We are approaching the European elections, which will open a mandate that coincides with the last years we have left to face a series of challenges – one above all the climate one – but my generation seems partly unaware of this crucial vote or disinterested in what leads.
A study conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that European voters are divided into five “crisis tribes”: 49.6 million people believe that the war in Ukraine will be the main issue impacting their future, for 58 .8 million will be immigration, 70.8 million will be the economic crisis, 73.6 million will be the pandemic, 73.5 million will be climate change.
The latter is at the top of the agenda and concerns of young people, both in Italy (as confirmed by research by Ipsos for the Catholic University) and in Europe, where 24% of those aged between 18 and 29 years see the climate crisis as the most important issue, placing it ahead of the global economic crisis (22%), the pandemic (19%) and the war in Ukraine (12%). Among the five crises, the one related to immigration obtained the lowest score: only 9%.
The polycrisis, that is, the intersection of all these critical issues, causes more fear than both each of them individually and their overall sum.
Mine is a broken generation. It is not the sequence of shocks: our parents and grandparents experienced even more intense traumas, perhaps. It is the rhythm of shocks, the feeling that the future has generationally stopped functioning as a better prospect than the present.
This status quo divides Generation Z: one part is disheartened, disillusioned or disinterested in the face of an institutional policy that seems equally disinterested in them; another part is attentive, active and combative, as it is aware that if it does not fight for its future no one will do it for it.
Some international instances, such as the mobilization for the climate in 2019 or the one for Gaza five years later, or local ones, such as the protests over high rents or the psychologist bonus, have had the merit of bringing people from the first approach to the second, and to make them understand that if they share their anxieties and break the silence they are not alone.
In our society, a certain idea about young people, who are very liked when they win sports tournaments or music contests, coexists with a sort of suspicion and a paternalistic temptation of appropriation. The moment they bring dissent, civil disobedience on the climate, the problem of unemployment, widespread mental distress, they no longer like it. When young people dare to raise their heads – when there is a “dis” in front – they are not listened to, they are repressed.
The turnout rate in elections is dramatically collapsing everywhere in the West. Citizens with a culture of voting are slowly dying, and several segments of the younger generations see electoral participation as an irrelevant act, also because much of what they care about is ignored or, worse, ridiculed.
In our country, the referendums on the decriminalization of cannabis and euthanasia, which managed to reach one million signatures thanks to an extraordinary participation of young people, were spuriously rejected by the Constitutional Court before citizens could express their opinion on the matter. It is a decision consistent with who we are, the second oldest country in the world after Japan.
In Italy, where sixteen-year-olds cannot vote (contrary to many countries close to us) and those under 25 cannot run for office (contrary to all other European countries), young people are a species at risk of extinction, but there are Still. The polycrisis situation forces them to be there. We are young people stuck on a path that we did not choose, and that if we had had the chance we would never have followed. Repression is also this: not giving a choice. Our choice is not to lower our heads. Let's not make deals, let's take to the streets.
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