with irl I mean somebody you actually know.
For me it's my mom. Growing up in a time and place where privilege was (and sadly still is) a thing for men in the dominant class/ethnicity, she taught me and my siblings to never yield to injustice and inequality. She was not very political aware, but lived her philosophy with her daily praxis. When I started learning about leftist ideology it felt like it fitted me like a glove.
How well do I have to know them? I only met them in passing a few times, but Art and Peggy Gish lived in and worked from my hometown and were hugely influential on my development as a person. Reading their letters to the editor and articles about their activism helped me realize that there were different interpretations of Christianity than my pastor's, and that the I didn't need to resign myself to the apathy about the world that so many of the adults around me embraced. Learning that it wasn't teenage foolishness to care so passionately about injustice was a turning point for me, and I'm grateful the Gishes were shining that light out into the world.