It's been a big couple of years for Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez. In 2015, she won a Golden Globe for her starring turn on the CW show, and she was nominated for another in 2016. As she enjoys her own success, Rodriguez feels that it's important she give back to other actors, especially performers of color, who are so often overlooked. So she created the hashtag #MovementMonday, which she has used to highlight actors and actresses of color (she first focused on the Latino community, before broadening the focus).
Refinery29 recently caught up with Rodriguez, and spoke to the actress about the motivations behind the social media campaign. "Movement Mondays came out of the entire Oscar situation where everyone was so upset," the actress explained. "I felt that there was so much negativity surrounding it that I was like, I have to put a positive spin on this because it is overwhelming me internally. I am not really sure, I didn’t have an idea of what it was going to look like, it wasn’t like, I wonder if it’s going to do this? It was: I want to do something because I don’t want to sit in this negativity."
Rodriguez continued, "I don’t want to feel like we’re nowhere — because that isn’t even the truth! We’re everywhere, and what I mean by we is the Latino community. And I have recently branched out to all the other diverse communities, because I saw a lot of my warriors were saying things like, ‘What about the Asian community? We don’t get spoken about also!’ And I thought, Okay, well, sometimes I don’t feel authentic to be speaking about a community that I [wasn't] culturally raised in, but then I thought, no, it’s just about uplifting people, period. "
Other Hollywood actors have also promoted Rodriguez's uplifting movement. Scream Queens' Diego Boneta and Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Stephanie Beatriz have both highlighted the project on their Instagram accounts.