Patrick Henry Supper Club - March 6, 2007
The Patrick Henry Supper Club presents
Kit Gage
"Government and Dissent"
As usual the PHSC meets at:
Eastern Buffet
7586 W. Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23294
(in Merchants Walk Shopping Center)
6:00pm Dinner 7:00pm main event.
Meetings are open to the public, please purchase a meal at the hosting restaurant.
Kit Gage has directed the First Amendment Foundation and the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL, www.ncarl.org) since April 2001. She is president and a founder of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF, www.ncppf.org). She has worked with the Foundation and NCARL since 1987.
Ms. Gage writes regular newsletters and articles, is a frequent public speaker, has worked extensively with the media, and works in coalition with many civil liberties, civil rights and immigrant rights groups across the country. In 2003, she helped coordinate the Grassroots America Defends the Bill of Rights First National Conference that brought together activists and experts working on bill of rights resolutions and defense. She continues to help bring together diverse activists doing bill of rights restoration work. She has been an activist for decades, focused on defending the right of political expression, but also she has taken up women’s rights, environmental, and human rights issues.
She has been in the national leadership of National Lawyers Guild (as a legal worker) and has been active with the NLG for several decades, and was on the board of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA for many years. She has a BA (1973) from Grinnell College with an independent major in Women, Socialization and Conflict, is married to Steve Metalitz and has two remarkable adult daughters.
First Amendment Foundation: focuses on educating people on the difficult history of political dissent, the First Amendment Foundation has published three books, including FBI vs. the First Amendment by Richard Criley and Terrorism & the Constitution, Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security by James X. Dempsey and David Cole. First Amendment Felon, a biography written by Robert Sherrill, about Frank Wilkinson and the Red Scare, is due out in November 2005.
NCARL: started as the National Committee to Abolish HUAC (the House UnAmerican Activities Committee), and has since worked to defend the right of political expression, particularly from government abuses.
NCPPF: was formed in 1997 following the passage of the 1996 Antiterrorism act. It protects the right of political expression, association and due process for immigrants and citizens alike. In particular it focused on eliminating the use of secret evidence in deportation-related proceedings.