Gohlke first joined politics in 1991 in the movement against both the Gulf War and the racist pogroms in the 1990s. During her studies in 1997, she joined the student protests against the austerity plans at the universities. In 2001, she joined the globalization-critical Attac movement. She became a member of the coordination group of Attac Munich, to which she belonged until 2003, and took part in the protests against the World Economic Summit in Genoa in the summer of 2001.