Bernie Sanders picks up megaphone, walks union picket in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS, Ia. – Bernie Sanders grabbed a sign and then a megaphone as he walked a labor picket line Friday night.

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, joined perhaps 100 Cedar Rapids-area union workers in an "informational picket" outside Penford Products, a corn processor where the Bakers Confectioners Tobacco Grain Millers union local 100G is negotiating a new contract with the management.

Sanders strolled up to the picket shortly before 5:30 p.m., picked up a sign stapled to a long stick and marched with the crowd to a park across the street from the plant.

"I want you to know being out on a picket line and standing with workers is something I have been doing for my entire life," Sanders told the crowd. "I did when I was mayor of the city of Burlington, did in Congress, did it in the Senate. This is what I do."

anders' boisterous, arm-waving speech went deep into the details of the union local's disagreement with Penford – even calling out the CEO by name and criticizing her pay package.

At one point the microphone went out, but he continued in a loud, hoarse voice until the man who had been leading chants during the picket approached and handed him a megaphone, which he took and used to finish his speech.

The president of local 100G, Chris Eby, said his organization has not endorsed Sanders' candidacy, but expressed his own appreciation for the senator's campaign.

"You're going to see today he doesn't just talk the talk," Eby said shortly before Sanders arrived. "He's going to come out and join us and walk the walk."

Another union man attending the picket, David Tallier, said he would support Sanders in the Democratic caucuses, calling him "someone I feel I can trust."

"He's just there for us," said Tallier, a maintenance worker for Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids. "It doesn't matter if you're an immigrant or born here, I think he represents everybody."