By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
I was thrilled to hear that Amanda Gorman was going to gift her poem This Sacred Scene to the DNC. Her spoken-word poem moved me deeply, calling out our role in the climate crisis and deftly, powerfully reframing the American dream from individual to community:
Only now, approaching this rare air
Are we aware that perhaps the American dream
Isn’t a dream at all, but instead, a dare: To dream together.
Gorman spoke with Time: “Hope isn’t something I possess — it’s something I practice. You have to wake up every day and work it like a muscle, and not in this…fake, superficial hope way where everything is fine and everything will work out, not the kind of hope that doesn’t pay attention to grief, loss, hurt, and longing. The most powerful and sustainable hope we have is hope that is invested in the totality of our human experience, and that includes the pain and the power –only then can you marshal it for worldwide change.”
This Sacred Scene
By Amanda Gorman
We gather at this hallowed place
Because we believe in the American dream.
We face a race that tests if this country
We cherish shall perish from the earth,
And if our earth shall perish from this country.
It falls to us to make sure that we do not fall,
For a people that cannot stand together cannot stand at all.
We are one family,
Regardless of religion, class or color;
For what defines a patriot
Isn’t just our love of liberty,
But our love for one another–
Loud in our country’s call.
Because while we all love freedom,
It’s love that frees us all.
Empathy emancipates,
Making us greater than hate or vanity.
That is the American promise, powerful and pure:
Divided, we cannot endure,
But united, we can endeavor to humanize our democracy,
And endear democracy to humanity.
Make no mistake, cohering is the hardest task history ever wrote.
Yet tomorrow isn’t written by the odds of hardship,
But by the audacity of our hope; by the vitality of our vote.
Only now, approaching this rare air,
Are we aware that perhaps the American dream
Isn’t a dream at all, but, instead, a dare: To dream together.
Like a million roots tethered,
Branching up humbly,
Making one tree,
This is our country:
From many, one;
From battles won,
Our freedom’s rung;
Our kingdom come
Has just begun.
We redeem this sacred scene, ready for our journey from it.
Together, we must birth this early republic
And achieve an unearthly summit.
Let us not just believe in the American Dream.
Let us be worthy of it.