seemed to put it all down the list of things that concerned me. This lasted until I was able to evaluate the people I had the honor to work with, and the true commitment to abstinence so evident in many of our trusted servants. With people like that we will not fail as a fellowship. But I still see us as a house divided. Thankfully I get to work at closing the rift at all levels of OA service.

Thank you for electing me to represent you this year.

In service,

Ray F.

Delegate to WSBC 2007