Archive for the ‘First Amendment’ Category

Distorted view of the First Amendment | News, Sports, Jobs – Williamsport Sun-Gazette

The National Socialist Movement, the American Nazi party, does not have a First Amendment right to rally at Brandon Park (or anywhere else) because their agenda is to encourage violence. A lawsuit is underway by the City of Charlottesville based upon the efforts of the organizers of the National Socialist Movement to both plan and encourage violence at a rally held in that city.

Our mayor and City Council are wrong to believe that there is any First Amendment right. It seems quite clear that the authorities in this city have not looked even casually at the history of the National Socialist Movement or examined their postings in connection with the event to be held in Williamsport.

Williamsport will now become known as the City of Hate. It behooves our newly elected mayor, City Council and the chief of police to do some research on this organization and to deny the permit.

A number of years ago, I received a telephone call from Mayor Campana when the Ku Klux Klan sought a permit in Williamsport. The Mayor said that because of the groups history of violence, he would not permit it. I received a similar phone call from the mayor of Montoursville. The Ku Klux Klan did not hold its rally.

After the permits were denied, the head of the Ku Klux Klan was referred to me by the ACLU in Washington, D.C. I met with the Klan head in my office for over three hours. After the meeting, I told the Klan head that I would not represent him but that there were plenty of other lawyers who had a twisted notion of the First Amendment. I encouraged the Klan leader to work through conventional, non-violent channels.

The citys chief of police later told me that the man I talked to quit leading the Klan and that the organization would not be pursuing any legal action.

Our current administration has to stand tall. Have some backbone on this issue. Hatred and incitement to violence must be opposed regardless of where those extremist views come from. The question is not one of opinion, but rather a history of violence and the promoting of behaviors that are a clear and present danger to others.

One must ask whether the mayor, City Council and chief of police have looked into the organization, its history, its social media prior to rallies around the country, and what has occurred at those other events.

I am and remain a proud civil rights lawyer. As I write this piece, I am preparing a federal complaint against a school district that denied to my client her First Amendment rights and retaliated against her for exercising those rights. The First Amendment is crucial. The document inked by our Founders was meant to be enforced.

Nevertheless, and in spite of the First Amendment, the Congress of the United States, during one of the earliest administrations, passed the Alien and Sedition Act. Under the presidency of John Adams, publicists and journalists were jailed for expressing negative views and opinions about the Federalists who were in power. This was a dark and ugly history for our nation. Other attempts to quash First Amendment rights have occurred throughout our nations history. The First Amendment must be a bulwark that stands between democracy and totalitarianism.

The Supreme Court is often quoted as having stated that no one has a right to yell fire in a crowded movie theatre. The First Amendment does not permit advocating or planning violence. People are criminally punished and go to jail who plan or try to convince others to commit violent acts. Violence is the agenda of the American Nazi Party.

No counter-demonstration or police presence will remove the stain from this citys reputation and history should it permit the Nazi event to go forward in Brandon Park. Our city officials should stand up proudly against granting this permit and should fight in the courts for the principle that violence and advocates of violence have no home in our beautiful city.

We live in an era where it seems that the First Amendment is defined by whether a particular official belongs to the left wing or right wing. Williamsport is taking an anemic stance toward a hate organization such as the Nazi party because of a misplaced and completely inaccurate view of the First Amendment. Such views are not progressive or open-minded, but rather represent the equivalent of unintended cooperation with forces of hate.

History has shown us that the Roosevelt administration not only failed to oppose the Nazi effort to destroy all Jews in Europe, but through its indifference actually encouraged the Holocaust. The Roosevelt administration was filled with anti-Semites who acted as a silent cheering section for the goals of the Third Reich. Our public officials must be cognizant of history. Liberalism and open-mindedness should never be an open highway to permit the promulgation of violence in the name of the glorious First Amendment.

The question as to whether the Nazis will be allowed to rally in Williamsport or whether the permit will be revoked is a defining moment in this citys history.

Cliff Rieders is a board-certified trial advocate in Williamsport.

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Distorted view of the First Amendment | News, Sports, Jobs - Williamsport Sun-Gazette

The First Amendment, a Philosophy Professor, and Pronouns – Daily Nous

No, professors, the First Amendment does not protect you from receiving a warning from your universityaboutviolating its nondiscrimination policies when you talk to or about your transgender students in discriminatory ways in class.

