Remembering the MAGPS 2020 Fall Conference 
Christopher Straley, MSW, CST, CGP
 
MAGPS held its 2020 Fall Conference on November 7th and 8th. Our organization was excited and grateful to welcome Dr. Aziza A. B. Platt, as she presented Let’s Face the Fact(or)s: Navigating Race in Group through Re-examining the Therapeutic Factors. In many ways this was a conference of firsts for MAGPS. This would be the organization’s first conference during the pandemic, our first virtual conference, and our first conference planned with the participation of our recently formed Anti-Racism Task Force. This would also be our first conference to organize small groups around racial composition, offering White, Blended, and BIPOC groups. These firsts were all the more relevant, as we were waiting to hear the outcome of a historic US Presidential Election, which was actually announced during our small group experience!
 
Dr. Aziza A. B. Platt is a psychologist who provides culturally responsive individual, family, and group psychotherapy. She specializes in racial-cultural issues, trauma, and grief. She was inspired to get into mental health to contribute to efforts to make therapy more acceptable, accessible, and affordable - particularly for marginalized communities. Social justice and liberation are an indelible part of her work. She aims to eliminate barriers, structural and otherwise, to seeking and receiving quality and culturally competent mental health care, especially for underrepresented and under-served communities. As a practitioner, she strives to help the field and practitioners become increasingly more culturally aware and responsive. 
 
We had an attendance of 71 participants, including new and returning members, and 14 scholarship recipients from the Saint Elizabeths training program and several universities, including University of Maryland, Howard University, West Virginia University, and George Washington University.
 
Our process groups were led by a distinguished team of small group leaders including Nadia Greenspan, LCPC, NCC, CGP, our guest leader from Evanston, Illinois; Victoria Lee, PhD, CGP; Jessica Chan, LICSW, CGP, MBA and David Flohr, PhD, CGP; Myrna Frank, PhD, CGP; Lorraine Wodiska, PhD, CGP, ABPP, FAGPA; Sean LeSane, LICSW; Reginald Nettles, PhD, CGP; and Joe Schmidt, M.Div, PsyD.
In the first two plenaries, with Dr. Platt’s guidance, we explored together the issue of structural systematic white supremacy and its impacts on BIPOC people, White people, other marginalized members, on us as group leaders, and on our groups. Dr. Platt encouraged us to revisit Yalom’s therapeutic factors including empathic responding, assisting members with a corrective experience of the primary societal group, and the installation of hope.
 
Additional issues explored included Racial-Cultural Events (RCE), such as microaggressions, how systematic racism may lead White members of the group, including leaders, to minimize, marginalize, sanitize, and/or over generalize RCE that BIPOC members often experience. Her demonstration of how to handle these events was, for me, very helpful as a White group leader.
 
In the final plenary, in Dr. Platt’s demo group, she modeled for the conference participants, through a series of steps, how a leader can assist the group to work through an RCE and facilitate a corrective experience with the marginalized member. In the demonstration, Dr. Platt non-judgmentally observed a microaggression had occurred in the group. She went on to disrupt the RCE, asking the group to slow down, and to tightly focus the group interaction on the RCE only. The group examined the painful impact of the RCE on the receiver and on the rest of the group. She explored with the offender the intent of the message versus the impact. She went on to facilitate an empathic response from the offender to the member of color. Through this thoughtful, slow, and painful process the installation of hope can occur - that offending members can tolerate their shame and will not be alienated; and that BIPOC members are seen and valued. It was a powerful and challenging conference for many, and possibly offered its own installation of hope for our membership.

*Conference artwork by Seth Higginbotham