Hayden Cohen
The SEAT co-founder empowers youth and fights censorship.
Most Prominent Youth LGBTQ Activist
Hayden Cohen (they/them)—co-founder and State Policy Director at Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT)— is an active member of the LGBTQ+ Political Caucus and a self-proclaimed local politics nerd. An accomplished community organizer despite their young age, Cohen got into all of this after joining the Young Democrats Club at their high school, which then snowballed into serving as president of the high school’s Gay Straight Alliance and being a Student Fellow for the Beto for Texas campaign. More recently, Cohen has been tirelessly working to help people get registered to vote for the 2024 election, helping SEAT’s preparations for interim hearings at the Texas Legislature, and more.
“One of the things I’m always doing, no matter when, is voter registration and education. I love going to schools, registering a bunch of high schoolers, chatting with them about the importance of voting and the stuff that they care about,” says Cohen. “Also, SEAT is putting together a boot camp for folks wanting to get involved. It’s two or three weeks of intensive training in how Texas politics work, how the legislature works, how Texas mobilization and advocacy works, and then matching these students up with actual jobs working for representatives or certain organizations.”
Cohen is also currently engaged in combating Texas House Bill 18. “It’s this major internet filter censorship law that passed in the Lege,” they explain. “So we’re saying, ‘No, this makes it impossible for us to do our work as a student organization.’”
Cohen also recently fought against the fallout from Governor Greg Abbott’s federal judge-approved refusal to adopt the US Department of Education’s April 2024 Final Rule amending the regulations implementing Title IX. “All these school districts started to come up with these votes and said, ‘Oh yes, we’re not adopting these guidelines.’ SEAT wrote a letter that we sent to every single superintendent in the state. We got a huge amount of sign-on from Pride organizations, Title IX organizations, and Keshet. We also had the ACLU and Texas Freedom Network oversee editing the letter, as well as the Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT).”
Winning a 2024 Gayest & Greatest award will further legitimize their efforts, Cohen feels, because the award was earned through community votes. “This person is well known by their community. This person has done some good work. It’s a really cool thing to have,” Cohen adds. “In the world of politics, that means you have a large network, and that means that you have more reach to get more positive work done. It means I have won an award for fighting back against bullshit bills in the Texas Legislature.”
For others who want to make an impact in Houston, Cohen thinks people need to look beyond news headlines. “Something that’s always great is to actually look into the bills themselves, look into the penal codes, look at the agendas of upcoming meetings at City Hall or in the County Commissioners Court, and then start finding folks to speak to. Start finding communities that can help you make a difference. I couldn’t do all that I’ve done alone just because I wanted to be loud. Making change really comes from a place of working with certain people.”
“You can volunteer with places like the League of Women Voters of Houston if you want to register voters. If you’re looking to do more trans-rights stuff, you can volunteer with TENT. And by volunteering, by giving up a bit of your time, you get to meet some incredible folks. And that is how you’re going to be able to make change,” Cohen emphasizes.
Follow Hayden Cohen on Instagram @hccohen5642