Nicholas Meriwether, professor of philosophy at Shawnee State University in Ohio,had used sir while responding in his Fall 2018 political philosophy class to a transgender woman student. After class that day, the student asked Dr. Meriwether to refer to her as a woman and use feminine pronouns (she, her) or titles (Miss, Ms.) when addressing or talking about her.He refused. Instead, he resorted to referring tothe student by her last name only, while continuing to address other students in class as Mr. and Ms. followed by their last name.

Nicholas Meriwether

The student filed a complaint with the university, which investigated and presented Dr. Meriwether with a written warning to not violate the schools nondiscrimination policies. (See previous post on this here.)

Dr. Meriwether then sued Shawnee State University, arguing that the warning had violated hisConstitutional rights. From the initial decision:

He is a professing evangelical Christian and member of the Presbyterian Church of America with sincerely-held religious beliefs about gender, and he does not believe that an individuals gender can be changed after the moment of conception He objects to communicating what he believes to be a University mandated ideological message regarding gender identity that he does not believe and which he believes contradicts (and would force him to violate) his sincerely held religious beliefs.

Meriwether sought a judgment that the schools nondiscrimination policies and practices violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Shawnee State University officials named in the lawsuit asked the court to dismiss it.

This past September the court did dismiss the case, making use of various precedents, including the judgments that Universities may sanction professors whose pedagogical attitudes and teaching methods do not conform to institutional standards and that although public universities may not force professors to endorse or eschew specific viewpoints, the First Amendment does not bar a public university from requiring that its faculty treat each other and their students with civility.

Meriwether appealed to the district court, which rejected his appeallast month. Meriwether has now filed a further appeal.

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The First Amendment, a Philosophy Professor, and Pronouns - Daily Nous

Sixteen Stormy Days: Tripurdaman Singh’s account of the First Amendment to Indian Constitution makes for… – Firstpost

Its fair to say that the average Indians faith in the judiciary and the Constitution in general is at an all-time low. A few days ago, we learned that former Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, will be a Rajya Sabha MP soon. This is less than a year after he presided over his own sexual harassment allegation hearing just one of the many unpopular decisions he took in the last year of his career, all of which favoured the Narendra Modi government (Ayodhya, the Rafale deal and so on). The most contentious issue in India (other than the governments handling of COVID-19, of course) today, after all, is an act that many of us feel is unconstitutional (violates Article 14, for starters) and yet, the fight against the CAA is led by street protests, not legal challenges.

When did the executive branch begin to bend the judiciary to their (political) will in India and how? Sixteen Stormy Days (Penguin Random House India), a new non-fiction book by Tripurdaman Singh, tries to answer this question and address the long-term effects of the First Amendment to the Indian constitution.

Sixteen Stormy Days, by Tripurdaman Singh

As the author says, How did this magnificent Constitution, the most elaborate declaration of human rights yet framed go from being a charter of freedom & fulfillment of the dreams of Indias people in 1950 to being an impediment in the will of the same people by 1951?

Why did Jawaharlal Nehru push so hard for the First Amendment in 1951, especially in the face of challenges both within the provisional parliament (general elections were still a few months away) and from various High Courts? The answer is both simple and not. The objective was three-fold: the abolition of the zamindari system (the impediment being the right to property), the application of caste-based reservations (the impediment being the right to equality) and the censoring of publications deemed as national security threats (the impediment being freedom of speech).

Each of the three objectives, therefore, involved a clash between political objectives and fundamental rights. This brought Nehru back to the original question: why do we have fundamental rights in the first place? Is it not to protect the most vulnerable among us? Nehru was certainly correct in his over-arching view of things that as long as structural inequities existed in the Indian state (the caste system, for instance, something that persists to this day and is easily Indias biggest social justice issue), fundamental rights could be misused to privilege the powerful over the weak. Zamindari did need to go, caste-based reservations were needed in India (still are).

