Phase 2, where are the young people in the Colao task force?

These days there is a lot of discussion about the task forces responsible for restarting the country, their multiplication and their composition. The writer is 25 years old, has two degrees, has finished yet another internship and, like many of his peers, is looking for work. He strikes to watch how in the Task Force led by Vittorio Colao there is not even one member under the age of 35 and it is assumed that also the composition of the others is not different. As if young people, who in any case make up 21% of the Italian population (15-34 year olds - ISTAT 2015 data), shouldn't have a say in the matter of the future of a country that needs to be reinvented after the pandemic.

It is not a question of questioning the experience and prestige of the 17 experts and technicians of the Task Force, nor of arguing that being young in itself makes one better. The intent is rather to highlight the absence of at least one member who is under 35 years old and who can compensate for his inexperience compared to older colleagues, offering a different perspective, a more modern and alternative vision.

The national debate has been monopolized by the issue of pensions for years. There gerontocratic culture rooted in this country leaves no room for the demands and priorities of the new generations. The causes are many and well known: disillusionment with politics, whether active or not (according to IPSOS data, the abstention rate of the 18-34 age group in the 2019 European elections was 50,5%), structural distortions of Italian society, the serious absence of youth policies. To these shortcomings are added the widespread laziness and lack of courage of young people, with the result of a lost, individualistic, lethargic generation: with immeasurable potential, but with the engine kept idling.

In the coming weeks, young people will be the first to be sent to the "front line", according to the phase 2 age group strategy (some are already there, such as volunteers, new medical graduates and so on). It would be hoped that their involvement would be matched by greater responsibility and participation in public life. Once this crisis has been overcome, young people will have to be able to influence public policies that are appropriate to their needs and to a new vision of the country (if not of the planet). Policies that are up to the challenges of this century. Because “it is the young people who will save the earth. Young people are the message we send to a world we will never see”, as Renzo Piano recently said. This exceptional situation could push the new generations to mobilize and get organized to shape the future, their future, and "contribute with a democratic method to determining national policy" (Article 49 of the Constitution).

Insert a young man in the Colao task force could be a purely symbolic gesture, but at the same time an important signal: it would mean starting, in the complicated process of a gradual return to normality, a profound re-evaluation of the role and weight of the younger generations in our society, seizing the outbreak of this crisis as a redemption opportunity.

The next step could be to a commission, or even a "Constituent" under 35, with the purpose of discussing, imagining and inventing a future of hope, sustainable, shareable. It's needed, and it's needed now. As was written in a recent article in the Financial Times published by Internazionale (n. 1353) “redistribution will return to the center of the debate, calling into question the privileges of the oldest and richest. (…) The leaders who won the war did not wait for the end of the conflict to plan for the future”.