What CANDIL has been up to

CANDIL recently held a strategy meeting on Saturday September 11/04. It was an excellent day with lots of ideas put forth and a great review of what we've been doing this past year. CANDIL has organized and participated in many demonstrations, vigils and protests. We supported 3 members on trips to Iraq this year to bring back information and help organize projects in Iraq. Two of our members met with the US Consul General in April to talk about the crises in Falluja. In conjunction with Project Ploughshares we organized the Candidate debate on Missile Defence and Iraq before the federal election and much much more!!

One of our key projects is Building Bridges. Julie Hrdlicka, the office co-ordinator of CANDIL, has been speaking in classrooms around the city and looks forward to carrying on with this as the new school year begins. She is also working with a group of homeschoolers who have an interest in social justice and environmental sustainability.

Currently CANDIL is raising awareness against violence with our Blue Ribbon Campaign which runs for the month of September.

CANDIL continues to publish its newsletter Non-Standard Issue. Our September issue is out now which focuses on Colombia and the ongoing violence and social justice issues in that country, as well as the impact of US involvement. The next issue will be out mid-October and will be a slightly lighter look at the upcoming US election.

CANDIL presents a free movie night on the last friday of every month. On Sept 24 we showed Breaking the Silence, John Pilger's latest documentary focusing on the 'War on Terror'.
On October 29 we will be showing Counting on Democracy by Greg Palast as reminder of what happened in the 2000 US election. Watch for our presentation of Coca Mama, a look at the drug trade in Latin America, in the coming months.

One of our members, Dr David Swann, will be running in the upcoming provincial election for the Alberta Liberal Party in the Mountain view riding.

CANDIL continues to support the Adopt-A-Town project, which is raising money to help rebuild the town of Jurf-al-Sakhr in Iraq, in conjunction with Life for Relief and The International Society for Peace and Human Rights.

The Canadian Peace Alliance conference takes place this November in Toronto and we are looking to send one of our members as a representative.

The Peace Fair takes place in November, at St. David's United Church, and once again CANDIL will be there. If anyone is interested in donating any craft items to CANDIL for sale at this event please contact Julie .