In the spring of 2004 we learned Advocate Health Care wanted to build a hospital in a southwest suburb of Chicago, my home turf.

Advocate owns nine Chicago-area hospitals, one of which is Christ Hospital, where I discovered as a labor and delivery nurse in 1999 that late-term babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die with no medical intervention....

Pro-lifers immediately opposed Advocate's expansion....

We organized a protest of Advocate at a public hearing to consider its plan. It was there we first encountered the Service Employees International Union, also protesting Advocate.

Advocate, as "metropolitan Chicago's leading private provider of health care and its third largest private employer," according to an SEIU flyer, had 25,000 nonunionized workers....

Working with SEIU against Advocate was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, only I didn't realize it then....

So I introduced myself to SEIU organizer Joseph Geevarghese, saying I was glad we were on the same side.

Joseph said perhaps we could join forces. He was also working with a church organizer, he said....
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As the media started spending more time on ACORN last week, I realized it was connected to SEIU. I recognized some of its tactics.

I wondered if I had held on to that Advocate/SEIU file, now five years old. Reviewing it might be enlightening, I thought.

I did, and it was. I had kept pretty much everything - SEIU's Hospital Accountability Project newsletters, my invoices, and letters.... one from then state Sen. Barack Obama....