Kathy Kelly helped initiate and continues to help coordinate Voices in the Wilderness , a campaign to end the UN/US sanctions against Iraq. For bringing "medicine and toys" to Iraq in open violation of the UN/US sanctions, she and other campaign members have been notified of a proposed $160,000 penalty for the organization, in addition to the threat of 12 years in prison. Kelly has been to Iraq six times since January, 1996, when the campaign began. Her most recent trip was in December, 1998, with a delegation that arrived in Iraq on the last day of US/UK bombardment.

During the first two weeks of the Gulf War, she was part of a peace encampment on the Iraq-Saudi border called the Gulf Peace Team. Following evacuation to Amman, Jordan, Kelly stayed in the region for the next six months to help coordinate medical relief convoys and study teams. Kelly has also helped organize and articipated in nonviolent direct action teams in Haiti and Bosnia.

Kelly has an M.A. in Theology and has taught in Chicago area community colleges and high schools since 1974. She is active with the Catholic Worker movement. As a pacifist and war tax refuser, she has refused payment of all Federal income tax for 18 years. In 1988, she was sentenced to one year in federal prison or planting corn on a nuclear missile silo.

Pax Christi USA awarded its annual Teacher of Peace Award to Kelly on August 9, 1998.