Paul is a dedicated environmental and political activist. In 2005, she was named "Activist of the Year" by the ACLU of Southern California. She avidly recycles, and will not use any products tested on animals. She has traveled to Nicaragua with a medical aid group and to South Africa to register voters, and has been registering voters locally every Wednesday night for the past eighteen years. The United Nations honored her in 1997 for her environmental work.

She has often committed herself to civil disobedience to protest against some policy or action that she believes is wrong. She has been arrested over a dozen times at the Nevada Nuclear Test site in peaceful protests. On March 19, 2003 she was arrested for trespassing onto federal property during a protest against the Iraq war and spent 5 days in jail. In 2006, Paul donated $250 to the Ned Lamont campaign against Joe Lieberman, because Lieberman supports the war in Iraq. She supported Representative Dennis Kucinich for Pre