IJ study archive

Boston AA and the White Flag Group: Commitments, Giving It Away, Identify-not-Compare

timeline_event

pivotal · 8 Nov YDAU (Interdependence Day)

  • When: 8 November YDAU, Interdependence Day — the White Flag Group's big Sunday meeting at the Provident Nursing Home, hosting a Commitment from the Advanced Basics Group of Concord
  • What: The thread's anchor set-piece establishes Boston AA's peculiar culture: every Group's weekly meeting is a speaker meeting addressed by a visiting Group on a Commitment (Groups trade Commitments; the travel and the speaking — "12th-Step Work," "Giving It Away" — are how you "Get Active"), the whole economy summarized as "You give it up to get it back to give it away." Ennet House requires residents to be seen at a designated meeting nightly, sitting up front to "Identify instead of Compare" — where the doctrine holds that "Empathy, in Boston AA, is called Identification." This is the thread's canonical statement of the identification-not-comparison node (echoed later at event 15 and event 19). The White Flag Group of Enfield (its "Crocodiles," its raffle-break, its "Keep Coming!") is the recovery thread's home base and the site where Gately's, Joelle's, Erdedy's, Kate Gompert's arcs converge. See the Gately timeline (Gately as White Flagger / Ennet staffer).