Sanders hopes nation smitten by his mittens will back food charity push

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.

Biden executive orders target federal minimum wage and food insecurity

Read more

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.”

Jen Ellis
(@vtawesomeness)

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

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.