Darializa Avila Chevalier

Darializa Avila Chevalier (born ), is an American political candidate and community organizer. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, she is the Democratic nominee for New York's 13th congressional district in 2026, having defeated incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the primary.

Born and raised in Florida, Avila Chevalier moved to New York City in 2012 to study at Columbia College, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern studies. She is a doctoral student in sociology at the City University of New York, studying the way black immigrants from Latin America are impacted by the U.S. criminal system and deportation.

Early life and education Avila Chevalier was born and raised in Florida to working-class Dominican immigrant parents. Her father is a truck driver and her mother a caseworker. She also lived in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela and speaks fluent Spanish. Her maternal grandfather was a member of the resistance movement against Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo and his successor Joaquín Balaguer, leading the family to emigrate to the US.

Avila Chevalier moved to New York City to study at Columbia College, Columbia University, She graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern studies. helping establish it in 2016. becoming a doctoral candidate by 2025.

Early career and activism Black Youth Project 100

After graduating from Columbia, Avila Chevalier organized with Black Youth Project 100. Avila Chevalier and three other Black women protested in front of the statue dressed in blood-stained hospital gowns, reading passages from Sims's autobiography, medical journals, and other historical material that highlighted his dehumanization of enslaved women. The statue was moved later that year.

Families for Freedom In 2019, as an organizer for Families for Freedom, Avila Chevalier protested to free Abdikadir Mohamed Felt, a Somali immigrant affected by President Donald Trump's "Muslim ban", from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention. She later published an analysis of the convergence of US counterterrorism policy and immigration enforcement as exemplified by the emergence of United States Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) units known as Tactical Terrorism Response Teams, with Abdikadir Mohamed's encounter with such a unit serving as a case study.

Avila Chevalier participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment (April 17–30, 2024), part of the Columbia University protests against the Gaza war and genocide.

As an alumna, Avila Chevalier participated in the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment, part of the protests at Columbia University demanding that the university officially call for a ceasefire and disinvest from Israel during the war and genocide in Gaza, for which she was targeted by Canary Mission, a pro-Israel doxing website. On October 8, 2023, she attended a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation that was condemned by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and New York City Councilman Brad Lander, who is now Avila Chevalier's fellow Democratic congressional nominee and campaign partner. The rally was condemned by local politicians Brad Lander and Kathy Hochul for allegedly justifying the October 7 attacks. On April 30, 2024, riot police forcibly removed protesters including Avila Chevalier from the entrance to Hamilton Hall. Avila Chevalier said that officers pushed her and other protesters to the floor, leaving them with bruises.

Career Avila Chevalier has taught at CUNY Lehman College and New York University. Her work has investigated police brutality in the United States.

On April 13, 2026, Avila Chevalier joined a Jewish Voice for Peace protest asking Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer to vote against selling weapons to Israel. Police arrested protesters, including Avila Chevalier, whose shirt read "fund people not bombs". In March 2026, she participated in a Columbia University rally calling for the release of Khalil and Leqaa Kordia.

2026 congressional campaign

Avila Chevalier ran in the Democratic primary for New York's 13th congressional district, challenging incumbent Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who has represented the district since 2017. NY-13 encompasses Harlem and the southwest section of the Bronx and is one of the most Democratic districts in the country. Avila Chevalier was the only challenger to outraise an incumbent in New York City during the first quarter of 2026. An April 2026 internal campaign poll showed her trailing Espaillat by 18 percentage points after voters were read biographical statements about both candidates.

Avila Chevalier was recruited to run by Justice Democrats, United Auto Workers Region 9A, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action.

Outside groups spent heavily in the race. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus's political arm spent to support Espaillat, and AIPAC spent at least $650,000 opposing Avila Chevalier; AIPAC-associated donors also spent to support Espaillat.

Espaillat retained support from several progressive Democrats, including Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar. The Congressional Black Caucus also backed him in the primary. The race highlighted tensions between the Democratic Party's "establishment" wing and its democratic socialists. Espaillat called Avila Chevalier's democratic socialism a "failed ideology".

