Kelly Harris was born and raised in Tule Lake, a town in northern Siskiyou County, a small community of farm workers, most of them Latino, where they are seen only as that, employees, not as people.
As denounced by Harris, general director of the organization TEACH (Training, Employment, and Community Help) Inc., who throughout the years has seen injustices and abuses against the Spanish-speaking community in the area.
"The Hispanic population has never been respected in this community; they are considered workers, not people," he told journalists Manuel Ortiz and Peter Schurmann, for a joint project between Pensula 360 Press and Ethnic Media Services.
The farms that fill the spaces of Tule Lake are owned by white people, who pass them on to their children, and they in turn to theirs, perpetuating a space where there is no room for being Latino, at least not as anything more than workers.