State Press Magazine Volume 20 Issue 3

state press magazine VOLUME 20 | ISSUE 3

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

WHO IS GOD THE MOTHER?

asu off campus housing guide looking for a place to stay? find your new place the easy way.

Livingasu.com

volume 20 | issue 3

S TA F F

CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE EDITOR SABINE GALVIS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MOLLY STELLINO MANAGING EDITORS CHASE HUNTER B. JOSEPH PEREZ DESIGN EDITOR ALEX CZAJA WRITERS ALLIE MAHAI KIERA RILEY DENZEL RUSTEMPASIC DESIGNERS MADELEINE ANDERSEN CHELSEY BOYLE JENNIFER DAM THOM KIM

About the cover:

The World Mission Society Church of God is known, among other more concerning characteristics, for its volunteer work. The church has won awards for its charitable work across the globe. During church events, members typically wear yellow polo shirts. We used this symbol for the cover and obscured the model’s face to show the way WMSCOG strips members of any sense of individuality. Stella Atzenweiler came back to create the third State Press Magazine cover of the semester.

CONNOR WODYNSKI PHOTOGRAPHERS STELLA ATZENWEILER ALEX GOULD BEN MOFFAT MEG POTTER

EDITOR'S LETTER

PHOTO BY BEN MOFFAT

05

Rashad Shabazz's Chicago

11

Neoliberalism is making you lonely

15

Who is God the Mother?

21

CHANGECON: Your official guide to the 24 most lucrative charities of 2019

23

Maestro of mosh

Our cover story for the third issue of the semester is a thorough look at the World Mission Society Church of God, a church that experts and former members consider to be a cult. Students have reported constituents of the church recruiting on ASU’s campus amid allegations of psychological manipulation.

Issue 3 does not have a theme.

It instead touches on a myriad of subjects, including one professor’s journey to understand the spatial segregation of the South Side of Chicago, an opinion on how neoliberalism is causing the intensifying loneliness among younger generations and an enigmatic musician’s influence on the SoundCloud community.

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PROFILE

BY CHASE HUNTER B. | PHOTOS BY BEN MOFFAT

5

An ASU professor and author on the history of segregation, carceral power and his childhood.

november 2019

RASHAD SHABAZZ’S CHICAGO

Editor’s note: This article contains offensive language. ashad Shabazz chose — no, he needed — to leave Chicago.

The month he left Chicago to go to college, someone was killed on the South Side.

The residents of a neighborhood had organized a block party. What was supposed to be a celebration in the neighborhood turned to mourning.

Attendees witnessed a 9-year-old boy shoot a 12-yearold girl in broad daylight.

“He did it right there, and everybody in the neighborhood saw him. Everybody in the neighborhood knew who he was,” Shabazz said.

The killer was never brought to justice. In fact, the same gang that ordered the boy to shoot an innocent girl killed him. Afterward, they dumped the boy’s body in an alleyway, Shabazz said.

“It was that kind of thing — especially young men who felt alienated, who felt powerless — having access to guns and dealing with conflict through force and violence, it just created a really toxic mix that continues to this day.”

Shabazz, now a professor of geography and black cultural studies at ASU’s School of Social Transformation and author of the 2015 book “Spatializing Blackness,” has spent a significant amount of his life trying to understand how the neighborhood he grew up in came to be, and how the 8 miles between northwest Chicago and the “black belt” on the South Side might as well have been two different worlds.

In a review of Shabazz’s book, David Ponton III said, “for Shabazz, ‘black masculinity’ becomes reconfigured as a consequence of these racialized prisons, producing cycles of gender performance among black men that devastate black communities in terms of violence, health and well-being and economic stability.”

R

Nicole Mayberry, a doctorate student who Shabazz is an adviser for, said he approaches teaching from the perspective of equity.

“He’s a natural community builder and allows us to come together and work out ways we can situate our research,” she said.

In the spring of this year, he brought some of his graduate students to a national conference in Washington D.C. There he introduced them to geographers whose books the students read, Brett Goldberg, a graduate student who went on the trip, said.

Shabazz studies under world-renowned civil rights leader Angela Davis and is currently working on a book to discover how the structure of Minnesota’s education system helped produce artists like Prince.

He educates the ASU community about critical race theory and the history of social injustice, knowledge that is key in today’s political and social discourse.

But all of his work follows a theme that traces back to his origins in the South Side of Chicago.

SOUTH SIDE LIVING Inside Wilson Hall at ASU, Shabazz is sitting comfortably in a maroon plush chair surrounded by books encased behind glass, old maps of Africa and wallpaper of a cabin in the woods. Light from the window catches on his gold nose ring, and his deep-set eyes stare calmly into space.

Shabazz still carries the trauma of the South Side. He doesn’t sit with his back to the door, he said, out of an anxious habit to remain constantly alert of his immediate surroundings.

In the mid-80s and mid-90s, Chicago had between 664 and 943 homicides per year, according to the Chicago Police Department. Gangs carried out many of the murders, Shabazz said, but that was in part because people did not have faith in the police or the justice system.

Gangs sprang up to deliver “street justice,” but that only exacerbated the violence.

“Because we didn't count on the police, we didn't count on the justice system. The only thing that we knew would happen was that there would be some kind of street-level response,” Shabazz said. “We were really kind of caught between not having any faith in the justice system and also being fearful of the justice system.”

When rappers Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre and more formed N.W.A. in the late 80s and came out with their hit single “F-- tha Police,” Shabazz had a watershed moment.

