Poet Amanda Gorman 'gutted' over banning of her inauguration poem

Poet Amanda Gorman has a message for the Miami-Dade school that removed “The Hill We Climb,” the poem she wrote for President Joe Biden’s inauguration, from the elementary student section: She will fight this and all book bans and she’s not alone. “Together, this is a hill we won’t just climb, but a hill we will conquer,” she said in a statement about the ban.

Bob Graham Education Center, which teaches kindergarten through eighth grade students, removed Gorman’s poem from the shelves for elementary students on the basis of one complaint from a far-right activist with documented ties to white supremacist and insurrectionist groups.

This is the passage the parent, Daily Salinas, highlighted in her complaint as proof the poem “is not educational and have indirectly [sic] hate messages.” This is the “hate” message:

We've braved the belly of the beast,

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,

and the norms and notions

of what just is

isn't always just-ice.

And yet the dawn is ours

before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we've weathered and witnessed

a nation that isn't broken,

but simply unfinished