running up two different streets. Several more shots are fired. I am towards the back of the group when two cars of plainclothes policemen come roaring up from behind. They leap out of their cars before they have even stopped and start grabbing people.

There is an alley to my right. It is the only way out. Half a dozen of us take off down the alley as fast as we can with the cops chasing us. Police are pouring into the area behind us. I am running.

I spin my head and my glasses go flying off. I think. "there go my glasses." I can't see, but I don't even slow down. The police are a few steps behind us. Some of the girls. who aren't as fast. are being caught.

The alley becomes dark, and all I see is the light at the end of it down on North Avenue. As I run. I am dreaming. There is something I can remember. somewhere where this whole piece of terror happened to me before. I remember, yes. it happened. running away from two boys who tried to hold me up with a razor blade one night in Harlem. I'm not aware of my legs lifting or my arms pumping or any part of running. I can't see. I am floating through a blur.

As I'm coming to the end of the alley all I can see is the flashing blue lights of police cars in front of me. All I can hear is the high tweet of police whistles being blown all around me. The police are coming at us from the other end of the alley. too.

Then. as we approach them. there comes an empty lot on our left. There is a wire fence as high as my chest. I. and one or two other kids. put our hands on it. and throw ourselves over.

Now I am running across the lot. stepping on things I can't see. surrounded again by police whistles and flashing blue lights moving parallel to us in the street.

I get to the other side and take a flying leap over the same fence. A police car turns down the street right in front of me. I put one hand on the trunk and twist around it. taking off down North Avenue. right next to the park, again.

The police are moving back in the other direction now to seal off the area I just got out of. They are all behind me. They can't leave their posts.

I stop running in a couple of blocks. and quickly take off my black leather jacket and wipe the sweat off my face and make like a pedestrian. I can't see anything and stop some people on the street to ask what street I'm on and which way to the nearest telephone. They point west.

I find a gas station. its phone. and a dime. It's an open phone. right out on the street. I dial the long-distance operator and call the CRIMSON to file my news. I get David Hollander in the newsroom. "David." I say. "everything's gone wild here..."

I STAND on North Avenue for half an hour phoning in my stuff to Cambridge. Police cars are pouring by me into the area I just left. A detachment of helmeted tactical cops walk by in step with one another. They pass so close I could trip them.

Three long-haired guys from the kids' medical unit come up. They buy some Sprites in the gas station. and tell me about the two people who were shot at the first interception. They call the medical telephone number. where they report that five have been shot.

More kids come by and stop. Some of them have been running with the Weathermen and got cut off. But none of them have helmets or weapons. They tell us that the main group got away from the first ambush, but was hit again on the Lakeshore Drive expressway as they were trying to work their way up to the judge's place. They said that some cops came out of all alley shooting. and that several kids went down. Stories become confused, but it is clear that most of the Weathermen have made it back across town and are now on the other side of us.

Police cars and paddy wagons are now streaming back down North Avenue in the other direction. I tell the people around me that we better break up or else we'll all be busted. Then the first two people I saw in the movement center that afternoon show up. They are from Vermont, but I don't remember their names. One is a guy with lots of curly black hair and a red lumberjack jacket. And the other is a girl with strange glasses (round) and a brown leather jacket. They agree to help me find my glasses.