Perkins has had a long history of activism and advocacy, particularly regarding the environment, community gardening, energy, peace issues, and progressive politics. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was active in the anti-nuclear movement and also helped organize a number of community gardens in Somerville, Massachusetts. In the 1990s, Perkins chaired the Millers River Watershed Council in western Massachusetts. He also served as a local conservation commissioner.
In 1998 Perkins wrote a critique discussing why market price mechanisms would be unlikely to solve the problem of global warming, and other similar environmental problems, using the example of the electricity deregulation then taking place. His critique, "Electricity Deregulation, Environmental Externalities and the Limitations of Price," was published in the July, 1998 issue of the Boston College Law Review.
In 2004, Perkins co-founded the independent political action committee, Swing the Vote and has served on its steering committee for five years, bringing together people from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont to do get-out-the-vote organizing in the swing state of New Hampshire. His interest in promoting international dialogue and a peaceful U.S. foreign policy led him to participate in the World Social Forum in Venezuela in 2006 and to take part in a Fellowship of Reconciliation "citizen diplomacy" delegation to Iran in 2008.
Perkins lives with his wife Madeleine and his younger son in the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. His older son now lives in Philadelphia.