“For many hip-hop heads and rap fans, and particularly for young black kids and kids who were under the thumb of the police, when ‘F--- tha Police’ came out, there was a song that said what we've been saying for years,” Shabazz said as he held up a middle finger.

Shabazz’s relationship with “F--- tha Police” is representative of one of his core findings in how law enforcement polices the black community.

Like many other children or teenagers, Shabazz and his friends hopped fences, ding-dong ditched houses and drank water from neighbors’ hoses, but that kind of mischief was “deeply criminalized,” Shabazz said.

The police followed black people — especially in white neighborhoods, accused them of wrongdoing and at times shot them, he said.

Because the police were hostile to young black men like Shabazz, he and his friends antagonized police. One of the ways they did this, Shabazz said, was by saying “F--- the police” while passing them, then running when the police tried to chase them.

“It was kind of a bit of a game until one time, we said it to them, and they pulled guns on us,” Shabazz said. “It was clear that it wasn't just an adversarial relationship.

It was a relationship between whose life is valuable and whose life is not, and that they would be willing to draw their service weapons on little kids who just said ‘F--you,’ and end our life.”

The origins of this interaction, Shabazz makes clear in his book, “Spatializing Blackness,” are not in the interest of law and order, but control and white supremacy.

“The Mike Browns of the world go back decades,” Shabazz said.

Trying to compare the more white and affluent North Chicago with its suburbs and financial district is almost impossible.

It’s like trying to compare “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” with “Boyz n the Hood;” it’s going from Tempe to Tijuana, Shabazz said.

So when Shabazz saw “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he felt totally misplaced.

“I still love it to this day, but it is not about the city I know,” Shabazz said. “They're in the nicest suburbs of Chicago in the northwest suburbs, so that isn't part of my life. Even though I respect the Cubs, even though I loved Harry Carey and their whole seventh-inning stretch and Wrigley Field is beautiful, it was another world.”

Shabazz is a Chicago White Sox fan, the team of the South Side, which may seem trivial, but his affiliation with the Sox is illustrative of the common consciousness on the South Side.

He remembers the Sox’s Comiskey Park when it was still called Comiskey Park, and their players, catcher Carlton Fisk and right fielder Harold Baines. Hyde Park and Englewood, corner stores and high schools are all part of a common language for residents of the South Side, Shabazz said.

“Chicago is just a really great case study. The segregation, the poverty, it produced a landscape,” Shabazz said.

7

In early 20th century Chicago, Shabazz said, the perceived power of white people was being challenged in vice districts where drinking, gambling and prostitution were quietly accepted by the police. At the center of this racial struggle were popular destinations known as “Black and Tans,” named after the open interaction between blacks and whites.

But one captain on the Chicago police force, Max Nootbaar, viewed Black and Tans as a “crucifixion of whiteness” and a moral affront because of the interaction between races. There were two worries in the white community: Black and Tans spreading to white neighborhoods, and sexual proclivity.

“What the police were able to do, and what Nootbaar did was institutionalize a set of ideas about race into the politics of policing,” Shabazz said. “Literally, policing the color became part of their job. So … yes, they're all of these white supremacist and broadly racist and homophobic elements that are woven into the politics of policing.”

Many young white people frequented Black and Tans,

EIGHT MILES november 2019

“SLUMMING IT”

but their parents weren’t happy with it, so the term “slumming” evolved to describe young white people heading to black neighborhoods to go to these interracial clubs.

When Nootbaar became captain of the police force, he used his power to send police raids into Black and Tans in an effort to eliminate the association between white people and non-white people. This was illegal, and yet he only received punishment equivalent to a slap on the wrist, Shabazz said, and continued his crusade in black neighborhoods.

“He was in the best position to do this. He was a cop. He had the authority of the state right there at his hands,” Shabazz said.

Racist ideas about black men’s inherent violent sexual pathology proliferated at the time. “In the fall of (the Reconstruction era), we see the rise of the geography of white supremacy,” Shabazz said in a talk he delivered at Brown University.

Nootbaar was the son of German immigrants, but the practices he employed as a police officer helped him to shed his ethnic identity and enter broader whiteness, Shabazz said. By policing blacks, viewed as the largest societal threat to white Americans, Nootbaar was no longer seen as foreign; he was a white American.

Middle-class black people welcomed police into their communities, in fact, in an attempt to show to the broader public that racist tropes of a violent sexual pathology among black men were untrue, Shabazz wrote in his book.

But this led to over-policing in black neighborhoods, and as Shabazz said, “Once police power moves in, it stays.”

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While buildings on the South Side have been torn down in recent decades, displacing thousands of people to find new homes and further resign the South Side to an outer appearance of poverty, the north side has boomed with investment and new infrastructure.

“It's that dichotomy that produces the reproduction of inequality around wealth, health, longevity of life, and access to food, bad health and shorter lives,” Shabazz said.

According to a recent NYU School of Medicine analysis, Chicagoans living in Englewood on the South Side live an average of 30 years less than those who live in Streeterville in North Chicago.

A FAREWELL TO CHICAGO

food, bad health and shorter lives,” Shabazz said.

According to a recent NYU School of Medicine analysis, Chicagoans living in Englewood on the South Side live an average of 30 years less than those who live in Streeterville in North Chicago.

A FAREWELL TO CHICAGO “You know, I felt like I had to leave Chicago in order to do the things that I wanted to do, and I needed to be out of what was going on in terms of the street-level violence,” Shabazz said.

Shabazz left to do his undergraduate studies at Minnesota State University, about 80 miles southwest of Minneapolis, before coming to ASU for his master’s. He worked in California and Vermont before being recruited to come back to ASU as a professor.

