"CRITICS OF Foreign Policy Stage '60-Style Protest" read the headline in The Washingtion Post. The story ran on the front page of the Metro section. The New York Times headline read: "Thousands Protest U.S. Policy in Central America". Its story ran on page 32. Neither was surprising, though the Times' article seemed about three years late and the Post's about 15.

The march in Washington a week ago was called to protest U.S. policy--in Central America as well as South Africa. But while the march was reminiscent of protests staged against America's involvement in Vietnam, the comparison was superficial. What the press did was use easy labels from a hazy past to categorize something new and distinctive.

In November of 1983, the fall of my freshman year, I was one of a few dozen Harvard students who trekked to Washington on a cold, gray autumn weekend to protest U.S. intervention in Central America. There were about 30,000 of us at the demonstration, which to my inexperienced eyes seemed to be an endless crowd. But when we reached the Ellipse, the vast open spaces of the Mall made our numbers seem meager.

Nevertheless, I was inspired by the sight of so many people in solidarity braving the cutting November wind to stand witness against our government's disgraceful support for the thugs and bandits of the Third World. We knew we were only the beginnings of a movement. But that was encouragment enough after three chilling years of the Reagan Revolution.

A WEEK ago in Washington we were no longer the beginnings of a movement. The police estimated the crowd at 75,000. The organizers said it was 150,000. Still, numbers were not the most important development this march highlighted, nor the most distressing misimpression pandered by the "liberal" press.

The Post article was most distressing, and not merely because it was in the Metro section next to a piece about cuts in real estate taxes in Arlington, Va. What rankled marchers was the epithet " '60s-Style Protest." The implication was clear. Aren't all those students with long hair and tie-dyed shirts just nostalgic for an era when drugs were cheap, sex was easy and it was cool to skip classes and shout slogans about our immoral government, parents and universities?

I don't know if such an era ever existed outside the minds of certain Cro-Magnon professors--some still on the Harvard faculty--and the rationalizing consciences of the proto-arbitrageurs so common on college campuses these days. However you may characterize the generation that came of age during the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, the women's liberation movement, the sexual revolution and the other frightening changes of "the '60s," their '80s counterparts were not in Washington last week.

What happened on the Mall was a response to the regression over the last six years in the nation's government and the public's consciousness. It was a protest for peace with busloads of marchers arriving in Washington from all over the country to make their voices heard. Perhaps that was reminiscent of the '60s. But there the similarity stops.

First of all, there were not many of us prototypical long-haired students with tie-dyed shirts. In fact, I did not see one tie-dyed shirt, and my long hair was as distinctive in last week's crowd as my age. It seems that college students are no longer the conscience nor the vanguard of the nation. Students were far outnumbered by constituencies whose activism is very much a product of this decade.

COLLEGE CAMPUSES have played a major role in the anti-apartheid movement that has burgeoned in this country in the last three years. But even with widespread support the numbers of students actually involved in demonstrations and protests--in giving of their time and themselves to the issues of the day--have been relatively few. That is even more the case with the anti-nuclear movement and especially the anti-war movement that has grown as the Reagan Administration has stepped up its not-so-cold war in Central America.

The crowd last week in Washington was older, with heavy representation from the church groups that have been the backbone of the peace movement in recent years. But there were also groups among the crowd that it was pleasantly surprising to see, faces that in the past hardly were noticeable at anti-war rallies.

Those faces were of many colors, giving credence to keynote speaker Jesse Jackson's exhortations about the prospects for a Rainbow Coalition. Three years ago Jackson spoke to a crowd that was almost exclusively white. This year there was a heavy Latino contingent and significant representation from the Black community. Six years of the Reagan Administration's attacks on the poor and people of color at home and abroad have pushed together constituencies that were once separated.

Even the culture of protest has shifted from the folk music of the white middle class and the garb of the hippie left to the sounds and styles of the dispossessed. The emcee at this year's rally interspersed speakers with an angry rap. And while Peter, Paul and Mary performed before the march, the rally on the Capitol steps featured reggae and latin sounds.

The new diversity was evident in class as well as culture. In the '60s hard hats were all too often on the sidelines taunting "unpatriotic" protesters. This spring many of the demonstrators wore union insignia. The staunchly conservative AFL-CIO hierarchy urged its members to boycott the rally, but five of the six largest unions in the federation endorsed the protest, and union members were heavily represented. Some observers estimated that as many as a third of the marchers were union members.

THE MARCH was not mainstream. The only major politician who came was Jesse Jackson. Meanwhile, the establishment "leaders"--AFL-CIO, Congressmen and media--did their best to ignore the gathering. But this march on Washington was not a nostalgic reunion of malcontents. It was the nation serving notice that they have not acceded to the Reagan Devolution. We were not the majority, but we represented those who will come to be.

Four years ago Jesse Jackson was the Black candidate, the Central America movement was a cause for the disenchanted white middle-class, few people were interested in South Africa and the anti-nuclear movement seemed a trendy fad. Now the various victims of Reagan's policies are comming to see their common cause. If no media politicians besides Jesse Jackson recognize the common enemy and our common future, more power to him.

The struggle has only started: 100,000 people in Washington is still only a beginning, but we are beginning in good shape. Because we have been warned by their example, we are five years ahead of what the protesters of the '60s were doing relative to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. And thanks to Ronald Reagan, we stand united. What we need now are new leaders, real leaders. And it's time for the generation of the '80s to fill that role.