During the campaign, Avila Chevalier was the target of racism, much of which was animated by anti-Haitian sentiment. Some Espaillat supporters falsely claimed she was Haitian, questioned her fidelity to the Dominican community in New York City, and called her "Haitian" as a slur. City & State reported that a senior adviser to Espaillat, Rusking Pimentel, made racist and Islamophobic comments about Avila Chevalier in Spanish language media.

News media and Espaillat scrutinized tweets Avila Chevalier made from a Twitter account she used from 2018 to 2022, when she was in her 20s. She said she deleted the account before Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk to focus on her studies and on organizing. In her tweets, Avila Chevalier criticized mainstream Democrats, calling Joe Biden "a rapist" in 2020, though she later said she voted for him in that year's presidential election. She tweeted "fuck Kamala Harris" in 2021 after Harris gave a speech discouraging migration to the US, In other tweets, she advocated prison abolition, police abolition, and border abolition. She rejected the view that Israel has a "right to exist" as a Jewish state. In a May 2020 tweet, she called COVID-19 a "European plague" and boosted a post suggesting the virus originated in France rather than Wuhan, China. She also criticized "Black" and "Arab men" for "fetishizing ugly colonizer women". In another tweet she responded to a prompt of "interracial relationship discourse, go" with a celebratory image, followed by "No yts tho" and an emoji. The New York Times and The Washington Post suggested this disparaged interracial relationships involving White people. She responded to coverage of her posts by saying, "I was young, yes, and I was a millennial with internet access", and added that the attention was "litigating the politics of the past instead of the politics of the future and the present". According to incomplete returns, she won 49.4% of the vote to his 45.9%; she won younger voters by 24%, college-educated voters by 20%, higher-income voters by 6%, and black voters by 2%. Espaillat won lower-income voters by 10% and Hispanic voters by 16%. If elected in November, Avila Chevalier will be the first socialist to represent the district since Vito Marcantonio in the 1950s.

Political positions Avila Chevalier is a political progressive and democratic socialist, and The New York Times has characterized her views as far-left. In an interview with MS NOW, she said she is not a communist. Avila Chevalier opposes all forms of deportation as well as US support for Israel during the war and genocide in Gaza. Her platform has included universal healthcare, stronger tenant protections, funding programs for children instead of funding war, abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), banning large super PACs from elections, and prohibiting members of Congress from trading stocks.

Foreign policy

Israel and Palestine Avila Chevalier has been "unequivocal in condemning Israel as an apartheid state committing genocide". In March 2026, during a forum with the Broadway Democrats political club, Avila Chevalier, when asked whether she condemned Hamas for the October 7 attacks, responded: "The premise of that question, to me, ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were living under before this genocide began." In an interview with Jewish Currents, she said Espaillat "has used his time in Congress to give ICE billions, fund the Israeli military, and vote for Trump's crypto corruption—while being bankrolled by AIPAC and the real estate lobby".

Avila Chevalier supports the Block the Bombs Act, which would limit the sale, transfer, or exporting of defense articles and services to Israel.

Ukraine In 2022, Avila Chevalier tweeted that the reason the United States was involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine was that "the Cold War ended and we've been bullying Russia ever since". In a 2026 interview, she said she believed Ukraine was a victim of Russia's violation of its sovereignty, and that diplomacy with Russia should be pursued.

Immigration Avila Chevalier supports abolishing ICE, expanding pathways to citizenship for immigrants in the US, When asked about open borders, Avila Chevalier called free movement an "ideal vision", saying, "capital can move freely across the world, but people are trapped." In 2025, Avila Chevalier wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling for the freedom of Mahmoud Khalil after he was taken from his home and detained by ICE, writing:Immigration courts and detention centers have, for decades, been an abuse of administrative power. By targeting Mahmoud, Trump is now taking this abuse of power to a whole new level and making an example of him to silence those speaking out for the lives and human rights of Palestinians. She denied being a communist, but said the question was a distraction. She posted tweets favorable to communist leaders and Marxism around 2020.

Also in 2020, she lamented the lack of Marxist literature in public libraries, including by Vladimir Lenin, and reposted a post criticizing "banned books" displays for not including the works of Joseph Stalin. In 2026, she said that was because she believed in freedom of speech and access to all kinds of thought, especially in the wake of book censorship.

Electoral history

2026 U.S. House of Representatives