Writings and meditations by Chema Hernández Gil – organizer, foiled engineer, and media activist based in San Francisco.
Writings and meditations by Chema Hernández Gil – organizer, foiled engineer, and media activist based in San Francisco.
Welcome to the digital home of Chema Hernández Gil, a foiled engineer, longtime media activist and journalist, and labor organizer stumping for the working class in San Francisco. This site gathers writings and meditations on politics, activism, history, and personal memory.
Your correspondent’s earliest memories are from another San Francisco: his family’s San Pancho in Guanajuato, where their roots reach back to 1607, when San Pancho was one of many “Indian republics.” He had only just arrived in San Francisco, California when he planted the seeds of what would become this site. This domain, built on the syncretic demonym of a Californian city imposed on a colonial settlement rooted in Indigenous labor and land, became a fitting foundation for a digital home.
More recently, the domain has come to reflect the author’s ethical commitments and political orientation in the pursuit of justice. These include animal liberation, degrowth, anti-authoritarianism, worker empowerment, and democracy — values he associates with the namesake of both his cities: Saint Francis of Assisi.
A San Franciscan is a collection of essays, analysis, published articles, personal meditations and media stretching back to the mid-1990s. If you’re new here, the Post Archive is a good place to begin. Alternately, you can browse the Media Gallery.
You may read more about your correspondent here.