I tell a guy in my running group that I'm going to split this center. I pack my duffle bag, and take the CTA down to an apartment where some other people I know are staying in Chicago.

At noon kids are filtering into the plaza next to the Federal Building in downtown Chicago. The Federal Building is a twenty-story glass box held off the ground on stilts. If Jerry Rubin is in there, we'll never know it. Police officers are lined up two steps apart all the way down the street on both sides. Their helmets are on, their clubs are in their hands. Three more busloads of cops are parked up a side street. A detachment is standing in back of the plaza. The plaza, itself, is attended on its peripheries by about one hundred plainclothes cops, most of whom are wearing dark glasses and turtlenecks so they will be mistaken for kids.

A policeman in a squad car is giving orders over a loudspeaker system which resounds off the buildings of the Loop. He tells the people walking by to keep moving and that they are not allowed to stop in this area unless they are in the plaza. A battery of a dozen TV newsreel cameras lines the edge of the roof of the building across the street from the plaza.

I run into Glassman of the Herald-Traveler, Jacobs and Carlson of the Crimson, Krim of the Washington Post, and Parker of the Globe. They tell me that the women were surrounded this morning before they could get out of Grant Park. They charged twice, and 15 were arrested. They let the rest go when they gave up their helmets. It is sad. Very sad. I am sad. A total of 63 were arrested last night. With 15 more that's 78.

Now Mike Klonsky begins to speak. This is bad for the Weathermen. Klonsky is the head of RYM-II. If the Panthers have really made thisdeal with the Weathermen, then Klonsky shouldn't be speaking. It looks like a real fuck-up on the part of our leadership, and the Weathermen are getting screwed. Klonsky gives a fiery speech in which he cuts up the Weathermen for what they did last night. He calls them "adventuristic" and so on. Then the Young Lords (the Puerto Rican gang) and Fred Hampton of the Panthers criticize the Weathermen. Hampton calls them "Custer-istic," which is surprisingly apt.

I am standing in the crowd listening more to the Weatherman next to me tell his friend how his running group is going to blow up the pig school out at the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois tonight. Suddenly another member of that running group is being pulled back out of the crowd by two black plainclothes cops with cigars in their mouths. The others in the group try to save him, but suddenly there are plainclothes cops everywhere. They drag the kid quickly across the street to the paddy wagon.

Four different kids are being arrested in different places around the plaza. Newsmen are told to get out of the street when they try to get pictures. Police move in front of the crowd to prevent any reaction. The RYM-11 people form a human chain to keep their people in the plaza so they won't get arrested.

The Weathermen running groups are trapped in the plaza. The one from which the kid was arrested starts to leave. walking down the street. The plainclothes guys hurry over and get one more kid who they haul off, twisting his arm behind his back, shoving him into the back of the paddy wagon.

This useless demonstration has been a disaster. Seventeen people are arrested either in the plaza or on the streets of Chicago for being recognized at last night's rioting.

People leave this demonstration to go to another one held by RYM-II in west Chicago to support some striking factory workers. Marching columns of police follow the people as they look for the CTA and the 60 Blue bus. Traffic is stopped and TV cameramen are left standing aimlessly in the street as the people find their transit and board it.

RYM-II's second event is held on a grassy median strip between the Cooke County Jail and International Harvester factory. The factory is being closed down so they can build a new jail on its site. Its workers, who will lose their jobs or at least their seniority, walked out on strike this morning. We are here to support them.

About 200 cops are here to watch us. Their buses are pulled up on the side of the road. Cooke County sheriffs and deputies, armed with baseball bats, are lined in front of the jail to protect it. Plainclothesmen speak into microphones in parked cars. Squad cars cruise back and forth past the scene. Police photographers are shooting still and movie film from across the street. A police helicopter circles overhead.

Three fifteen-year-old school kids wander up suspiciously, smoking cigarettes. They hold their cigarettes like pencils with the ash end sticking out between their thumb and first two fingers. One explains that he just got his hair cut. but it used to be long. They say they wish we'd come over and bust up their school because it really sucks.

I recognize some Weathermen groups who are here. They are observing because RYM-I has got nothing on tap for this afternoon. They were considering an action at the Federal Building after the Panthers abdicated the lead of that demonstration, but the Federal Building was a trap. I talk to someone from the Boston collective. I tell him the latest revised figures have 89 arrested-60 last night, 12 this morning, and 17 this afternoon.

Klonsky speaks. There will be no violence, he says. "The microphone belongs to the workers today," he says, and hands it to the nearest worker. The worker tells us he's glad to see our support. They talk for a couple of more hours, and it all dissolves. It's the kind of demonstration that makes a Weatherman out of you.