(This is the first of two feature articles on last week's Mayday actions in Washington. A second analysis will appear in tomorrow's CRIMSON.)

IF YOU weren't in Washington for Mayday, I'm not sure I can explain to you what it was like. And I'm not sure you'll want to know.

Because if you're one of those people who say, yeah, well, the war is bad and all, but this is still the best country in the world, then you're not going to want to hear what I have to say. And if you're the kind of person who says all we have to do is beat Nixon with some nice solid liberalism and then everything will be fine, you're not going to like what I say either.

And you might not believe me. Because you might not have read about the things I'm going to tell you in your newspapers, and if you really think the Times prints all the news there is, then you'll think I'm lying. And if, in some kind of final desperation, you scream out It can't happen here, then I'm going to tell you you're wrong. It did happen here. Again.

Perhaps the best way to talk about Mayday is to talk about the little isolated events that stick in my mind. Like the police busting twelve of us for obstructing traffic when we were going 25 miles an hour in a 25 zone, and then, as we're being arrested, an officer taking his Louisville Slugger and smashing the front windshield of our van, and then slashing the tires with a knife. And coming back four hours later to try to pick up the van, and finding the police had exploded popper gas inside, and watching the cops across the street laugh as we choke. A police sergeant came up to me, "What's the matter boy?" "I ran into a little gas." "Oh, well, watch it, you could get arrested for hanging around places where there's gas." (Two of our friends went back again in the evening for the van. They were arrested. Again.)

And then there's the memory of the young couple being arrested near George Washington University on the way to their wedding. The guy had long hair, so he was suspicious. They got married in the detention center.

There's the picture I'll always have in my mind of the paratroopers landing on the grounds of the Washington Monument Monday morning, six Marine helicopters ready to protect America against itself. And the little ironies: thinking as the Marines landed that here they were landing on ground dedicated to a revolutionary who fought against oppression. Big George didn't work within the system.

PROBABLY the strongest memory of all is of the detention center. In stories phoned in from Washington, I wanted to call the ball-field-turned-prison next to RFK Stadium a concentration camp; the editors, sitting in Cambridge, kept changing the wording to detention center. Perhaps they were right; after all, Metropolitan Police Chief Jerry Wilson called it a detention center and not a concentration camp, and he should know. But if that wasn't a concentration camp, I never want to see one.

Try to picture it: more than two thousand people crammed into this tiny field by a wire fence. All that was missing was the barbed wire. There was no food until the evening, after many had been there more than twelve hours. There was little water and no toilets to speak of Army trucks with pepper gas propellers circled the wire fence; occasionally-just to keep in practice I guess-lobbing gas canisters into the crowd. And, of course, the 82nd Airborne next door in the Stadium.

But the police were generous; they moved the crowd indoors Monday evening. But think of the Colliscum: 40 degrees instead of 30; some food but few toilets; hardly any blankets to warm the crowd forced to curl up on the stone floor. And still the troops patrolled outside, protecting America against these worst of criminals.

What I'm trying to say, the impression I'm trying to create, is one of total fear, absolute and utter paranoia. If you "looked suspicious" (and you know what that means) you could not leave the sanctuaries of the three downtown universities without fear of getting arrested. You could not walk down a street or drive a car without being stopped repeatedly, questioned and often arrested. And you could never go anywhere alone. If you did, if you had no witnesses around, you were risking a lot of pain. I remember driving around Washington Tuesday morning, feeling like a spy in an enemy camp. I was stopped twice in a single trip around Washington Circle; once for going too slow, once for going too fast.

Well, you could say, the government had to do what it did, it had to bust us so it could keep functioning. You're right, of course, if you say that, the government did have to arrest us, did have to stay open in spite of a large number of its citizens, and every one of us who went to Washington was prepared to go to jail.

But that wasn't it. The point is, the government decided that it had the right and the mandate to terrorize a significant group of citizens; to completely suspend the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and any civil liberties we are used to having, in order to gas, drive, and club dissidents from its doorsteps. It wasn't that the government jailed us; it was that it declared war on us. The death machine brought out the full force of its fire-power to protect Washington, and it was awesome. The American government probably imposes order better than it does anything else, and it showed this past week.

But think about it. There were probably over 15,000 police, federal troops and National Guardsmen mobilized in the streets of the District of Columbia. Estimates of the number of troops on call ranged as high as 200,000. When you think that the government was forced to go to this extreme to defend itself against Americans who say No, you don't have the civil right to carry on business as usual when this business as usual means death and destruction for millions, you see just how scared they were. And their fear, their fright that Mayday might actually challenge the way power is distributed and decisions are made in this country, is the real victory of this country's first attempt at mass civil disobedience.

Before I end this piece, I want to tell you a little about the moods of Washington; the way the demonstrators felt, because I feel it's important in assessing any significance the first week in May might have had. You could read about what happened in the Times or the Post, and find out what this police captain or this Senator had to say, but you probably knew it anyway. To appreciate the real dynamic of Mayday, you had to live it.