Roberto Hernandez

Roberto’s family’s immigration story began with his grandmother, who moved to San Francisco from Nicaragua in 1955. Roberto’s mother was six months pregnant with him when she came to the United States on a one-way ticket. His whole family lived together on the corner of 24th and Florida Street in the Mission; at first, more than a dozen family members shared one apartment, including Roberto’s siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Eventually, his grandmother saved up enough money to buy the family two big flats on York Street. Her vision was to find stable housing for all of the family, and Roberto came of age witnessing her achieve her dream.

As a teenager, Roberto learned how to channel his community values into organizing, and he saw firsthand what was possible when the community all came together in service of a common goal. Roberto’s father sent me to Delano, California, to volunteer with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the leaders of the labor movement, during the summer of 1970. They brought Roberto out into the fields to work alongside the farmers, and his perspective transformed when he experienced their working conditions. Cesar and Dolores taught Roberto and his colleagues how to organize ourselves to fight for basic human rights, like decent wages and functioning toilets and clean water.

Roberto brought that spirit back home with me to the Mission, where he spent the rest of his life dedicated to organizing movements on behalf of his community. His experiences as a youth leader for the Real Alternatives Program—a role that eventually grew to Executive Director—allowed him to help young people from the neighborhood divert from troubled pasts into life paths that brought them college degrees, lucrative careers, and home ownership. He has fought for many successful affordable housing initiatives across the district, resulting in the creation of thousands of new homes, and he secured funding from the city to build Raza Park and the Mission Recreation Center. He also helped establish the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center and served as its first director, providing services to seniors, children, and youth.