Your guide to the First Amendment

ACLU Hawaii proved it can go old-school with its outreach to people wanting to exercise their constitutional rights. The civil-liberties nonprofit has produced 10,000 paper copies of its new First Amendment Toolkit outlining rights and advice ("Don’t touch a police officer," for one) for people wanting to protest near the coming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings.

But a demonstration these days is nothing without the Internet, so of course the same content in the four-page newsprint flyer is available online, too (acluhi.org/know-your-rights/demonstrating-at-apec/). There’s even a scannable barcode in the tabloid that a protester can use to get a copy on their phone when they’re not busy uploading to YouTube.

Aloha, and welcome to Constitutionville.

Public housing looking better

After living in squalid conditions for so many years, the residents of what used to be called Kuhio Park Terrace are seeing a transformation: Workers for Michaels Development Co. are hard at work, remodeling apartments and adding floor space, new kitchen cabinets and appliances. But it’s more than an extreme home makeover; it’s a change in the narrative for the public housing project. For years, the only stories coming out of KPT, now known as the Towers of Kuhio Park, have been about crime and the appalling lack of basic maintenance in the 1960s-era buildings.

Now, thanks to a partnership between the Hawaii Public Housing Authority and Michaels Development, residents are talking about how great their apartments look, and how happy they are to live in them. Now that’s progress.