As part of its agenda, the Congress wanted to abolish the zamindari system as soon as possible. Obviously, faced with the overnight evaporation of their power, the zamindars of Bihar in particular fought back hard, helped by allies like Rajendra Prasad, Indias first President. On 12 March 1951, the Patna High Court struck down the Bihar Land Reforms Act, saying that it violated Article 14 of the Constitution (which pertains to the equality of all citizens in the eyes of the law).

In a searing indictment of the Congress party and the Bihar governments manifest authoritarianism, the judges denounced the Act as an unconstitutional law enacted in the belief that the right of the plaintiffs to challenge it and ask for relief from its operation has been taken away. The courts decision shook the government and the Congress party to its core. It shattered the illusion of the current regime having inherited the absolute power of the Raj. The Bihar Land Reforms Act bit the dust. An entire pillar of the Congress partys social agenda stood virtually crippled.Singhs research is thorough. He excels in the blow-by-blow accounts of those crucial weeks when Nehru tried to bring his allies and his opponents around to his point of view. (Realpolitik is a thorny affair at the best of times, one that Singh is clearly familiar with). Immediately after the Patna High Court ruling, Nehru had a fairly strong-worded statement for the press:

If the Constitution is interpreted by the Courts in a way which comes in the way of the wishes of the legislature in regard to basic social matters, then it is for the legislatures to consider how to amend the Constitution so that the will of the people as represented in the legislature should prevail.

Most students of history and/or political science will, I am sure, find the back-and-forth between Nehru and BR Ambedkar, or between Prasad and Nehru, compelling reading. This is among the reasons why Singhs work is such a valuable resource. To his credit, the book is also accessibly written, for the most part, only slipping into legalese at a few places every now and then small blemishes in an otherwise thoroughly professional job.

I was also impressed by the fact that Singh, despite his Bharatiya Janata Party affiliations (his father Mahendra Aridaman Singh re-joined the BJP in 2017; at various points through the 90s and 2000s, he had been a part of the Samajwadi Party and Janta Dal as well), isnt interested in painting Nehru as an outright villain (although predictably, his book has been gleefully reported on by right-wing publications with a history of Islamophobia and publishing falsehoods like Swarajya magazine, complete with headlines blasting Nehru). As the author himself pointed out in a recent interview, he saw Nehru as a hard-nosed politician (and not as the saboteur of fundamental rights in India, despite his stand here). Hopefully, this sense of nuance also reaches Singhs colleagues in the BJP soon.

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Sixteen Stormy Days: Tripurdaman Singh's account of the First Amendment to Indian Constitution makes for... - Firstpost

In times of housing crises, Washingtons old squatters rights law is put to the test – Seattle Times

Police entered the Kent home with their guns drawn. Angela Simmons panickedand held up her hands.

Crisis and opportunity had collided to bring Simmons into the Kent homein 2013. In the aftermath of the recession, when foreclosed houses around King County sat empty,Simmons was introduced to an ancient legal principle called adverse possession that resulted in her living in one suchabandoned home that she hoped one day would be hers.

Some may think of it as squatters rights, but adverse possession, enshrined in 19th century Washington law and common law going back centuries, theoretically can provide a path to property ownership through moving into an abandoned home without permission, paying taxes on the property and maintaining the place as an owner would. The challenge is to avoid getting caught.

But Simmonsnever thought that what she was doing could be considered criminal.

She wasnt the only one.

A man namedNaziyrYishmaEltaught a program in south King County on financial self-empowerment, including a course on adverse possession. At that time, several people, including Simmons,had signed ontoYishmaElsprogram, paid to become members of what he called the Association of Autonomous People. Then, some moved into foreclosed or otherwise vacant homes.

It was a perfect storm of factors: after the housing bubble burst, mortgages became harder to get for some. At the same time, homelessness also started to rise in King County beginning in 2012.

But adverse possession also often attracts attention from law enforcement and prosecutors, and both forces came down hard on YishmaEl. For his business advising people on financial empowerment and how to use the adverse possession law,YishmaElwas charged with theft and conspiracy but acquitted by a jury for all but one misdemeanor the unlawful practice of law which the state Supreme Court upheld last month.

Back in 2013,Simmons exchanged emails withYishmaEl, who sent her information on Washingtons adverse possession process and a spreadsheet of vacant homes.

SoSimmons, then working in city government,looked up the laws and even asked the attorneys she knew about adverse possession. It was real, they told her, though they didnt know how anybody mightactually goabout it.