While his body may be in Arizona, his mind is still working on how to remake the South Side of Chicago. He believes the appetite to change police practices is growing, either through self-reflection from the police or through forceful demands from the public.

“They can’t continue to be an occupying army,” Shabazz said. “They can’t continue to be warriors in urban space and kill people in their homes.”

Building off of his findings from “Spatializing Blackness,” Shabazz is introducing ideas through his book to change the South Side and the cyclical violence within it. The solution, Shabazz said, is to turn those areas into “green spaces,” where community gardens can grow.

“We need green spaces that serve the needs of poor and working-class people of color,” Shabazz said. “It brings the temperature down no matter what the context is, whether adversarial or not.”

He said he developed writing and speaking skills, but those do nothing for the plight of average Chicagoans unless they can be shared with the general public. His work has contributed to understanding carceral power, the history of segregation in Chicago and green spaces, but also his own understanding of himself.

“I wish I could have done what I’ve achieved in life and done it there, but that wasn’t possible,” Shabazz said. “But Chicago gave me lots of gifts, absolutely. They gave me an experience, they gave me a way of understanding myself in the world, they provided me with a narrative and a story to

november 2019

understand who I was.”

9

“You know, I felt like I had to leave Chicago in order to do the things that I wanted to do, and I needed to be out of what was going on in terms of the street-level violence,” Shabazz said.

Shabazz left to do his undergraduate studies at Minnesota State University, about 80 miles southwest of Minneapolis, before coming to ASU for his master’s. He worked in California and Vermont before being recruited to come back to ASU as a professor.

While his body may be in Arizona, his mind is still working on how to remake the South Side of Chicago. He believes the appetite to change police practices is growing, either through self-reflection from the police or through forceful demands from the public.

“They can't continue to be an occupying army,” Shabazz said. “They can't continue to be warriors in urban space and kill people in their homes.”

Building off of his findings from “Spatializing Blackness,” Shabazz is introducing ideas through his book to change the South Side and the cyclical violence within it. The solution, Shabazz said, is to turn those areas into “green spaces” where community gardens can grow.

“We need green spaces that serve the needs of poor and working-class people of color,” Shabazz said. “It brings the temperature down no matter what the context is, whether adversarial or not.”

He said he developed writing and speaking skills, but those do nothing for the plight of average Chicagoans unless they can be shared with the general public. His work has contributed to understanding carceral power, the history of segregation in Chicago and green spaces, but also his understanding of himself.

“I wish I could have done what I've achieved in life and done it there, but that wasn't possible,” Shabazz said.

“But Chicago gave me lots of gifts, absolutely. They gave me an experience, they gave me a way of understanding myself in the world, they provided me with a narrative and a story to understand who I was.”

“Once police power moves in, it stays.”

– Rashad Shabazz

OPINION

Neoliberalism is making you

e n ly o l

Although many argue the rise of social media is contributing to the surge of loneliness in younger generations, neoliberal policies are truly to blame.

BY DENZEL RUSTEMPASIC | ILLUSTRATIONS BY JENNIFER DAM

F

organic cohesion. They are ripping apart the social fabric of humanity and killing people in the process.

A recent study out of BYU found loneliness to be as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This is a worldwide public health crisis that cannot be mitigated by prescription drugs. In reality, the nation’s over prescription of drugs serves only as a convenient distraction from our need for economic reform.

Discourse about this public health crisis is nonexistent compared to the opioid epidemic or obesity problem.

Celebrities don’t do somber public service announcements about isolation, and in my research I could not find a presidential candidate having ever been asked about the issue.

We have collectively turned our heads away from an issue that’s too uncomfortable and discouraging to investigate.

The Economy Is Making You Lonely

11

Most American work is deeply unfulfilling.

According to a recent Gallup poll, 55% of millennials are not engaged in their jobs and 16% actively disengage from them. This is because the vast majority of people are wage slaves.

They work for a boss, eight hours a day, five days a week, and still 40% of Americans cannot afford a sudden charge of $400. Meanwhile, Norwegians report 94% job satisfaction due to more leisure time and democratic control in their workplaces.

Research shows a link between feeling a lack of control and anxious behavior. The fact that 48% of millennials report a lack of control at work explains why when more

workers control their labor situation, their mental health is better.

In addition, hierarchical systems in which shareholders make all decisions actively destroy workers’ psyches. The more people experience intensifying anxiety and depression, the less likely they are to properly function in society and make friends.

A 2015 Brookings Institution study found those who had two or more friends were 20% less likely to be poor, proving a link between material circumstances and social isolation.

This carries well into adulthood.

AARP found that nearly half of adults over the age of 45 making $25,000 or less reported loneliness, compared to a third of those who were surveyed.

There is a clear pipeline within America wherein those born without privilege and means are more susceptible to clinical loneliness.

Studies have also shown how social isolation degrades the brain's ability to manage impulse control, obesity and drug use.

Loneliness is a life-threatening illness, but traditional media outlets avoid the inherent discomfort of the topic. Loneliness seems like a personal failing of the strange or unlikable, when in reality, it ties more strongly to material circumstances and collective conditioning.

Solitary confinement, the most draconian psychological punishment in America, forces increasingly parallel terror on the economically disenfranchised.

Though better off than the poor, even the rich find pithy solace in modern consumerism.

A 2012 study out of Northwestern University found that those who placed greater value on wealth, status and material possessions are

november 2019

reedom is “To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing,” wrote Ayn Rand, noted idiot, in one of her terrible novels.

She represents an idyllic view of a perfectly atomized and inherently lonely society that is all too real for our generation.

