Will Obama Bring the StockYards Back to Chicago?

July 22, 2007 -- DES MOINES, Iowa - Barack Obama is telling union activists he would walk a picket line as president if organized labor helps elect him in 2008.

The Illinois senator also criticized President Bush's policies toward working people.

"We are facing a Washington that has thrown open its doors to the most anti-union, anti-worker forces we've seen in generations," Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery last night. "What we need to make real today is the idea that in this country we value the labor of every American."

Obama was scheduled to speak to Iowa's largest union representing more than 20,000 state workers.

"I stood on the picket line and marched with workers at the Congress Hotel in Chicago last week," Obama said.

"I had marched with them four years earlier and I told them when I left that if they were still fighting four years from now, I'd be back on that picket line as president of the United States," he added.

NYPost