Could Youth Engagement Have Stopped Luigi Mangione?
A young man has been murdered and children are without a father, while a young person has allegedly committed murder, likely spending the rest of his life in prison. There are many lessons we can learn from here, and one of them focuses on engaging youth throughout our society.
While investigators are searching for causes and talking heads are announcing their theories, one thing is increasingly obvious about the man suspected of killing a healthcare CEO Brian Thompson (1974-2024): He was acting as a disconnected, disheartened and determined murderer intent on making things different in the world.
According to a handwritten manifesto found, suspected killer Luigi Mangione (b. 1998) appears to have felt the world is in such terrible shape that he had to do something drastic to make it change. Apparently, Mangione wrote about his "both his motivation and mindset," according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Another NYPD official said he wrote about his, "ill will toward corporate America" and wrote, “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” Apparently, the note listed "a few false or misleading statistics about America’s health-care system" and then it said companies “abuse our country for immense profit."
Like Mangione, a lot of young people today see the world heading towards disaster. Research consistently shows that youth are concerned about healthcare, the climate crisis, education, the economy, and so much more. However, the average young person with these concerns does not try to make change by gunning someone down on the street.
The truth is that generations of young adults, children and youth have repeatedly met the challenge of social decline by showing the world that there are practical, purposeful and substantial ways we can all transform the world we share, shift the systems we are all subjected to, and create progress in places, issues and among groups that seem Irretractable. This has been going on for decades, and its not just the Gretas and Malalas of the world. Instead, it’s the rank-and-file young people, the everyday students, the commonplace children and youth who are taking action for positive change.
What's different between these young people and Mangione?
Maybe the answer comes from his manifesto, where he labelled himself as “the first to face [the problem] with such brutal honesty.” This falsehood can be better understood through the lens of engagement, or lack of it. The media is telling us that Mangione after graduating valedictorian from a private high school in 2020, getting a masters degree at Penn State, and being socially connected for a long time, he separated himself from friends and family for six months before he allegedly killed Thompson.
We are left wondering whether he had no idea about his peers and people who are younger than him who are collectively doing substantial things peacefully he thought he could do alone through violence? Did he know about...
These real actions creating real change, while described by my friend Wendy Lesko as youth infusion and intergenerational community organizing, are commonly summarized as youth engagement, which I have advocated for throughout my career. As I’ve written before, “Youth engagement happens when young people have sustained connections anywhere in their life. Youth engagement can happen throughout the lives of children and youth, including within themselves, in the immediate world around them, throughout society in general, and across the entirety of the world. The sustained connections they make can be emotional, psychological, or cognitive and can happen personally and socially.”
After more than 25 years collaborating directly with youth and adults working together to transform society in positive, powerful ways, this tragedy is devastating to me. Where was the sense of possibility, hope or perspective that could have prevented this outcome?
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In 2023, I co-wrote a book with J. Cynthia McDermott called Democracy Deficit Disorder: Learning Democracy with Young People. In our book, we diagnose the raging disengagement facing youth today, and how that in turn drives not only their connection to their families, schools and communities, but is also damaging our democratic society. Our book diagnoses much of the disengagement in our world today as the cause of tragedies such as this murder. However, we also prescribe the cure that prevent democracy deficit from becoming a disease: We must, in every corner of every community throughout our society, seek to engage every young person, everywhere, all the time. Will cannot be 100% successful, but any increase is better than none; any decrease is a danger to us all.
If we allow it, this horrific event can show us the utter necessity of engaging youth by teaching them how to choose positive actions with meaningful purposes for powerful outcomes. By becoming engaged, young people can believe in democracy. If they believe in democracy, we can show youth the good things they can do to make a change in their own lives and in the world, including healthcare, politics, culture and everywhere else.
The antidote to the healthcare industry is the opposite of what caused this problem in the first place: Becoming disengaged allowed a young person to murder someone in cold blood; becoming engaged will all other young people to fix the system he thought he was addressing, and much more.
We can prevent future tragedies by teaching children and youth about the power we all must make positive change throughout our world. We can eliminate the cynical disdain apparent in the musings of this alleged murderer by becoming absolutely clear on the positive purpose, power and potential of all young people everywhere. We can do that through intentional, focused and substantive youth engagement. This will defeat the democracy deficit and save the lives of countless people who might otherwise be lost to its terrible effects, this one included.
About the Author: Adam F.C. Fletcher is co-founder of the Freechild Institute for Youth Engagement and a consultant and educator who teaches organizations foster youth voice, facilitate youth-adult partnerships, and infuse Meaningful Student Involvement in organizations and communities around the world. Learn more at freechild.org.
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1wNo. Universal healthcare could've stopped Luigi.
retired
1wSAdly we will never know what was missing in his life but we do know the consequences of not being engaged in a healthy way
"Why Aren't We Doing This! Collaborating with Minors in Major Ways"
1wYes and adults must learn to go the extra mile to demonstrate that they really want to engage “with” young people, especially those understandably. distrustful of older peopl and corrupt public and private institutions.