Over the holiday weekend, Los Angeles-based actor Darlene Vazquetelles was visiting her parents in Miami. A friend of hers, actor Amaury Velasco, was starring in a new sitcom. She had recorded the pilot episode and as she and her mother watched the television, one line spoken by Velasco’s character caught her by surprise. “I’m Puerto Rican. I’d be perfect for selling drugs.”

“I stopped the recording and called my dad into the room to make sure me and my mom weren’t making a big deal out of nothing,” said Vazquetelles. “When my dad saw it, he was like, ‘What was that?’”

She wasn’t the only one who watched the episode. George Torres, based in New York, was alerted to the same line when his friend and mentor Jaime Emeric told him about it. After watching the show, Torres tweeted, “Where is the comedy in ‘I’m Puerto Rican. I’d be perfect for selling drugs’? Can someone at ABC please tell me?”

After the effect of one tweet and various social media connections later, Vazquetelles, who is shooting a film in Chicago, along with director, Carlos Jimenez Flores, decided to move this above and beyond a sitcom and into action within the community.

The two decided to put up a series of videos on YouTube that followed a script. Individuals, mainly Puerto Ricans, would introduce themselves and end with, “I’m Puerto Rican and I do not sell drugs.” Due to the massive influx of videos pouring in to their inboxes and considering the videos that Jimenez Flores recorded, they had well over a couple hundred in support for their initiative.

“First we were getting videos from Chicago. Next thing you know, it’s the Midwest. Then we were getting them from coast to coast; from ...