Neoliberalism can be a vague term.

It typically describes contemporary liberalism that favors deregulation and laissez-faire economic policies.

It claims to value equality and social progressiveness but heightens inequality. It’s Raytheon having a float at Pride, and its deceptive austerity has left society dangerously isolated.

A recent poll from YouGov showed 22% of millennials today say that they do not have a single friend, compared to 16% of Generation Xers and 9% of baby boomers. Another

by Cigna found 46% of Americans report always feeling alone, and 27% report feeling like no one or rarely anyone understands them.

Almost half report having no meaningful social interactions. And 18% rarely or never feel there is someone around to talk to.

This same research argued Generation Z is the loneliest generation yet. At ASU, 40% report being so depressed it’s hard to function and 12% report seriously considering suicide.

Your nostalgia blinded parents will tell you it's because we’re on social media all day instead of having “real conversations,” but that link hasn’t been scientifically proven. In fact, that same Cigna study found that heavy social media use alone is not a predictor of loneliness.

These numbers are terrifying by design. The economic and social structures of neoliberalism are working as intended by breaking down

less sociable than those who do not.

Another study out of the University of Missouri found consumer desires replace social action when a father in the study reported longing for a new pool so he could bond with his 13-year-old daughter.

In a neoliberal world that exists for the shareholders, it's worth asking who might be profiting off our collective social isolation.

In 2016, drug companies spent $6 billion on advertisements for prescription drugs. Consequently, there has been a 64% rise in the amount of Americans taking antidepressants between 1999 and 2014. As of today, one in six Americans take some kind of psychiatric drug, and the antidepressant market is set to grow by almost $2 billion between 2017 and 2023.

It’s obvious that some people need medication. The problem is that medication has become a profitable and convenient excuse to ignore the social and economic reforms we collectively require.

A doctor can’t recommend you organize and overturn your economic system, but he can scribble down a prescription for Zoloft.

Bad Cities Are Making You Lonely For a while, America built concentrated metropolitan cities.

They were supposed to be big, fun, full of people and easy to get around.

Then around the 1950s, American

culture shifted toward utopian visions of atomized suburban life.

Car companies and advertisers worked to enshrine the automobile as the defining symbol of American independence. Today more than 75% of people drive to work alone through frustratingly congested highways. Meanwhile billionaires send dark money to cities like Phoenix to defund light rail infrastructure that might serve the collective.

Prior to the 1950s, cities invested in subways and streetcars to transport people in dense urban centers, but the rise of the suburbs meant people needed individual, highly polluting vehicles to navigate modern life.

The Great American Streetcar Scandal saw companies like General Motors purchase streetcars and public trains in the 40s, only to dismantle 90% of them by 1950. The auto industry won. Today, 5.5% of us use public transportation or ride a bike, and suburbs reign supreme.

This automobile dependency, Michael Kuby, professor of geography and urban planning at ASU, said, is locked in a “vicious cycle” with urban sprawl. “Auto dependency leads to sprawl which reinforces auto dependency and so on,” Kuby said.

The cycle of poor urban planning is also fortified by low gasoline taxes, free parking, freeway and beltway construction, suburban street design and lack of rural land-use protections.

“Substantial spatial expansion of our cities was inevitable due

to growing wealth, technological change, and market forces,” he said.

“But the degree of sprawl in the US has been exacerbated by many policies or lack thereof.”

What does this have to do with loneliness?

Suburbs are inherently lonely.

Research by Men’s Health has found those in urban environments grew to value liveliness, diversity and other people while those in suburbia more strongly valued economic status.

The research explains, “Immigrants and other urbanites used to have casual interactions on a daily basis ... once people started moving to the suburbs, they lost that sense of spontaneous social interaction.”

Where children might have explored cities and public spaces in metropolitan areas, they are confined to suburban blockades and require being driven out of them to explore the greater world. This unnatural stifling of organic social interaction contributes to shyness and social anxiety later in life.

Because suburbanites value economic wealth, they generally strive to own increasingly bigger properties. As a result, today’s homes are 1,000 square feet larger than in 1973.

In 2013, inside these barren castles 28% of people live completely alone.

This compares to less than 6% who lived in isolation in 1915.

Worst of all, there isn’t anywhere to go even if you could walk.

Aside from a few parks and mu-

“

There are millions who rightfully need prescription medication. There is also a legitimate concern about the space social media takes up in modern relationships. Regardless, it is the core of our economic and social institutions that are responsible for the plague of loneliness facing our generation.

Until we universally guarantee housing, food and educational security to everyone, those without privilege will disproportionately face isolation.

Until we fundamentally change our social structures to value closeness and proximity over economic status, children will grow up socially and developmentally stunted.

Until we fundamentally change the inherent hierarchy of our corporate structures, too many people will lack control and be alienated from their work.

Editor's note: The opinions presented in this column are the author's and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.

Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a solitary boat floating in a sea of possible companions.

– Robert Fulghum

13

Pop culture teaches young suburban minds that college is a vibrant self-affirming party that never ends.

Media and film tell stories in universities in which people acquiesce into exciting social circles and being “open-minded” is all it takes to have the time of your life.

This doesn’t reconcile with the

The Full Picture

november 2019

Universities Are Making You Lonely

previously mentioned research on rising loneliness in our generation.

Movies like “Old School” and “Pitch Perfect” fail to represent a reality in which 64% of college students reported feeling very lonely over the past year.

Going to college, especially out of state, means leaving your life behind.

It's only natural for people to struggle when everything that previously brought them stability disappears.

