WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Joan Bragdon could no longer be silent.

So the elderly woman made the long bus journey from Maine to Washington, D.C., on Saturday and joined several thousands of people to protest the Persian Gulf War.

"I was against the Vietnam war but I didn't do anything about it, and I've regretted it ever since," Bragdon said after finishing the long anti-war march along Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday.

Bragdon, bundled in a long overcoat, gray scarf and hat, struggled to listen to the demonstration's speakers while holding up a handmade protest sign.

Saturday's demonstrators, who marched in 30-degree temperatures, often defied the stereotypes of long-haired college students.

Jill Benderly, of Salisbury, Md., attended an anti-war protest in Washingtion in 1968 at the age of 14. And while she may have been a devout hippie in her high school days, she had quite a different demeanor Saturday. Wearing a ski jacket with her hair cropped short, she spoke fondly of her early involvement in the peace movement. But protests in those days were much different, she said.

"This is an intergenerational movement," she said. "It's much more spread out than it was when I was a teen-ager."

Many older people saw a difference between the current anti-war movement and the protests in the '60s.

"People are making connections," said Lakshman Yapa, a University professor of geography. "It's not just make love, not war."

Yapa, who was a foreign exchange student during the Vietnam War, said many of today's protesters are connecting U.S. action in the Persian Gulf with its overall foreign policy. And people are relating the problem to environmental causes, racism and a failure of the United Nations.

"A lot of people saw Vietnam as an accident, that the U.S. bumbled itself into the war," Yapa said. "But now they see it as systematic."

Many organizations holding radically different views attended the rally. Among those at the march Saturday were church groups, pro-choice groups, labor unions, veterans organizations, socialist and Marxist political parties, gay and lesbian rights activists and Jewish and Palestinian groups.

"Even though it's a one-issue thing, it doesn't feel like it," Benderly said.

Seasoned activist Alan Mills, a balding man with a goatee, said that this is not an uncommon feeling. Mills said he was involved with the Freedom Rides of the civil rights movement and had protested the atomic bomb and the Vietnam War.

"One of the nice things about all of the peace movements I've been involved in, is the brotherhood and camaraderie people have for one another," said Mills, who took the bus from Portland, Maine.

"My philosophy is that silence is the voice of complacency," he said.

One of the main differences between this movement and others is how quickly this one has developed, Mills said.

"I think this war has been brought closer to home and therefore people are speaking out," he said. "More people are aware of the hypocrisy of our government. We're not as willing to believe what we're hearing now."

While many of the protesters are dedicated to their causes, they doubt whether demonstrating will be able to stop the current crisis in the gulf.

"It's what I have to do as a citizen," Yapa said. "I don't have to worry about my affect on George Bush."

And Mills, who turned 47 on Saturday, expressed similar thoughts.

"We will be successful when there is world peace," he said. "I don't know if I'll live to see that day, but I'll continue to fight for it."