1st Protest Speaker Highlight - Jose Gispatcho Speech

 The following transcript is from a community member's powerful speech shared at the first 50501 protest, which occurred on 2.5.2025 in Indianapolis.

"Hello everyone life long Hoosier, first time speaker. I love all the support we have here today and I am so happy to meet so many like minded Hoosiers. As I’m sure many of you have experienced, going about our daily lives here can sometimes feel like we are the crazy ones with too few neighbors who share our values and our priorities. Too many diesel trucks “rollin coal” at every red light toting a MAGA flag in the back and some cursive font on a bumper sticker taken out of context from a historic legal document. I’m no one special, just a public high school educated corn fed Hoosier boy, but I wanted to share my thoughts.

 

Well here we are now, and we are not just concerned, we are loudly and repeatedly saying what Republicans in this state are too cowardly to say. We say “when Americans are down, and when our countrymen need help, like the minutemen of old we form up at the ready”. We don’t blame our fellow Americans for the state for our country, we lift them up, we help them, we teach them, they are us and we are them!

 

Republicans would rather spend a lifetime trying to oversimplify the worlds problems into a few platitudes that ultimately amount to “hey, it ain’t MY problem” while expecting the worlds woes to blow away in the wind.

 

They say “give a man a fish, and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime” and from that they say “well giving things to people is bad!” That’s not the lesson here, the lesson is that investing time in each other makes a better world for all. We do not ignore issues and struggles, we identify, discuss, and solve those problems together as we should.

 

Lately as many you of you likely know a word has been thrown around a lot regarding this administration and I want to address it. The word is fascism. I want to stop and address this word on the grounds it deserves and I want to stress: Calling Trumps administration fascist in light of recent events is NOT name calling or disputing by association. It is by definition a correct statement. If anyone thinks this word is too loaded to be used in our times I would like to read out some things that would make a political party fascist, and you tell me if any of these sound familiar:

 

* Claiming the country used to be better in the past and saying it can be that again

* Says the country is no longer great because of a growing list of “undesirables” sabotaging its success where they describe them as non human

* Advocates rounding up and mass deportations of these people despite citizenship status

* Says the government is ineffective and full of red tape causing a need for someone to “take action” and go outside the normal legal boundaries to “save it”

* Discusses blood poisoning, or “blood purity”

* Being pro corporations even if those corporation leverage literal slave labor or its modern equivalent

* Disgust at the idea of talking things through

 

Did any of that sound familiar? This isn’t some word game being played, this is an apt description of something the world already solved before. This country lost over half a million young men fighting fascists in the 20^th century, and now those same people are rolling in their graves having their children and grandchildren children elect and cheer for a neo-fascist regime. Don’t let those that died leave your mind as the right does, embrace the continued fight and know you are on the right side of history.

 

The right has many quips and platitudes they tout proudly to show how little they have considered in their methods of problem solving and I offer you some lines in return to justify why we are here. It’s from a beautiful lady that greets and has greeted generation after generation to our countries shores. This woman in a few lines outlines exactly what MAGA republicans are too cowardly to say hiding behind their protectionism. She says in part:

 

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossedGi to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

And thank you all for helping hold that lamp with us today. Thank you"