I have been active in the ecology, anti-war, feminist, lesbian-gay, anti-racist, and multicultural movements since the late 1960s. I have been arrested twice for non-violent civil disobedience: in 1971 for blocking a draft board during the Vietnam War, and in 1987 for blocking the Supreme Court after an anti-gay rights decision. In the mid-1970s, while in graduate school at Yale, I was active in the grass-roots feminist movement, as a board member of the Women's Center and founding member of the New Haven Socialist Feminist Union. I am a long-time member of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), and of Marxist-Feminist I, a Marxist-feminist discussion group, and a charter member of IAFFE, The International Association of Feminist Economists.

When I came to Wellesley in 1978, I became active in the campus anti-aparteid movement, helped form Women's Studies as an independent department, and helped found and participated in the Radical Caucus in the 1980s. I helped rewrite Wellesley's sexual harassment policy in the early 1990s, and then served on the Standing Panel on Grievances for three years. In the early 1990s, I helped plan the first Lesbigay Awareness Week, was a co-organizer and participant in the Faculty and Staff Discussion Group on Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay Studies, and co-organized a faculty summer seminar on lesbian and gay studies. I was a member of CARD, The Committee Against Racism and Discrimination from 1993-1999, and co-chaired CARD from 1997-1999. In January of 2003, I attended the World Social Forum, and was impressed and energized by witnessing the burgeoning international movement to shift our globalizing economy in a more democratic, sustainable, peaceful, and equitable direction.