Rising tuition, rent and inflated class sizes all display a lack of public investment under neoliberal austerity.

Can the 36% of college students who do not regularly get enough to eat be expected to pay steeply to be in a fraternity or sorority to make friends?

Worst of all, colleges inundate you with the alienating sense that you are in constant competition with your peers. You cannot root for your cohort’s success, because they might soon occupy a graduate school slot or job interview you couldn’t secure.

Much like the greater neoliberal economy, you are meant to constantly punch sideways in the interest of the bosses, rather than building solidarity and cooperation as equals.

“

seums, neoliberal policies auction off all public space to commercial interests. Is paying $14 to see a movie or walking around the mall an enriching basis for social life?

Public spaces in America require you to spend money to occupy them, further alienating the poor from social nourishment.

Powerful business interests of the neoliberal 20th century created the suburbs to sell cars and expensive, inaccessible homes. People increasingly live in massive cookie-cutter homes they can only escape with wasteful automobiles.

Worst of all? They look ugly.

WHO IS GOD THE MOTHER?

I

t took 15 years for Jordan Young to leave the church. After years of telling non-members that their religions were satanic and lying to the public to persuade them to join, he said he had enough.

“Now I can live freely,” Young said. “Now I’ve broken off these chains that I’ve been dragging for so long.”

Students recently reported constituents of this church, World Mission Society Church of God, soliciting on ASU’s Tempe campus. Former members and experts widely consider it to be a cult.

15

By Molly Stellino and Joseph Perez Photo by Stella Atzenweiler

november 2019

Members from a church that is widely considered to be a cult have been recruiting on ASU’s campus

REPORT

In late September, multiple students described on Wildfire, an app that allows students to communicate about current events in an open forum, that they had been approached by people who wanted to talk to them about “God the Mother.”

The posts quickly gained traction and raised concern from students.

Haily Aldrich, an undeclared freshman at ASU, said two members of WMSCOG who claimed to be students approached her one afternoon as she left the Sun Devil Fitness Complex.

“I had a red flag in my head from the beginning,” Aldrich said. “They just overall didn't look healthy.”

She said the two women, who Aldrich thought didn’t appear to be students, asked her if she had heard about God the Mother, cited Bible passages and encouraged her to learn more about the church. But what concerned her most, she said, was their unusual demeanor and robotic way of speaking.

The encounter “freaked her out,” and afterward, she did not travel on campus alone.

Other ASU students have had similar experiences.

“My roommate and I encountered two guys dressed up the same talking about this … it was some creepy religious stuff,” one user in the Wildfire thread said.

But a closer look at the practices of WMSCOG shows the concern from students goes beyond pushy solicitation, as the church has a track record of manipulative ideologies, lawsuits, questionable finances and dubious recruiting methods that have raised questions around the morality of allowing members on university campuses across the country.

Almost all of its foundational ideologies revolve around the belief that World War III is imminent. Only members of the church who follow all of its rules and practices will receive a spot in heaven, and WMSCOG is the only church that has true knowledge of the Bible.

WMSCOG considers anyone who criticizes the church, leaves the church, is not a member of the church, the media and depictions of religious symbols to be satanic, Young said.

Members of the church claim to interpret the Bible as directly and literally as possible, but Young said a number of verses and passages that are pillars of their belief system have been disproven with their full context.

CULT ACCUSA Many former members of the church, which boasts 2.7 million members on its website, have spoken out online about the practices of the church. Their stories flood Reddit, news sites and anti-WMSCOG websites and prompt other former members to share similar accounts.

Young joined the church at the age of 7 after a member of the church approached his family at a mall in Inglewood, California.

For 15 years, he followed the teachings of the church in hopes of being welcomed into heaven. He lived in fear that the world would soon end in catastrophic destruction, a mindset he said is shared by all members of the group.

This constant fear, he said, was what controlled people in the church. Pastors constantly preached about the coming of World World III and global nuclear destruction.

Members, he said, must follow the teachings of the church to be granted a spot in heaven.

“They’re always watching you, and you have to do what’s in their best interest,” he said. “You can’t do what’s in your best interest.”

Young said members were strongly discouraged from associating with people outside the church because pastors considered their souls “dead.” If they searched the internet for information about the church, played video games, missed a day of mass or didn’t consistently recruit new members, they would go to hell.

“It’s just fear mongering, a fearful mentality that

IDEOLOGY According to the church’s literature, God is a woman named Jang Gil-ja who lives in South Korea. The church was founded in South Korea in 1964 by her husband Ahnsahnghong, whom the Church believes to be one of the two embodiments of the second coming of Christ.

When Ahnsahnghong died in 1985, Jang became the head of WMSCOG. The South Korean couple, referred to as “God the Father” and “God the Mother,” are both the deities of this church that teaches all other religions are the work of Satan.

pretty much everyone has that just turns everyone into robots,” Young said.

People in the church are strongly encouraged to donate at least 10% of their income, he said. Leaders also pressure members to donate each time they come to church on top of the set portion of their income. If members do not meet the tithing, Young said they are shunned by leadership and denounced during sermons.

He said leaders in the church told him that this donated money paid for weekly feasts and construction of new churches. But the church members regularly paid for their meals at the church and worked without pay to help with construction.

“Who knows what the church is doing with the money?” he said. “It’s a sign that it’s a really corrupt organization.”

Young knew several people who sold their cars, dropped out of school or quit their jobs to devote themselves to the church. Once people bought into the notion that the end of the world was around the corner, he said it was easy for them to cut themselves off from their profession, education, hobbies and family.

