In the week before Mayday, things looked very tense. The first people to arrive on The Land, the campsite in West Potomac Park, were the angriest, and their anger was not always just concentrated against the government. There was, people say, a lot of ripping off, and the woman talked of rapes and sexism. The predominant atmosphere was fear and suspicion; anyone you didn't know had to be a government agent, or, at best, an enemy of the people. When the people in the Boston region found out I was a reporter, they told me they would only talk to me if they could write the article collectively.

But somehow, between Thursday evening and Saturday evening, a lot happened. Perhaps it was the arrival of thousands of new people, the newer, more idealistic radicals whose militance had not crushed every bit of love they had out of them. Friends gathered, hugged, and began to care about each other. Perhaps it was the rock concert Saturday night and the people who came to hear it. Everyone on The Land had nothing but scorn for the "weekend hippies" across the road who, it was felt, would leave before the action started Monday. The radicals with their commitment had no use for the freaks with their acid and bummers. It was the first time the people at The Land could unite about anything; after days of endless meetings and infighting, they finally had a cause of unity.

In many ways, the police bust of The Land helped this out. For the first time, there was a sense of urgency, a sense of fear among the Mayday people. For the first time, they had no time for bickering and quarrels: decisions had to be made and plans finalized. The people got together; the police on the periphery looked too real.

So by Monday morning, there was a mood of togetherness and common purpose among the demonstrators, and they rushed off to get arrested pretty joyfully. The Mayday people made the effort to talk to the police who "captured" them. I remember standing for four hours on the banks of the Potomac (forty police were guarding twenty-five of us) and laughing, staging guerrilla theater, joking with police, throwing donuts to passing motorists. We did calisthenties, and tried to have one-to-one raps with police. Most of us had discarded the V-sign around the time of the McCarthy campaign, and it felt strange to unclench the fist again and flash those two fingers, but we did it. Every now and then someone would flash the sign back; sometimes they'd throw out another finger. The police couldn't figure us out. "You're the roughest bunch of criminals I've ever guarded," one said to me.

But it didn't last long. By Tuesday afternoon, Washington was exhausted.

The demonstrators, who had been getting up before dawn and spending nights planning and getting friends out of jail, had run out of gas. At the gathering places like American University, where two days before you would see people in intense discussions of political tactics, now all you could see were bodies stretched out on floors, tables, chairs: any place they could get an hour or two of sleep. Where the demonstrators had made the effort to rap and persuade on Monday, now they were just too damn tired to care.

And the police, most of whom had been working 18-hour shifts for several days, seemed to just want to go home. Mayday was over.

There are two other things which need mentioning here. The first is the schizophrenia of the police in Washington (and in Boston last week at the JFK building). For the most part police were open, enjoying conversations with demonstrators and not causing trouble. But suddenly an order would come or an incident would happen, and the nice guy who had been telling you about his wife and children was suddenly beating the shit out of you, and judging by his face, loving every minute of it.

And then there were the two moods of the demonstrators. Sometimes, like during the two demonstrations at the

Justice Department, the demonstrators were peaceful and joyous, kind of David Harris-like. People were even singing "We Shall Overcome" again. It was like 1963 all over, as if the Kennedys and Malcolm and King and Evers had not been murdered, as if we all returned to the days when we were pure and innocent and moral and non-violent. You almost expected Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger to come cruising in by helicopter.

And then there was Monday morning: street fighting, anger, hatred. Nobody sang "We Shall Overcome" in Dupont Circle Monday morning. The idealism was gone, burnt out by a system that is so good at burning out idealism, replaced by a harsh militance.

Neither strain of the movement, it seems, is enough. If our task is to combine the peacefulness and love of the passive resister with the activism of the militants, we have a long way to go.

Thinking back about Mayday, it's one of those phenomenons about which you can make any conclusions you want, and back them all up with good evidence. Was Mayday a victory or a defeat? Well, we said we would stop the government and we failed, so I guess it was a defeat.

But something much more important happened in Washington. There was the vision of just what Nixon had to do to preserve order. There was the vision for all America of the chaos that would come unless this war is ended. There was the realization for all of us just what law and order without justice means.

Before he was arrested by the FBI Monday afternoon, Rennie Davis said that of course, Mayday had been a tactical failure, but that it had won a much larger victory. For Mayday was the resparking of spirit and commitment for a generation of Americans; a regeneration that will lead eventually to radical change.