Content note: list of violence statistics.
For 15 to 24 year olds, one in four deaths are caused by firearms. 270,000 guns go to school every day in the U.S.
The average child graduates from high school having spent more hours in front of the television set than in the classroom, and seen 80,000 violent deaths and hundreds of thousands of other violent acts.
A higher % of U.S. citizens is behind bars than in any other country. New prison construction is draining funds from social programs.
More than 500,000 women are victims of sexual violence each year in America.
A child is reported abused or neglected every 12 seconds, 8,470 children a day. Since 1973, the number of American children living in poverty has increased 50%.
In 1960, the average CEO of a major U.S. corporation made 20 times as much as the average worker in his company; twenty years ago it was 40 times as much; today it is 260 times as much. The richest 1% of Americans owns twice as much wealth as the poorest 80%.
20% of the world’s population consumes 80% of its resources. Prevailing economic policies foster high levels of consumption by the well-to-do and often neglect the environment and ignore the needs of the hungry, refugees, the poorest of the poor.
U.S. arms sales have increased since the end of the cold war. While before 1989 the majority of U.S. arms sales went to democracies, for the past decade over 3/4 have been to authoritarian governments.
Sources: Children´s Defense Fund, Center for Media Literacy, Bureau of Labor Statistics, NY Times, Economic Policy Institute, Federation of American Scientists, Peace and Justice Resource Center