Cult psychology specialist Cathleen Mann said WMSCOG fulfills her definition of a cult.

Mann, who has consulted on about 100 legal cases involving cults, said that after interviewing former and current WMSCOG leaders, members and their families, she concluded that the church manipulates members to ensure compliance and undue influence, deliberately changes members’ environments without consent, deceives members and devalues members through sustained criticism.

She also confirmed that the church manipulates members through sleep deprivation, lying, isolation and poor diet.

“Their beliefs are secondary and a mechanism for deceptive recruiting by claiming they have the only true biblical understanding,” Mann said in an emailed statement.

The World Mission Society Church of God in Glendale, Arizona declined to comment on the allegations.

LAWSUITS

TIONS

november 2019 17

Documents from lawsuits against the church confirmed what Young said: It is common for members to be pressured to sign non-disclosure agreements.

This suggests that the number of lawsuits filed against the church may not accurately reflect the actual amount of the church’s legal wrongdoing.

Multiple lawsuits against and by the church have still managed to surface.

In 2013, Michele Colón, a former member of WMSCOG from New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the church and all of its related profit-making companies for intentional fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent misrepresentation and more.

Documents from the lawsuit said members subjected Colón to intense social pressure and unduly influenced her into separating herself from her family outside the church, separating her from men in the church including her husband and son, forcing her to watch fear-inducing propaganda videos and depriving her of sleep.

Colón also alleged members of the church hacked into her email by baiting her into using a “Cult Watch Site” created by WMSCOG. Members of the church also allegedly told Colón’s husband to divorce her and subsequently blackmailed her into returning to the church after she briefly left.

Similarly, in 2014, Michele Ramirez, a former member of WMSCOG and New Jersey resident, filed a lawsuit against the church and all of its related profit-making companies for intentional fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent misrepresentation, invasion of privacy and more.

Ramirez alleged that members of the church psychologically manipulated her, resulting in sleep deprivation, extensive labor and deep distrust of those who were not part of the church.

She said the physical and mental burden of the church caused Ramirez to drop out of college.

The complaint from Ramirez’s lawsuit reads, “the World Mission New Jersey members who staff the Profit-Making Companies are abused and exploited, and subjected into a state of de facto slavery.”

FINANCES World Mission Society Church of God in Glendale, Arizona has been registered by the state as a taxexempt religious organization since 2009. As a result, church leaders are not required to annually submit Arizona Form 990 to the Arizona Department of Revenue, making it difficult to see how much the church profits from its operations.

Public information about the finances of the church in Arizona is scarce, but both New Jersey lawsuits allege that the New Jersey church’s operation intertwines with World Mission Enterprise, a related profit-making business, and exists to create wealth for its South Korean leaders.

According to the complaints, the related profit-making companies, which are staffed exclusively with members from the church, funnel money to the church to avoid taxation. Once the money is in the possession of the church, most of it is sent to South Korea.

Mann also said based on interviews with current and former members, she believes the church’s intentions lie in sending money to its homeland.

“They're a dangerous and growing movement, and they send enormous amounts of money to Korea,” she said.

times, where WMSCOG members routinely lied and said that they were students (as allegedly did the two women who approached Aldrich on campus), and that the church had a club on campus when no club existed.

ASU’s campus is not the only one to have experienced what has been described as WMSCOG's pushy and aggressive recruitment.

Portland State University’s student-led news organization, The PSU Vanguard, reported on the church’s presence on their campus, as did The Mercury, the student media publication at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Constituents from the church have also been reported at Vanderbilt University, Boston College, Rider University, the University of Mississippi, Boston University and the University of North Florida.

A local news station in Memphis reported that several members of WMSCOG were placed on criminal trespass by the University of Memphis after police said they “aggressively attempted to discuss religion and distribute literature.”

ASU Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the issue of WMSCOG on campus.

The World Mission Society Church of God has faced harsh criticism in the past.

Those who left the church have claimed their lives were ruined by it.

Though Young doesn’t want to infringe upon the rights of students to practice whatever religion they please, he said that “by joining this church, you’re violating your own rights in a way.”

He said he wants WMSCOG banned from college campuses.

“They robbed me for 15 years, so I don’t want them to rob anyone else’s life.”

COLLEGE CAMPUSES Both Mann and Young emphasized the church’s standard of recruiting on college campuses.

Young attributed this to what he described as the “vulnerability” of college students who the church assumes to be more open-minded than older adults.

He said he recruited, or as members call it, “preached,” on campuses in California hundreds of

“ N O W I C A N L I V E F R E E LY, ” YO U N G S A I D .

“NOW I’ VE BROKEN OFF THESE CHAINS T H AT I ’ V E B E E N D R A G G I N G F O R S O LO N G .”

november 2019 19

SATIRE

Your official guide to the 24 most lucrative charities of 2019

By Allie Mahai | Illustrations By Madeleine Andersen It’s that time of year again! Your favorite convention

our weekly social gatherings at local country clubs

for world improvement coalitions that affect change

to predict changes in trends and brainstorm ways to

in the global heart landscape of our society’s

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infrastructure and the modern zeitgeist is here. At

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free to skip to Celebrity Aid.

with “I’m a good person” stitched into it.

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AID ABROAD We know what you’re thinking: money that is not spent in the United States? Gross! But we promise we’ve found you the most vetted charities dedicated to securing and maintaining U.S. interests.

Human ReSource A group that takes disenfranchised children under 12 and empowers them by giving them full-time jobs.

People for Progress Fracking on Mars, created and funded by Elon Musk.

