Feb 4, 2021
'What was your legacy?' Young LGBTQ people advocate, work to challenge stigmas in rural North Carolina
At six years old, Devin Green would call 311 to report street lights that stopped working in his neighborhood.
He would give the phone representative the exact details of where the broken street light was located and what was happening until the light was fixed.
By the age of 12, he started speaking on panel discussions on human rights issues.
“I was always a person that was looking for issues that I could solve,” Green said. “What really sprung me into advocacy, funny enough, was the show 'Law and Order: SVU.' There was an episode about the backlog of rape kits and it was an issue I didn’t know existed. For me, that was kind of the thing that made me say ‘Ok, I have to do something. How am I going to make meaningful change?’”
Green, now 18, identifies as a transman and has plans to go to law school to become a civil rights lawyer to continue his advocacy for marginalized people. He started a project called the "Young Advocate" where he would email lawmakers to act on issues around North Carolina that he felt passionately about.