Proposed by: Jim R, Lisa M, Staci, Wendy, Boaz, Rene, and Vivienne
Issue:
Trusted Servants who serve as Breakout Room Hosts and Newcomer Greeters must be empowered to act confidently, in accordance with group conscience guidelines, when confronted with aggressive or bullying behavior. Training and documentation should explicitly affirm their right to self-care and group care, including taking necessary action against harassment and bullying.
We move that the training for Breakout Room Hosts and Newcomer Greeters would emphasize their right to self-care and the importance of maintaining a safe group environment; providing clear guidelines on how to handle harassment and bullying, including immediate response actions; and that these guidelines would apply to business meeting chairs and anyone in a facilitative role in service to SMR.
Background:
This is why action is necessary: Volunteers have been bullied, which undermines recovery of individuals and the group, so the behavior cannot be tolerated. Suggested guidelines and empowering responses for Trusted Servants to repeated aggressive behavior:
- Trusted Servants experiencing aggressive or bullying direct (chat) messages could respond with a message like: “I am focused on my service, please do not contact me now.”
- If abuse continues, Trusted Servants have the following options:
– Removal of the offender from the breakout room and meeting, (this prevents their return for 24 hours)
– Public acknowledgment of abuse at an appropriate time – directly after the meeting, at a business meeting, at service support sessions. Sharing the inappropriate messages exposes the behavior. - Documentation of harassment by copying the chat using Zoom’s “copy chat” feature, taking screenshots, or using a smartphone camera.
By reinforcing these principles in training and documentation, the ACA Strengthening My Recovery Trusted Servants will feel more confident in their roles, ensuring a safer and more supportive meeting environment for all participants.
References:
Tradition 1: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on ACA unity.
Tradition 5: Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the adult child who still suffers.
Bill of Rights:
– (1) I have the right to say no.
– (5) I have the right to detach from anyone in whose company I feel humiliated or manipulated.
– (15) I have the right to ask for what I want.
– (18) I have the right to be my True Self.
Affirmations:
– (2) It is okay to trust myself.
– (5) It is okay to say no without feeling guilty.
– (6) It is okay to give myself a break.
Additional Safety Resources:
ACA Morning Website: Personal Safety Suggestions and Addressing Harassing Behavior
It can seem healthy to give a host power to take direct action on a person they perceive to be overstepping.
But I feel it’s not in accordance with this meeting’s very high standards, and I feel it’s the worst thing that could happen to a meeting as good as this one – to have it become driven by a win-lose not a win-win atmosphere.
If this motion is to be considered, I feel some significant conditions need to be included as part of the motion for it to be fair and balanced.
Where a host or secretary has formal powers to remove a person, and where Zoom-bombing isn’t happening, a system of checks and balances needs to be in place to prevent accidental or deliberate mis-use of power when mis-use could result in a person needing the meeting being excluded.
IMHO the power to remove someone from the meeting potentially opens the space to drama-triangles where people are labelled as trouble-makers. Not only does it violate anonymity in a shaming way but it’s the stuff a denouncement culture is built on.
Let’s face it – meetings are often the equivalent of attending Accident & Emergency. This is the real context of deciding what kind of powers its managers have to remove people. Like the rest of us, hosts are human. Regardless of how much experience they have, they may not like a person. They may act inappropriately through wanting to practice boundary-setting, or because they are having a bad day. Or they might be stressed and making an in-the-moment error of judgement, as we all can, overstepping their authority as a way of addressing their own personal triggers. I’m writing as someone who has done it.
When personalities start leading over principles and authority is uncontrolled, the meeting potentially becomes like a town where a law enforcement officer in the field can discharge their weapon without being held accountable, making them judge, jury and executioner. In my experience a good Leo would not be comfortable without accountability. (Apologies Leos. I am sincerely grateful for your integrity and daily bravery on the job in spite of being underpaid).
So I feel a motion like the one being proposed here needs to have a rider attached: a way or ways to effectively hold anyone accountable for something as drastic as removing a person.
There are lots of ways to create checks-and-balances so the meeting stays motivated by a win-win spirit. One way might be to keep the host off-service after an incident, say for a month. I’m sure the creative minds here could come up with a few ideas if they felt ideas were needed.
The real question here might be, is it important that everyone have the freedom to attend a meeting? Is this still a critical part of Twelve Step Fellowships? My answer is yes. None of us are here because we want to be – we are here because we need to be. That’s what’s important.
Thank you for reading this.