Disaster Releaf FUNd Puts doodles of leaves on one-time use sandwich bags.

Give Life Finds rare tree species and turns them into recyclable paper.

Rights for Sum Nonprofit dedicated to protecting banks and Wall Street investors from predatory civilians looking for small loans.

Winds of Exchange It’s just tariffs.

World For a Better Change For a Better World by ChangeX They have no documented mission statement, subsidiary of ExxonMobil.

DOMESTIC AID

You know what they say: You have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. Or in this case, you have to pay someone to put on your oxygen mask for you, so as not to disturb your mid-flight mimosa.

Well-to-Dos Doing Good Rich people putting on gloves and tossing soil in a community garden long enough to take a picture (before replacing the garden with a cast-iron statue made in their image).

WEvolve Invests in uploading poor people to the cloud so they don’t need physical resources.

Truth Lobbies to redact every government document in existence.

Furry Friends** Uses artificial intelligence to allow pets to volunteer for hairlessness and supply the 1% with fur scarves.

No More Strawz Melts down every plastic straw to create recycled Juul pods.

Communication through Commerce Works toward developing a universal language with an alphabet comprised entirely of different amounts of bitcoin.

Relief Chance Has people in poverty spin a giant wheel for a chance to make a livable wage.

Libertarians for Life Pro-life libertarians spreading awareness of their existence.

Money Laundering Organization “Nonprofit” dedicated to cleaning corporate cash of the blood of children.

Strong Parents, Strong Kids Funds a “Scared Straight” styled classroom program that promotes the nutritional value of milk, paid for by milk.

CELEBRITY AID

Trust in US Rolls out yearly protections for homophobic celebrity churches.

Class Clowns Created by “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” dedicated to giving funds to canceled celebrities and war criminals.

Change Affecting Lives to Heal Hearts for Love Creates specialized supplements for celebrities made from the blood of their dying pets.

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21

Living for Laughter and Love Bill and Melinda Gates’ second foundation, donates exclusively to Forbes Magazine right before their “90 Under 90” article gets published.

november 2019

With marginalized groups like #womensupportingwomen or <another movement> taking matters into their own hands on the rise, these charities follow suit. These are by celebrities, for celebrities.

Gobble it up!

Join us for Thanksgiving Dinner ASU Student Media

Thursday, November 28, 2019 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

ASU Tempe Campus/Matthews Center 950 S. Cady Mall Tempe, AZ 85281 ASU Student Media/Off-Campus Housing in partnership with the Sun Devil Family Association and Apollo Apartments invites you to enjoy a free Thanksgiving meal with us.

Please bring a can of food to donate to the City of Tempe Food Bank. RSVP required. Contact DeDe@asu.edu for more information. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/asu-thanksgiving-dinner-tickets-74735280235

Student Media Housing Fair November 6-7, 2019 March 18-19, 2020 Memorial Union/Cady Mall Tempe Campus 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

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Sponsored by Union Tempe

Join the ASU Off-Campus Students Group on Facebook to connect with students.

PROFILE

november 2019 23

BY KIERA RILEY PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOM KIM

PHOTOS BY ALEX GOULD AND MEG POTTER

THE RISE OF SOUNDCLOUD RAP IN THE TEMPE AND ASU COMMUNITY CAN BE ATTRIBUTED TO $ONOMA, ONE OF THE FIRST ARTISTS TO PROMOTE SOUNDCLOUD RAPPERS IN 2015.

P

hone lights look like stars against the darkened venue. Dozens of arms suspended in space uphold the cosmos.

And below it, chaos.

The first beats of Waka Flocka Flame’s trap masterpiece “Hard in Da Paint” blare from the overhead speakers. As the song builds, so does the energy.

With the drop, a mess of heads and bodies collide across the crowd. It’s a sweaty, adrenaline-induced bounce underscored by a semi-rhythmic chorus of “ayes.”

Looming over the crowd, Tyler Dharamraj, better known by his moniker $onoma, watches as anarchy ensues.

With a subtle smirk, he flips his blond, teal-tinted shoulder-length hair.

The same smirk slides across his face as he reclines

“Kids like to rage,” he said.

In the last five years, Dharamraj, now 21, booked and performed alongside some of the biggest names in rap music. Amassing a social media following and notoriety in the SoundCloud scene, Dharamraj continues to promote and perform around Arizona.

“I find myself as an empath, so I’ll feed off their energy but they’ll also feed off mine,” he said.

He’s soft-spoken in person, subtle on stage but exerts a clear control over a crowd.

Dharamraj, in a few words, is the maestro of the mosh.

His Instagram story highlights show the peaks.

Crowds of hundreds jump in unison and hands uphold one crowd-surfing rap star or another. In one particular video, he stretches out

I’m like, ‘Wow, I want to be them,’ I want to make people feel that way.”

He recently opened for Azizi Gibson at Aura Nightclub in Tempe on Oct. 19 and performed at Ski Mask the Slump God’s after-party at The V on Vineyard in Mesa on Nov. 2.

At both shows, he performed in a boot after tearing a ligament while playing basketball. Though on stage, he told the crowd it was from a black widow spider bite.

In the underground hiphop community, Dharamraj, or @thatboysonoma, is a bit of an enigma.

He’s vegan, or occasionally pescatarian. He’s sober. He’s big in Turkey, Russia and Sweden. And he’s worked behind the scenes and on stage with some of the biggest rap and hip-hop artists.

“He’s vegan, or occasionally pescatarian. He’s sober.

