lisa l. maki law

New Installation at the GE/MOBIL/BP/AT&T Sponsored Smithsonian Institute, formerly a museum.

Title of Installation: A Jury Box

Enter Docent:

“Children, there was a time when the very ground you are standing on was a Country. The Country had a Constitution. The Constitution granted citizens of what we used to call the United States certain things called rights and liberties. Some were even called fundamental rights. What you are looking at now is not a set of church pews in the GE/MOBIL/BP Church. No, this is something that used to be in a building called a Court House. It is called a “Jury Box” and citizens of the United States used to sit in it and decide disputes, instead of having a King decide or a Dictator, or GE/MOBIL/BP who pays something called an arbitrator to decide a dispute. As you all know, the arbitrators are paid by GE/MOBIL/BP because we do not have money, but I’m getting off track. So, I heard the reason that the United States used to have something called the “jury trials” is because this right was contained in a document called the Constitution. Everyone had a right to trial by jury, no matter who you were. Even people who were accused of crimes had a right to a jury trial and they were presumed innocent until found otherwise by a jury of their peers. Isn’t that weird? The idea was that a jury of ones peers could decide disputes and claims, especially since they were not financially interested in the outcome of a particular case. The Constitution had other rights too. People could bear arms to protect themselves. Remember that exhibit of guns we saw earlier. Those were the arms the Constitution was referring too. People also had something called “privacy rights” which is hard to explain, basically, unlike today, a person could keep their private lives private, and make their own decisions about their bodies and things like that. I know, it is radical, isn’t it? I’ll have to do a little more research on that. Anyway, before companies owned the United States, people owned their own homes, and had something called personal property. It used to be illegal for another person or a company to take someone’s property! Oh, and citizens of the United States used to do something called vote. That’s spelled V.O.T.E. Citizens would vote other citizens into office. Those people would represent them and help to enforce the Constitution. Then, one day, one of the Courts, called the “Supreme Court” became sponsored by the companies. They started taking away a lot of the rights in the Constitution. Anyone who protested the taking away of rights by the Supreme Court was called unpatriotic. They began to give the companies more and more power. For example, they decided that the corporations could donate money to citizens being elected. They began to decide elections. (Whispering---I really don’t think that was right. My grandmother told me that things were better than. She voted once! And, she sat in a jury box! She told me she used to be something called an “American”)

(VOICE HEARD OVER THE PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM SPONSORED BY GE---COMRADE SMITH, MOVE ON NOW!!!!!)

Insert embarrassed look here…O.K. Children, let’s now move to the next exhibit. This is a something the Citizens used to call a park. We used to have these. The green stuff on the ground is called grass. The tall things with the round tops of them were called trees.

Today the United States Supreme Court Ruled Today That Companies Can Force Consumers to Give Up Their Right to a Jury Trial and Have Their Complaints Decided by an Arbitrator Paid by the Company. See, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion