• Former President of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom
• Former Executive Vice President of National Lawyers Guild
• Former Director of the Defending Dissent Foundation
• Current Treasurer of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee
• Opposes government anti-terrorism efforts

Kit Gage is a longtime leftwing activist who once served as Director of the National Committee to Abolish HUAC. (At the height of its power in the late 1950s, HUAC -- acronym for the House Un-American Activities Committee -- investigated allegations that Communists had secured positions of influence inside the U.S. government and in American society at large.) She subsequently served as Executive Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild. She also became involved with the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), which sought to shield individuals affiliated with terror groups from investigations by counter-terrorism prosecutors.

Gage has suggested that law-enforcement officials who had stepped up their efforts to foil Islamic terror plots in the post-9/11 era were motivated by racism and anti-Muslim bigotry more than by any pressing concerns about American national security. Several weeks after the attacks of 9/11, Gage, while acknowledging that the prosecution of some terrorist operatives may have been justified, hastened to add that "all Arab Americans, all Muslims, all people who others think look Afghani, Arab or somehow different must not suffer from those investigations and from ill-informed and/or racist presumptions." 

Gage expanded on this theme in 2002, telling an interviewer that as a consequence of the U.S. government's counter-terrorism tactics, "[W]e have seen the chilling of the right of protest. The Muslim community is already feeling the repression." She portrayed federal prosecutors' efforts to expand the scope of crimes that legally constituted terrorism, as unwarranted assaults on civil liberties.

In 2003 Gage replaced Sami al-Arian as President of NCPPF, following the latter's arrest on terrorism-related charges. In that position, Gage vigorously opposed the U.S. government's use of secret evidence in terrorism cases -- maintaining that she was merely "defending the right of political dissent of individuals and organizations."

Most notably, Gage protested the 2003 arrest of al-Arian, which had transpired because of his active involvement with the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. According to Gage, a person's "Mere membership of an organization, in my belief, should not alone be the basis for prosecution.”

Objecting to the efforts of prosecutors to broaden the use of deportation for suspected terrorists, Gage further complained that "it will be easier to deport anyone they accuse of being associated with a terrorist organization—no matter what the nature of the association."

In August 2004, Gage resurrected her contention that only bigots would oppose NCPPF's efforts to thwart toughened counter-terrorism legislation:

"There are always going to be people who are racist, who are anti-Muslim and feel threatened by groups like ours who do coalition work, because we stand up for groups that have taken on unpopular positions."

In addition to her work with NCPPF, Gage also served stints as Executive Director of the First Amendment Foundation and as Director of the Defending Dissent Foundation (DDF). DDF's mission is to "protect and advance the right of dissent in the United States" by "alerting local activists to civil liberties threats" and "educating the public, the press and policymakers as to how dissent is crucial to democracy." Other notable (past and present) DDF board members include Chip Berlet, Victor Navasky, and Gore Vidal.

Today Gage is Treasurer of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

In 2008 Gage supported Senator Barack Obama for U.S. President.