He’s big in Turkey, Russia and Sweden. And he’s worked behind the scenes and on the stage with some of the biggest rap and hip-hop artists.”

back into a black leather office chair at his producer’s studio, the Beat Creeps, off Southern Avenue in Tempe.

Now doused in purple and pink LED lights, he sits clicking a pen in his hand.

his arms crucifix-style and splashes two full water bottles onto the mob below as the beat drops.

“The reason I really like music is when I go to a concert, I look at (the artist) and

“I’m definitely not a promoter, and I’m definitely not a DJ,” Dharamraj said, “Pop? Pop maybe. Because pop is a mixture of everything.”

With his own new musical projects in the works, Dha-

moting was in time with the emergence of a number of up-and-coming rap artists.

He sent out emails, met with rising artists and networked with the budding SoundCloud rap community.

From booking underground artists like SeshHollowWaterBoyz and Lil Pump, to mainstream hit makers like Migos and Travis Scott, Dharamraj quickly became a notable promoter in the local hip-hop community.

His most frequent gigs are at The Pressroom, but he’s booked shows at the Tucson Convention Center, Club Red and Mesa Amphitheatre, to name a few.

In 2017, he put on You’re Welcome Fest with acts like Fat Nick, Pouya and Ghostemane.

As a solo artist, he has about a dozen songs out on streaming services. His most popular song, “Rollin Off,” features rising rap star Killstation. It’s racked up over 250,000 listens on Spotify.

The music video has accumulated over 8,000 views.

Dharamraj’s instrumentals typically stick with trapstyle beats, but he’s varied in tone. His most recent release, “Drain The Sun,” takes on a softer, more mellow vibe.

Dharamraj follows a process when it comes to making music. He starts with the beat and improvises through the

25

promoting sector, or rather, it found him.

While taking photos with friends at an In-N-Out Burger one night, some SoundCloud rappers asked Dharamraj and his friends to photograph their upcoming show.

He agreed.

“At the time, SoundCloud was like nothing.”

Only 10 people turned out to the show. On top of taking photos, Dharamraj ended up doing a DJ set and more importantly, found his “in” in the concert promotion business. He got the promoter’s information, borrowed $2,000 from a family friend and booked Lil Uzi Vert and Felly for a show at Club Red in 2015.

Lil Uzi Vert missed his flight, and consequently, the show.

Despite this mishap, his first gig still proved to be a strong first step for Dharamraj.

A lot of now prominent SoundCloud artists were on the rise in 2014 when current ASU students were in high school. He said the presence of underground rappers and artists in Arizona expanded around 2015, and this was the same year that Dharamraj entered the music scene, both as an artist and a promoter.

And it started with a simple thought.

“Why don’t we do this with upcoming SoundCloud rappers?”

His first step into pro-

november 2019

ramraj continues to make waves across the state.

Though Dharamraj saw most of his influence take shape in Arizona, he’s not native to the state. He grew up in Michigan, and his interest in music was built there.

In first grade, he recounts buying Eminem and 50 Cent posters at the county fair. He and his friends brainstormed mixtape name ideas and design album covers.

Around the time Dharamraj started middle school in 2010, he and his family made the move to Anthem, Arizona.

By the time Dharamraj hit high school, he started making his own music.

“Freshman year, I made a freestyle over a Flatbush Zombies beat on YouTube and people hated it,” Dharamraj said. “Which was obviously because it was really (bad).”

Despite this minor setback, Dharamraj continued.

He created a new persona junior year, which he declined to mention due to it being “corny.”

But finally, following a lacrosse tournament in Sonoma County, California, he donned himself $onoma. A nickname he’s stuck with ever since.

“Alright, bet. I’m just gonna throw a dollar sign in front of it,” Dharamraj said.

After messing around with hip-hop and rap music, Dharamraj found his way into the

rest of the process, similar to Migos, in the studio.

“I just mumble a bunch of bulls---, and then if some of that is slightly good, then I take the original vocals and I copy it and delete it as I go on,” he said.

Bryan Pino, $onoma’s producer and engineer at Beat Creep, chimed in, “Like a Pac-Man game.”

Shifting from rap, Dharamraj said he also wants to focus on rock and indie music. He said he’s learning how to play the guitar and the drums.

Pino previously worked with Asking Alexandria, a heavy-metal rock band. With a rock-oriented production background, Pino brought something new to the mix.

“He probably wanted someone to challenge him,” Pino said. He said he works to bring Dharamraj’s songs

together. “With any artist I work with, I strive for them to create their own voice.”

Dharamraj expanded his discography, and shortly after, he direct messaged Jordan Carter of Culture Only Management on Instagram, and the two started to build a professional relationship.

“I was kind of wary at first, but after staying in contact through social media and FaceTime, I got a feel for his music and if he was into music for the right reasons, not just for the money,” Carter said.

Carter is responsible for booking, paperwork and contracts. With connections to labels, Carter also helps with promotion and organization.

“You need a team, you need a group of people around you,” Dharamraj said.

Dharamraj builds his audience through his Twitter and Instagram accounts. He

grew his following to around 10,000 on each platform.

He started by building his Twitter through connections with influential accounts, growing both his domestic and international following.

“I put a good amount of work into keeping it looking cool, like aesthetically pleasing, but I don’t really try too hard on it,” he said.

Dharamraj plans for the future. With a festival, music videos and a new album in the works, he’s keeping busy.

Through his work, though, he keeps a few things in mind.

“Don’t do negative stuff, but just do what you want,” he said. “Follow your dreams, music is dope, clothes are sick, be peaceful, recycle and stuff, vote if you can, drink water, wear protection during sex — if you’re at ASU especially.”

All the things.

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