WMAA34 PUBLIC INFORMATION COMMITTEE

The PI Committee Goals

• Every public library has at least one Conference-approved book (e.g. the
  Big Book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, or Living Sober).
• Let the Fellowship know how to reach out to the hearing impaired.
• Place a literature rack in every high school, college, police station,
  library and hospital in the district and keep the rack stacked with
  appropriate literature and meeting schedules.
• Send a letter to high schools, offering AA literature and/or a
  presentation on AA – what we do and what we do not do.
• Send a letter to convalescent homes, rest homes and senior centers in the
  district offering AA literature and/or a presentation on AA.
• List open AA meetings in the newspapers in the District.
• Place a small (paid if necessary) announcement in every District newspaper
  around the holidays.
• Work with the newspapers – anonymity, Traditions- generating interest in
  our Fellowship.
• Respond to speaking requests at non-AA meeting in the District.
• Place Public Service Announcements with radio and television stations.
• Put meeting schedules behind the front desks at every hotel, motel, and
  bed and breakfast.
• Participate in District and State AA seminars and conventions.
• Fight apathy within the Fellowship, find a co-chair and interested people
  in order to achieve all the above, and most importantly, keep your sanity and
  stay away from the first drink.

Who can participate? And how?
Individual – establish relationship with medical community by
identifying ourselves as AA members to own doctor or other professionals
(lawyers, educators, employers, law enforcement officers, clergy..)
Committee – Group/District – provide literature and be available
to answer questions, host community or public information meetings
With other Committees –
Cooperation with the Professional Community (CPC),
Treatment Committee,
i.e., District 11 has a ‘service committee’

The goal of AA Public Information is to carry the message to the alcoholic
who still suffers:

1. Through informing the general public about the AA program,
2. Through reaching a third person whose work is or may be involved with
   the active alcoholic, and
3. By keeping the Fellowship of AA well-informed, so that members and
   groups may carry the message more effectively.

• Remember this is basic Twelfth Step work through contact with the public.
  The purpose of AA is to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.
• Avoid drunkalogues. Keep comments close to AA-related matters. And,
  maintain our amateur standing, we are not experts when speaking as AA members.
• Read the pamphlet “Speaking at Non-AA Meetings” before undertaking a
  Public Information presentation.
• Provide appropriate AA Conference-approved pamphlets to the audience or
  group

1. Introduction: “Why I am here?” To carry the message of Alcoholics
   Anonymous; what it is and what it is not.
2. You may choose to show an AA Conference-approved video/film such as
   “Hope: Alcoholics Anonymous” or “AA – Inside View” These videos can be
   purchased from the General Service Office.
3. Read and Explain the AA Preamble
4. Twelve Step and Twelve Traditions: explain them as a whole, not
   individually
5. Describe types of meetings: open/closed, speaker, discussion, etc.
   (Reference “Information on Alcoholics Anonymous”)
6. Where are AA meeting located? Provide the telephone number of your local
   central office or AA answering service and meeting directories, if
   appropriate.
7. What to expect at an AA meeting
   What happens during various kinds of meetings
   Temporary and permanent sponsorship
   Fellowship: before, during and after meetings
8. Describe AA Conference-approved literature in general. Explain that this
   literature is developed by AA and available to anyone.
9. Questions and Answers: Keep it simple
10. Express gratitude for the opportunity to share about AA; close.

back to top

 ANONYMITY –
In part, taken from the Public Information Workbook

An understanding of anonymity in AA is the first prerequisite for being
effective in public information. At first glance the terms anonymity and
public information seem to contradict each other. Actually, they don’t as
these selections from the co-founder’s writings demonstrate. Bill W. wrote
extensively about anonymity, and this selection from the P.I. Workbook is made
up of his words. It is divided into three sections. We follow Bill in
distinguishing the significance of anonymity at the practical and the
spiritual levels, as well as at the individual and the group levels, the
private and public, and the local and national. Then, Bill W. takes up the
questions of anonymity breaks and their consequences.

“In my belief, the entire future of our fellowship hangs upon this vital
principle. If we continue to be filled with the spirit and practice of
anonymity, no shoal or reef can wreck us. If we forget this principle, the lid
to Pandora’s box will be off and the spirits of Money, Power, and Prestige
will be loosed among us. Obsessed by these evil genii, we might well founder
and break up. I devoutly believe this will never happen. No AA principle
merits more study and application than this one. I am positive that AA’s
anonymity is the key to long-time survival.”

Bill’s Last Message: “Anonymity has two attributes essential to our
individual and collective survival; the spiritual and the practical. On the
spiritual level, anonymity demands the greatest discipline of which we are
capable; on the practical level anonymity has brought protection for the
newcomer, respect and support of the world outside, and security from those of
us would use AA for sick and selfish purposes.”

