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The program's executive director, Rafael Agustin, says these kids will someday help change the entertainment industry. He says they are the answer to the recent social media uproar over #OscarsSoWhite. The hashtag infamously began on Twitter in 2015, and took off again in 2016 when, for a second year in a row, all 20 actors nominated in the lead and supporting acting categories at the Academy Awards were white.

Dos momentos en la vida de Rafael Agustín replantearon su existencia: Cuando se enteró que ni el mariachi ni el tequila eran ecuatorianos, y cuando supo que era indocumentado.

“I'm going to tell you this story of a family you consider illegal but you're gonna recognize as uniquely American,” writer Rafael Agustín says of the “edgy, Latino Wonder Years” TV show he's sold based on his life growing up undocumented in L.A. “I always wanted to call it Illegal because I wanted to make a statement: 'Listen, we're gonna get rid of this word once and for all.'”

Creatives have always been at the forefront of political revolutions. And since Donald Trump’s inauguration last January, artists of every stripe—visual, musical, and otherwise—have been integral to the Resistance, from Shepard Fairey and his ubiquitous “We the People” prints to the innumerable LGBTQ+ artists and artists of color, for whom simply continuing to create became a political act.

After last night’s Emmy Awards, much of the Monday morning chatter was spent discussing Sean Spicer’s strange cameo, and the ceremony’s historic wins for Donald Glover (first black person to win an award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series); Lena Waithe (first woman of color to win an Emmy for comedy writing); and Riz Ahmed (first man of Asian descent to win an acting Emmy). Their Emmy wins were applauded by the media and celebrated as a major triumph for diversity on TV. But amidst all the self-congratulatory praise, there remained one glaring omission: Where were the awards and nominations for the Latinos?

Amid the Trump Administration’s hotly debated positions on immigration, actress Gina Rodriguez is working on two timely television pilots centered on Latino immigrants. The shows, which will be aired on the CW and CBS, are all about the Hispanic community. Both programs will be produced by I Can & I Will Productions, the Jane the Virgin star’s multi-media company, and CBS TV Studios.

Television ripped from the headlines doesn’t usually fare too well. When Homeland delved in, there was an embarrassing moment involving Arabic graffiti, while Scandal’s treatment of real-life events was so ham-fisted that other show’s parodies made it look tame. The latest TV trend involves the idea of real life directly informing TV, but takes things up a notch by centering it around one of the most divisive subjects in US politics: immigration.

Rodriguez’s second show will highlight another aspect of the immigrant experience. Working alongside Rafael Agustin, an actor and current writer on Jane the Virgin, Rodriguez will develop Illegal for the CW. This series tells the story of a high schooler who learns he’s undocumented. Rodriguez will serve as the producer for Illegal, but the show is really the brainchild of Agustin, who based it on his life as an undocumented immigrant born in Ecuador. Earlier this year, Agustin sat down with Remezcla to discuss Illegal, an “edgy Latino” take on The Wonder Years that he initially developed as an Episodic Story Lab Fellow at the Sundance Institute.

Michele Roberge, the director of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at California State University, Long Beach, resigned last week after the university told her to cancel a campus performance of a racially charged show.