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* Unless otherwise indicated, information in this fact sheet is from the Souls of Poor Folk: Preliminary Report, December 2017. ** Additional sources used include: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/north-‐carolinas-‐voter-‐id-‐law-‐supreme-‐court-‐cert/526713/; https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-‐battle-‐for-‐north-‐carolina/501257/ ***Additional sources used include: https://www.chn.org/wp-‐content/uploads/2017/09/First-‐Look-‐2016-‐Data-‐Updated-‐SPM-‐numbers-‐2-‐1.pdf; https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/p60-‐261.pdf; https://census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2017/demo/P60-‐259.pdf; http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/data/child-‐poverty-‐in-‐america-‐2016.pdf; http://www.epi.org/blog/2016-‐acs-‐shows-‐stubbornly-‐high-‐native-‐american-‐poverty-‐and-‐different-‐degrees-‐of-‐economic-‐well-‐being-‐for-‐asian-‐ethnic-‐groups/; https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/PR
Souls of Poor Folk: Auditing America 50 Years After the Poor People’s Campaign Challenged Systemic Racism, Poverty, War Economy/Militarism and Our National Morality
Fact Sheet* January 2018
Systemic Racism** • There are fewer voting rights in place today for people of color than 50 years ago when the Civil Rights
Act was passed. Since 2010, 23 states have passed racist voter suppression laws, including laws that making it hard to register, reducing early voting days and hours, and more restrictive voter ID laws. Racist gerrymandering and redistricting have also proven highly effective as an attack on voting rights. In 2016, there were 868 fewer polling places for the Presidential election. In North Carolina, HB 589 was struck down for having targeting the rights of “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
• As of July 2017, 25 states have passed laws that preempt cities from passing their own local minimum wage laws. Most of these have been in response to local city councils passing or wanting to pass minimum wage increases.
• Since 1976, the criminalization of poverty has raised federal spending on prisons tenfold to $7.5 billion a year and led to increased policing to fill them. The number of state and federal inmates grew from 188,000 in 1968 to nearly 5 million in 2015. Racial profiling, biased sentencing, and policing practices have expanded the share of inmates who are people of color from less than half in 1978 to 66% in 2015.
• Federal spending on immigration, deportations and the border has gone from $2 billion in 1976 to $17 billion in 2015, with 10 times as many deportations (333,000 deportees in 2015).
Poverty*** • As of 2016, there are 40.6 million people living below the federal poverty line, which is an income-‐
based measure that is limited to $11,880 for a single person, $16,020 for a household of two, and $24,300 for a household of four. This means there has been a 60% rise in poverty since 1968.
• There are 95 million people (29.6% of population) who are either poor or low-‐income (living under twice the federal poverty line). This number rises to 140 million people (43.5% of population) when using the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account critical out-‐of-‐pocket expenses for food, clothing, housing, utilities, work expenses, child care and federal subsidies.
• Looking at the 40.6 million people who fall below the poverty line: 16 million are women and 13.2 million are children; in other words, nearly three-‐quarters of people living below the poverty line are women and children.
• Poverty is still disproportionately impacting people of color. The poverty rate for White people is 8.8 % (17.3 million), 22% for African-‐Americans (9.2 million), 19.4% for Latinos (11.1 million) and 26.2 % for Native Americans (700,000). Of the 3.3 million people who live in the Puerto Rico, 1.4 million are poor (43.5%). African-‐American children have the highest poverty rate (30.9% or 3 million), followed by Latino (4.89 million or 26.6 %) and white children (4 million or 10.8% percent).
*** Additional sources for this section include: http://www.epi.org/publication/black-‐white-‐wage-‐gaps-‐expand-‐with-‐rising-‐wage-‐inequality/; http://www.realtytrac.com/statsandtrends/foreclosuretrends; https://www.theguardian.com/us-‐news/2017/dec/05/america-‐homeless-‐population-‐2017-‐official-‐count-‐crisis
Jobs, Income, Wealth and Health**** • The U.S. economy has grown more than 18 times in the past 50 years. From 1973-‐2013, productivity
went up 74.4 %, but hourly compensation only went up 9.2%. • From 2005-‐2015, all job growth was in low-‐wage, temporary, part-‐time or other non-‐permanent, casual
employment. • From 1968-‐2017, the top 1 percent’s share of the economy has nearly doubled. In 2017, 3 individuals
had a combined wealth of $248.5 billion, the same amount of wealth as the bottom 50% of U.S. households or 160 million people.
• Meanwhile, the bottom 38% of American households have 0 net worth. • Over the past 30 years, rents have gone up faster than income in nearly every urban area in the country.
At the same time, the median cost of a home has ballooned from $23,500 in 1968 to $318,700 in 2017. In December 2017, there were more than 60,000 new foreclosure filings, bringing the total of properties in foreclosure to 572,344.
• A 2009 study looked at more than 60 million people across 30 wealthy countries and found that high levels of income inequality translate to higher risks of premature death. Their research suggested than 1.5 million deaths could be avoided by reducing income inequality.
War Economy and Militarism • At height of the Vietnam War, military spending was $354 billion, today it is nearly twice that at $635
billion. 53 cents out of every discretionary dollar of our taxes goes directly to the military. City police departments are getting military weapons and equipment left over from the Pentagon’s wars. If we add up those costs of this militarized budget – which includes pending on the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border and Immigration Enforcement and Federal Prison Spending, including for the FBI -‐ we get up to 66 cents out of every federal dollar being spent on a militarized, policed and criminalized society.
• The same money could provide healthcare for at least 178 million low income people, or it could create more than 11 million good, green, union jobs, or it could get more than 71 million poor kids into Head Start or outfit 442 million households with solar electricity.
• The cumulative costs of the U.S. wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and post 9/11 Veterans Care and Homeland Security from 2001-‐2018 are estimated at $5.6 trillion.
• In 2013 about 23,000 active duty military troops were receiving food stamps. In 2015, 24% of children in schools run by the Department of Defense inside the U.S. qualified for free meals, and another 21% qualified for reduced-‐price meals.
Ecological Devastation • The number of natural disasters between 2000 and 2009 was 3 times higher than in the 1980s. • Pollution caused an estimated 9 million premature deaths in 2015 worldwide. This is 3 times as
many deaths as from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined and 15 times more than from wars and other forms of violence. Water pollution alone kills 1.8 million a year around the world.
• The U.S. is the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the world. Between 2010-‐2015, there were more than 3300 incidents of crude oil and liquefied natural gas leaks or ruptures on U.S. pipelines.
• At least 4 million families with children are being exposed to high levels of lead from drinking water and other sources. The risks fall heaviest on low-‐income, African-‐American, and Latino children.
• A 2015 EPA analysis found that the population within three miles of highly contaminated “Superfund” sites was 45.7% non-‐white. This is significantly higher than their 36.7% share of the U.S. population, even though the most impacted population is still majority white.
• There are in the U.S. 13.8 million low-‐income households that cannot afford water. This number could triple if water prices continue to rise.
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