For Simmons, the prospect of owning her own home in the area the ultimate stability for her kids looked very far away, even on a government salary.Soshetook the plunge. Shesettled on a four-bedroom home in a suburban Kentculde sac.

The home was in dire need of repair, so Simmons labored for weeks to fix up the house, remodeling the kitchen and roof. She hired a landscaper, installed an alarm and painted an eggplant accent wall.

It didnt last long. Shortly after Simmons moved in,a neighbor called the police.

An ancient law

Squatting, adverse possession and homesteading all have long histories in Washington state. Homesteaders played a major role in settling the Northwest, often outside the bounds of what waslegal. Many white settlerswho started farms in the Washington Territory before the land waseven surveyed, including on Native land, were later grantedlegal ownershipof it by the U.S. government.

Squatting in vacant buildings in Seattlealsoserved as amajorprotest tool of activistsin the 90s.After protesters agitating for more low-income housing occupiedabandoned buildings,two of those buildings were redeveloped to house people with low incomes and formerly homeless people.

The lesser-known law of adverse possession has been on the books since the late 19th century, though in recent years, activists have suggested adverse possession as a common-sense way to combat the homelessness and affordable housing crisis.

Prosecutorsalleged thatYishmaEltook advantage of people living at the margins through his business, for which he charged $7,000 for membership.YishmaElcountered that he warned his clients he was not a lawyer and advised them that the process wouldnt be easy.

I explained to each and every one of them, even on the day that this happened, look, the cops are going to be on there, he said. Youre going to have to fight this.

In California,community organizer Steven DeCaprioused the states adverse possession law toadvocate for people experiencing homelessness and to successfully occupyan abandoned home.

Two decades ago, DeCaprio found himself homeless in Oakland after losing a jobat Whole Foods. He had already seen squats in Europe protests that eventually blossomed into communities with schools and music venues while on tour with his punk band.

I just started researching and looking into it and the phrase adverse possession came up and I looked into it and eventually started squatting and litigating those squats, DeCaprio said.

DeCapriofound himself in and out of court, and in and out of various homes he and others attempted to occupyin the Bay Area. He founded an organization, Land Action, to help people do the same.

After more than a decade of fixing up a long-abandoned home, DeCaprio eventually acquired the title through adverse possession.His story made national headlines and wound up in an online presentation ofYishmaEls still available to watch on YouTube.

But in Washington, owning a home through adverse possession is much more difficult because of the length of time involved. California only requires five years of occupying a home intended for adverse possession; Washington in most cases requires 10.

Its not usually a successful strategy just because the period of time is so long, says EduardoPealver, a property law expert and dean of Cornell Law School. Among the ways to acquire property, its one of the riskier ones.

Typically, before that 10 yearperiod is up, an owner will show up to kick you out. Plus, theres potential criminal liability,Pealversaid, as if youre breaking and entering onto the property.

But the switch that flips when the clock runs out thats what makes it enjoyable to teaching students about adverse possession,Pealversaid.

Because its so counterintuitive,Pealversaid. Youre engaging in trespass and thats bad, but if you do it long enough you become the owner.

A long road to get back on their feet

When Simmons explained to the Kent police what was going on,she handed them a packet of paperwork she had filed with King County, including a notice of adverse possession.

Police chalked the dispute up to a civil matter meaning they couldnt do anything about it and left.

Then, shortly after her interaction with police, Simmons found out the home was being put up for auction? Itleft her scrambling.Simmonshad sunk an estimated $5,000 into the home, all of which went to waste. She had paidYishmaEl $2,500.

Others who learned about adverse possession from YishmaEl had worse outcomes. Holli Gaines was homeless with her son and her newborn, living out of her car, for more than two months after she was arrested for burglary in ahomeshe found throughYishmaEls course. (The burglary charge was later dropped). Another woman who followed the adverse possession course lost all her family photos after she was arrested.

Unpopular views

On a recent Friday afternoon,YishmaEl, now 50, had just learned that the Washington Supreme Court had upheld his misdemeanor conviction. It frustrated him. He considered his business and what he advised his clients a matter of his First Amendment rights.

