2024 September POPS! News
HDEPPCO becomes POPS!
The Honouring Diversity, Examining Power and Privilege, and Challenging Oppression (HDEPPCO) peer development group recently celebrated our 4 year anniversary. Founded in August 2020, our group has grown to include practitioners, peer supporters, community workers, and carers from around the world.
Recent discussions within our community of care have highlighted the limitations of “diversity and difference” rhetoric, and how performative approaches to “diversity” can function in oppressive ways. Some people also found “HDEPPCO” to be an unwieldy term that could unintentionally create cognitive barriers to inclusion for some current and prospective members of our community.
For both of these reasons, our group name from September 2024 is changing to Power, Oppression, and Privilege-Focused Space! (POPS!). This new title provides greater clarity and focus on the Anti-Oppressive Practice approach that unites our community. POPS! is also easier to remember and more catchy and fun, something that is particularly vital for those of us who are polyennic (affirming alternative to deficit and disorder concepts such as “ADHD”).
Although our group was initially limited to Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) practitioners seeking to integrate awareness of systemic oppression into their therapeutic work, we have broadened organically and unexpectedly over the past four years to include a range of practitioners, peer supporters, community workers, and carers who share a commitment to emotion-centred, person-centred, trauma-and-violence-informed care (TVIC) that addresses concerns of power, privilege, and oppression in our respective contexts.
From September 2024, POPS! will be hosted by The Centre for Liberating Practices. POPS! remains free for all participants.
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
Maya Angelou (she/her)
Community note: Apology and repair
Apology from participant N.:
“I would like to apologise to the people that were present at the HDEPCO meeting on 28 August at which I engaged in a ‘debate-like’ style of discourse with Gávi as the the group facilitator, inadvertently failing to check my privilege, and falling into an expert position in which I didn’t sufficiently own my own experience and perspective, using argumentative language like “I disagree” and presumptive language like “we” in reference to counsellors and other helpers.
I also used the phrase “the therapist smuggles in their own beliefs”, which demonstrated a lack of insight and understanding into well established anti-oppressive practices specifically designed to address these issues.
I apologise for any discomfort or lack of safety that this represented for any member of the group, that certainly wasn’t my intention. I was genuinely interested in exploring a dimension of anti-oppressive practice that I was struggling with personally, and, at the time believed that this was what I was doing.
Following hearing feedback from the group as shared with me by Gávi, I can see how my way of doing this stepped outside of the established expectations of the group and may have compromised group safety.
I would like to thank the group members that shared their feedback with Gávi for helping me to be accountable for my privilege and impact.”
“Nonviolence pursues heart change, cultural change, AND systemic change.
It is not a ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ ideology.
It is a philosophy and strategy for true peace, which includes justice.”
Dr Bernice A. King (she/her)