Paris in the 18th century the Marquis de Lafayette organized a "Garde nationale" to defend the city against the army. On 14 July, a mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, and stormed the Bastille, a symbol of royal authority, a prison which at the time held only seven prisoners, and was defended by eighty invalid soldiers, reinforced by thirty-six Swiss guards. About forty Revolutionaries were killed in the fighting. The governor of the Bastille, the Marquis de Launay, surrendered and then was killed, and his head put on the end of a pike and carried around Paris. The Provost of
Locked in the Poorhouse some ways, went into reverse. What caused this halt and retreat? First a series of economic shocks and trends had a depressing impact, especially on minorities. And second, the government’s action and inaction bore a good deal of the blame…Today, thirty years after the Kerner report, there is more poverty in America, it is deeper, blacker and browner than before and it is more concentrated in the cities, which have become America’s poorhouses. The companion volume to Locked in the Poorhouse, The Millennium Breach, was featured in a debate on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. When reporter Elizabeth