There was no responsibility or accountability on the police,YishmaElsaid of the justices decision. He believes the charges on which some of his clients were arrested never would have held up in court.

By his own account,YishmEelhad spent much of his early life angry. Angry at the bullies in his Omaha neighborhood who targeted his family because they were Black. Angry at the system.

And even with this adverse possession, in a way, it was kind of my way of thumbing my nose to the system,YishmaElsaid. Weve got one of the most prosperous countries in the world, we have homeless people, we have people that work full time job, they dont get a high wage, but theyre on the verge of being homeless.

YishmaElstill fiercely believes in the potential of adverse possession and is convinced it could be a partial solution to the regions current homelessness crisis. Hes also considering taking his unlawful practice of law ruling to federal court as a First Amendment challenge.

King County prosecutors have a different view ofYishmaEl. To them, he was an opportunist who already had an embezzlement conviction on his record and took advantage of people on the margins during an economic crisis.

You cant just walk into a home and claim itsyours,King County senior deputy prosecuting attorney Jennifer Atchison said.

DeCaprio, the man who successfully used adverse possession in California,agrees withYishmaElsargument whileskeptical of his business model. He calledthe recent Supreme Court ruling an affront to freedom of speech, the right to organize, the right to engage in public discourse, and opens the door for unlimited targeting of individuals who hold unpopular views.

As for Simmons, seven years after she attempted to find a home she could own, shes still renting. Until last year, her daughter still asked about when the family might go back to the big Kent house.

She still wants a stable home for her kids,now determined to do it the hard way.

She is convinced her best shot at that in King Countys tight real estate market is to wait until another economic downturn, when more houses might go up for auction at cheaper prices.

Atchison,the King Countyprosecutor,believes that another economic downturn will almost certainly resultin morecases likeYishmaEls, when homes areforeclosedonand people see an opportunity.

But ifYishmaElsclients had stayed in the homes long enough, could they have succeeded?

Atchison paused before answering. Possibly.

This story has been corrected to reflect the proper spelling of Eduardo Pealvers name.

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In times of housing crises, Washingtons old squatters rights law is put to the test - Seattle Times

FIRST FIVE: In crisis times, balancing safety and freedom – hays Post

Lata Nott is chief content officer of the Freedom Forum.

In times of crisis, safety and freedom may seem like theyre at odds with each other. A society that respects individual liberty cant implement the same kinds of drastic laws and policies that a more authoritarian one can.

This puts more of an onus on citizens of a democracy to make responsible choices. As we face a virus that we can easily pass on without realizing it, that may not cause any symptoms in those who are young and healthy but is potentially deadly to the elderly and those with preexisting conditions, we need to keep in mind that our independent media and civil society can be assets in this fight, as long as we balance our personal freedoms with care and compassion for each other.

As I write this column,7,038 people have tested positive forCOVID-19 in the United States. The highly contagious nature of the virus has led Ohio to postpone its presidential primary, Washington and Maryland to shut down all restaurants and bars (except for delivery and takeout) and California to call for all people 65 and older to shelter inside their homes. More than 30 states have closed their schools. On Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that no gatherings of 50 people or more be held in the U.S. for the next eight weeks. On Monday, it amended thatwarning to apply to gatherings of more than 10 people. Imcertain that by the time you read this,there will be more cases of COVID-19, as well as more shutdowns, both voluntary and mandated by state and local officials.

All of this was unimaginable last week. Just last month, the coronavirus seemed like a rather distant problem,even though the firstconfirmed case in the U.S. occurred in late January. We had several weeks to observe Chinas handling ofCOVID-19and at first,a lotof our conversations had a tone of reluctant admiration for howswiftly an authoritarian government couldact in the face of an outbreak. In a matter of days, the Chinese government had quarantined entire cities, suspended travel, closed schools and businesses and built two new specialized hospitals. What democracy could matchthat?

It didnt take long forthe truth to come to light. Not that the Chinese government had been censoring information and violating civil liberties that was sort of a given but that censoring information and violating civil liberties actually made the outbreak worse. Chinas suppression of news about the outbreak prevented health care practitioners and individuals from being able to take appropriate precautions and hindered officials from being able to coordinate a response. As this personal essay from an anonymous resident of Wuhan put it, Before this coronavirus, I always thought it was OK to sacrifice some level of democracy and freedom for better living conditions. But now I have changed my attitude. Without democracy and freedom, the truth of the outbreak in Wuhan would never be known.

Of course, now that its our turn to deal with the virus, its hard to argue that were doing much better. For weeks, the Trump administration downplayed the severity of the situation, contradicting public health experts and news media reports and delaying containment and mitigation efforts. According to The Washington Post, early problems with manufacturing coronavirus tests, along with an initial decision to test only a narrow set of people and delays in expanding testing to other labs, gave the virus a head start to spread undetected and helped perpetuate a false sense of security that leaves the United States dangerously behind. Officials in China are reportedly watching our mishandling of the outbreak with a mix of shock and pleasure. They find it hard to believe that the worlds top superpower might be bungling its response to the virus, even after having had weeks to prepare for its possible arrival.

As the national security law blog Lawfare has pointed out, many observersare using the coronavirus as a proxy war for democracies versus authoritarian systems. This is,of course, an oversimplification, but it does highlight an important truth civil liberties do have an impact on how governments deal with crises. Our freedoms of press and speech ensure the free flow of information, but they also allow misinformation to spread. And while South Korea, a fellow democracy but one with less regard for civil liberties,was able to curtail its COVID-19 outbreak by forcibly shutting downa series of churches where the virus initially spread, its hard to imagine an American government official doing the same. Such an action, might register to many Americans as an egregious violation of basic First Amendment instincts regarding the freedom of religion, right to assemble and separation of church and state.

Our state, city and federal officials do have the power to place people in isolation or quarantine, but that power is tempered by the Constitution (the government cannot confine people arbitrarily and without adequate explanation) and by the norms of our society (the impact on liberty means that these are considered measures of last resort). Officials in the U.S. are more likely to recommend that people voluntarily practice social distancing. And even when they do make some aspects of this behavior compulsory, these policies arent nearly as draconian as they would be in an authoritarian system. WhenOhio Gov. Mike DeWine ordered bars, restaurants and recreation centers closed,he added, we hope that Ohioans will follow this advice. Just as with every other law or rule, you cant enforce it every time. Compare this to language a Chinese party committee used to discourage citizens from hiding infections: Whoever deliberately delays or conceals reporting for the sake of their own interests will be forever nailed to historys pillar of shame.

Our democratic approach means that we run the risk of our citizens not taking the warnings seriously. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie observed on Monday that, There are still too many Americans going out to restaurants, bars and other public areas as if this is business as usual. In a way, this is the cost of our freedoms. Weve been advised, whether we are healthy or ill, to practice social distancing, by minimizing contact with other people, limiting nonessential travel, working from home and avoiding gatherings. But for most of us, this isnt a mandate. Instead, its a choice we make every time we cancel plans, stay in our homes and forego human contact for another day. These decisions might not make much of a difference to your personal health and safety, but can have an outsized impact on the health and safety of others. As the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, has said, I think we as a nation have to get into a place of not just thinking about ourselves, but thinking about everybody else around us, and particularly the most vulnerable people those who are older and those people with chronic diseases. Young people may have a relatively low risk of serious illness, kids seem to have a very low risk, but if you want to avoid what could be the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, then it is incumbent on all of us to severely limit our social interactions. We need to ask the question about every interaction we have and whether it is necessary or not.

It can be quite daunting to realize that flattening the curve slowing the rate of new infections in order to buy researchers more time to develop vaccines and give hospitals some respite is a responsibility that falls on all of us as individuals. But the thing about democracies is that theyre fundamentally optimistic about human nature. We give people civil liberties, knowing full well that some will abuse those rights, because we expect that, on the whole, most will use them wisely. We protect heinous speech, false information andpointless assembly from government crackdowns because we dont want to risk infringing on valuable speech, information and assembly and with that there isaninherentassumption that its worth it, that the good outweighs the bad.

There is no requirement that you exercise your freedoms responsibly, but the fact that you have them reflects the underlying belief that you will.

Lata Nott is chief content officer of the Freedom Forum.Contact her via email at[emailprotected], or follow her on Twitter at@LataNott.

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FIRST FIVE: In crisis times, balancing safety and freedom - hays Post