District 45 proposes that Area 59 establish Area Assemblies to include all home group GSRs in the
business of the Area.

Summary
In January of 2019, a small group of GSRs began to do some research on Assemblies. The Service
Manual explains: The Area Assembly, in chapter four on page S36. “Any meeting of area G.S.R.s and
area committee (see Chapter Five) is an assembly. The area assembly is the mainspring of the
Conference structure – the democratic voice of the movement expressing itself. Assemblies are the
responsibility of the area committee and are conducted by its chairperson.” – “Now, assembly
meetings consider a variety of issues, from General Service Conference business to area problems
and solutions and financial affairs, while sharing sessions, public information programs,
workshops, and video programs keep A.A. strong and participation in service growing.”

The group of GSRs wanted to learn why Area 59 does not utilize the Assembly method. They began with
a collection of opinions from area officers and past delegates, who all stated the same reason;
“the area is too large to conduct assemblies”. One alternate delegated stated, “can you imagine
trying to do business with 700 GSR’s”. Investigation in the Area 59 archives showed that during
1990 and 1991 there was an ad-hoc committee that studied and proposed splitting Area 59 because of
rapid growth rate of homegroups and AA’s. The motion did not pass because of lack of knowledge in
the voting pool. Vote was taken in first year of a new panel.

The group next identified all areas in the Northeast Region plus six other (large Areas) to
investigate how they govern their respective areas. All 24 areas researched utilize area assemblies
to make decisions for their areas. All areas use the voting of GSRs and committee members to govern
the AA service areas. Only Area 59, does not use assemblies. Further research has determined that
92 out of 93 areas in North America use Service Assemblies as the democratic voice of A.A.

It is the conclusion of this small group of GSRs that the geographical size or number of AA
homegroups or total number of AAs in an area has little to no bearing on how most AA Service Areas
govern democratically.