Bernie Sanders’ xenophobic message for Labor Day

Bernie Sanders supporters are circulating this Labor Day meme: “What corporations have done is shut down factories in this country & moved abroad where they pay workers pennies an hour. Forcing American workers to compete against Vietnamese workers who earn 56 cents an hour is a failed policy.”

Now there you have Bernie Sanders in a nutshell. A man without an international bone in his body, a candidate who pits US working people against the working people of other countries & doesn’t want them showing up on our borders trying to get away from sweatshops.

The appropriate response to sweatshop economics is to call it chickens coming home to roost after decades of US workers being privileged at the expense of other workers all over this globe. Now we feel entitled to jobs & wages that sweatshop workers are doing dirt cheap & under inhumane conditions.

The appropriate political response is to call on US workers to drop the xenophobia & identify with the struggles of working people around the world against sweatshops under the guiding mantra that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” You can say, well that’s just a socialist utopian thing. But if you’re looking at economic realities with a hard-nose you can see it’s really the only strategy for survival.