Gopal has been involved in fighting for social, economic, environmental, and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking, and direct action since the late 1980s. He currently serves on the Staff Collective of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, which brings a strategic understanding of the ecological crisis and transition to racial and economic justice organizing.

Gopal is an active trainer and serves on the boards of The Ruckus Society and the Center for Story-based Strategy. He also serves on the advisory boards of The Working World and Catalyst Project. Gopal works at the intersection of ecology, economy, and empire.

Gopal has been a campaigner for Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition on human rights and environmental justice in the high-tech industry and the Oil Campaigner for Project Underground, a human rights and environmental rights organization that supported communities resisting oil and mining exploitation around the world. Gopal has been active in many people-powered direct action movements, including the Global Justice/Anti-Globalization Movement, Direct Action to Stop the War, Mobilization for Climate Justice, Take Back the Land, and Occupy.

Gopal was an elementary and early childhood educator, working formerly as a teacher and as the co-director of the Tenderloin Childcare Center, a community-based childcare center supporting children and families forced into homelessness. He has worked in teacher education and education organizing in the U.S. and briefly in India.

Most importantly, Gopal is the father of Ila Sophia and Kavi Samaka Orion. He lives in Oakland in an intentional, multi-generational community of nine adults, eight children, and a bunch of chickens.