“We are raising funds to support a critical legal defense in the fight against unchecked corporate power and a system that continues to favor the few over everyone else. This case isn’t just about one individual—it’s about challenging a status quo that protects the interest of the powerful at the expense of justice and fairness,” read one of the fundraising pages that was quickly removed by GoFundMe.
I mean, the vast majority of poor and uneducated voted for Privatized Healthcare, so that’s not really true. Plus, Luigi wasn’t exactly poor, he worked in the tech industry.
Working in the tech industry isn’t enough money to be immune from worries health care costs. A bad injury or illness can rack up hundreds of thousands or even millions in bills.
A kid who’s been out of school for a few years could maybe have made a few hundred thousand. There are rare unicorns that might get totally insane compensation right out of school but I doubt there are many 26 year olds getting 1 million+ total compensation in tech.
Anyway, making a few hundred thousand a year isn’t poor but when you’re looking at healthcare, political influence or the legal system, that money most certainly isn’t rich.
He’s from a rich family. He went to a $40k/year all-boys private high school and was valedictorian.
Is being valedictorian a proof of financial situation? Genuine question.
Not proof but high grades are definitely correlated with family income.
A friend of mine had a very well paying job in tech. Then she had a major injury. Without money paid by her well off parents she would have died. Insurance was stingy as hell.
Cool cool cool, so she wasn’t really poor.
Ok, so now instead of ‘eat the rich’ we’re going ‘eat everyone except for the absolute poor’, right?
I’m just saying the image most people have of Luigi Mangione is pure fiction.
The rich should always have been afraid, but that is besides the point that the best possible outcome for all of us is to become real political activists and help elect people who will bring about real change without encouraging violence in the streets. Or at the very least have some way to organize to the point of actually agreeing on which targets are greenlit, but that’s basically impossible. Just yesterday I saw some kid talk about offing the Funko Pop CEO for taking down Itch Io, another dude advocating arson on a McDonalds in the mall.
With this best outcome I agree, it would be nice if there were less violence, not more.
The danger is that those less well-off people who are currently supporting privatized healthcare will see actions like this, hear the conversations around it, and figure out what the real issue is, unless the media obfuscates it with spin.
And this guy may have been fairly well off (his family apparently are wealthy). But he doesn’t have to be poor to get people thinking and talking.
I was working in tech when I became disabled. I wasn’t rich and I would have become homeless if I didn’t have a partner’s income to fall back on.
Tech isn’t some magical gold mine.
He had a masters in Computer Science from University of Pennsylvania (Ivy League, founded before the USA), graduated a private high school as valedictorian, and prosecutors are claiming he was carrying $10,000 in cash when he was arrested.
Tech was a magical gold mine to this kid, but rich parents didn’t hurt either.
I thought it was Engineering, not CompSci? (Not that it really changes anything about the point)
Yup sorry, Masters in Science and Engineering, Bachelors in Comp Sci
You don’t know that. His grandfather was wealthy. He’s one of, IIRC, 37 grandchildren. That doesn’t mean he is wealthy. Yes, much more privileged than most of us, but that doesn’t mean he was rolling in cash. Even if he was, so what? He was still fighting against an unjust system.
And he disputed in court that that cash was his–notably, while not disputing that the gun was his. I’ll trust an average person over a cop trying to get a big win any day. They plant plenty of false evidence.
$10,000 would be a weird thing to plant, nobody would have questioned Cocaine. That’s more money than most people his age have ever had in savings total.
It’s not that weird if you think about it. They could be trying to portray him as a flight risk since he also had his passport.
He already fled the state where the crime took place, seems like portraying him as a flight risk would have been easy. Are we arguing the passport was also planted?
No, and that’s not how assessing flight risk works. I’m not saying that he necessarily isn’t a flight risk. He did have his passport on him. It just sounds like there is the possibility that law enforcement added extra “evidence” so that they could be sure he wouldn’t be let out on bail.
If money was the only difference between flight risk and not then fundamentally the concept of Bail wouldn’t make any sense.
EDIT: It also doesn’t make sense for other reasons, but thats besides the point.