Anonymity as a spiritual message: “We are sure that humility, expressed
by anonymity, is the greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can ever
have.”       “. . .anonymity is real humility at work. It is an all-pervading
spiritual quality which today keynotes AA life everywhere. Moved by the spirit
of anonymity, we try to give up our natural desires for personal distinction
as AA members both among fellow alcoholics and before the general public. As
we lay aside these very human aspirations, we believe that each of us take
part in the weaving of a protective mantle which covers our whole society and
under which we may grow and work in unity.”

Sacrifice and Survival: “The spiritual substance of anonymity is
sacrifice. Because AA’s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up
personal desires for the common good, we realize that the sacrificial spirits,
well symbolized by anonymity, is the foundation of all these Traditions. It is
AA’s proved willingness to make these sacrifices that give people high
confidence in our future.”

“. . .While it is quite evident that most of us believe in anonymity, our
practice of the principle does vary a great deal.”       “Of course, it should
be the privileged, even the right, of each individual or group to handle
anonymity as they wish. But to do that intelligently we shall need to be
convinced that the principle is a good one for practically all of us; indeed
we must realize that the future safety and effectiveness of Alcoholics
Anonymous may depend upon its preservation.”       “It should be the privilege
of each individual AA to cloak himself with as much personal anonymity as he
desires. His fellow AAs should respect his wishes and help guard whatever
status he wants to assume”

Anonymity at the Group Level: “In practice, then, the principle of
anonymity seems to come down to this: with one very important exception, the
question of how far each individual or group shall go in dropping anonymity is
left strictly to the individual or group concerned. The exception is: that all
groups or individuals, when writing or speaking for publications as member of
Alcoholics Anonymous, feel bound never to disclose their true names. It is at
this point of publication that we feel we should draw the line on anonymity.
We ought not disclose ourselves to the general public through the media of the
press, in pictures, or on the radio.”

Anonymity at the Public Level: “Great modesty and humility are needed
by every AA member for his own permanent recovery. If these virtues are such
vital needs to the individual, so must they be to AA as a whole. This
principle of anonymity before the general public can, if we take it seriously
enough, guarantee the Alcoholics Anonymous movement these sterling attributes
forever. Our public relations policy should mainly rest upon the principle of
attraction and seldom, if ever, upon promotion.”       “The old files at AA
headquarters reveal many scores of . . .experiences with broken anonymity.
Most of them point up the same lessons. They tell us that we alcoholics are
the biggest rationalizers in the world; that fortified with the excuse we are
doing great things for AA we can, through broken anonymity, resume our old and
disastrous pursuit of personal power and prestige, public honors, and money –
the same implacable urges that when frustrated once caused us to drink; the
same forces that are today ripping the globe apart at its seams. Moreover,
they make clear that enough spectacular anonymity breakers could someday carry
our whole society down into the ruinous dead end with them.”

Media Attitudes Toward Anonymity: “. . .almost every newspaper reporter
who covers us complains, at first, of the difficulty of writing his story
without names. But he quickly forgets his difficulty when he realizes that
here is a group of people who care nothing for personal gain.”       “For many
years, news channels all over the world have showered AA with enthusiastic
publicity, a never-ending stream of it, far out of proportion to the new value
involved. Editors tell us why this is. They give us extra space and time
because their confidence in AA is complete. The very foundation of that high
confidence is, they say, our continual insistence of personal anonymity at the
press level.”

“Of course, no AA need be anonymous to family, friends, or neighbors . .
.But before the general public – press, radio, films, television, and the like
– the revelation of full names and pictures is the point of peril. This is the
main escape hatch for the fearful destructive forces that still lie latent in
us all. Here the lid can and must stay down.

“. . .we are certain that if such (worldly) forces ever rule our Fellowship,
we will perish too, just as other societies have perished throughout human
history. Let us not suppose for a moment that we recovered alcoholics are so
much better or stronger than other folks; or that because in twenty years
nothing has ever happened to AA, nothing ever can.”

“Our really great hope lies in the fact that our total experience, as
alcoholics and as AA members, has at least taught us the immense power of
these forces of self-destruction. These hard-won lessons have made us entirely
willing to undertake every personal sacrifice necessary for the preservation
of our treasured Fellowship.”

Bill’s Experience: “. . .I was once a breaker of anonymity myself. . .
I learned that the temporary or seeming good can often be the deadly enemy of
the permanent best. When it comes to survival for AA, nothing short of our
very best will be good enough.”

Rationalization of Anonymity Breaks: “. . .they (anonymity breakers)
express the belief that our anonymity Tradition is wrong – at least for them.
. . They forget that, during their drinking days, prestige and achievement of
worldly ambition were their principle aims. They do not realize that, by
breaking anonymity, they are unconsciously pursing those old and perilous
illusions once more. They forget that the keeping of one’s anonymity often
means a sacrifice of one’s desire for power, prestige, and money. They do not
see that if these strivings became general in AA, the course of our whole
history would be changes; that we would be sowing the seeds of our own
destruction as a society.”

Consequences of Anonymity Breaks: “Anyone who would drop their
anonymity must reflect that they may set a precedent which could eventually
destroy a valuable principle. We must never let any immediate advantage shake
us in our determination to keep intact such a really vital tradition.”

back to top