Bastille Day had often held people jailed on the basis of "lettres de cachet" (literally "signet letters"), arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed and did not indicate the reason for the imprisonment. The Bastille held a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, and was also known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the attack in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance. The crowd was eventually reinforced by mutinous "Gardes Françaises" ("French
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