Sanders hopes nation smitten by his mittens will back food charity push
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Bernie Sanders is turning a meme based on the mittens he wore to Joe Biden’s inauguration into a money-making opportunity – to benefit programmes like Meals on Wheels in a time of spiralling food insecurity.
Related: Biden executive orders target federal minimum wage and food insecurity
At the US Capitol on Wednesday, the independent senator from Vermont was pictured wearing chunky knitted mittens, sitting cross-legged on a folding chair, socially distanced from other guests, hunched against the cold.
The image was soon spliced into a billion social media pictures and videos, the be-mittened democratic socialist appearing from Yalta to the ranks of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the famous potters’ wheel scene in Ghost. In Wisconsin, one man even adapted a snow sculpture of the Lincoln Memorial, a pillar of American democracy, to depict Sanders and his mittens instead.
The Vermont second-grade teacher who made the mittens out of an old sweater and recycled plastic bottles and offered them on Etsy soon announced she had sold out.
“There’s no possible way I could make 6,000 pairs of mittens,” Jen Ellis told Jewish Insider, “and every time I go into my email, another several hundred people have emailed me. I hate to disappoint people, but the mittens, they’re one of a kind and they’re unique and, sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.”
I made Bernie’s mittens as a gift a couple years ago. They are made from repurposed wool sweaters and lined with fleece (made from recycled plastic bottles). #BerniesMittens pic.twitter.com/lTXFJvVy9V
— Jen Ellis (@vtawesomeness) January 21, 2020
On Sunday, a chuckling Sanders welcomed his mittens’ notoriety and described how he wanted to put it to work.
“Not only are we having fun,” the 79-year-old told CNN’s State of the Union, “what we’re doing here in Vermont, is we’re going to be selling around the country sweatshirts and T-shirts and all of the money that’s going to be raised, which I expect will be a couple of million dollars, will be going to programs like Meals on Wheels that feed low-income senior citizens.”
Food insecurity under the coronavirus pandemic has become a serious problem, among Biden’s targets in his first days as president.
“So,” Sanders added, “it turns out actually it’s a good thing, not only fun.”
On the senator’s website on Sunday morning, a $45 “Chairman Sanders” crewneck sweatshirt featuring the inauguration image was itself sold out.
