Overview [1]

Darializa Avila Chevalier was born in Florida on December 3, 1993, to working-class, unmarried parents who had immigrated from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. prior to her birth.

Soon after the girl was born, her mother took her to the Dominican Republic and lived there with her for approximately 18 months, except for a brief period when the child lived with her grandmother in Venezuela. Darializa and her mother then returned to Florida, where they resided primarily in Miami and Tallahassee and were, as the daughter would later put it, “pretty poor.” Eventually they moved to New York, where in 2012 Chevalier enrolled at Columbia University. There, she was active as an organizer fighting to end what she characterized  as an abundance of sexual violence on campus, and supporting efforts to liberate both black Americans and Gaza-based Palestinians from the respective oppressions they purported to suffer.

From 2012-2015, Chevalier worked for Community Impact, a self-described “independent nonprofit organization dedicated to serving people in need in the Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Washington Heights communities” of New York City. Its programs included services like:

• giving young people access to tutoring and mentoring;
• helping adults learn to read and write English, prepare for a GED exam, gain computer literacy, apply to colleges, and cultivate marketable job skills;
• distributing free food to low-income people;
• providing staffers for local homeless shelters; and
• educating low-income New Yorkers about how they could access health insurance and other benefits.

Chevalier was an administrative assistant with Community Impact from October 2012 through May 2013, and a program coordinator for its so-called “America Reads” initiative from May 2013 until September 2015.

From May 2014 through July 2014, Chevalier was also an International Intern with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and non-governmental organization that operates primarily in the Middle East and “delivers high-impact, locally led programs that help children, youth, women, and families affected by conflict and crisis heal, learn, build skills, and move toward more stable futures.” During that internship, Chevalier taught English-language skills to Palestinian children residing in the refugee camps of Nablus, a West bank city located approximately 30 miles north of Jerusalem, She also conducted professional competency courses at An-Najah National University in Nablus.

From June 2015 through June 2016, Chevalier was an administrative assistant for the Columbia University-based Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, which “supports academic research, teaching, and scholarship on the study of religion, culture, and social difference.”

In 2016, Chevalier earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia University.

From June 2016 through November 2018, she worked as a paralegal at the New York City law firm of Sivin & Miller, LLP.

From November 2018 through May 2019, Chevalier was an organizer with Families for Freedom, a New York City-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit describing itself as “an organization led by Black women” whose “primary goal” is twofold: (a) to “challenge policies that cause harm and trauma in minority communities’ households,” and (b) to “dismantle mass incarceration and deportation systems” in the United States.

In 2019, Chevalier enrolled in a Sociology doctoral program at the City University of New York (CUNY).

In approximately 2019 or 2020, she underwent a religious conversion from Christianity to Islam.

Racist, Anti-American, Anti-Israel, Pro-Communist Tweets

From 2018 through 2022, Chevalier produced a large number of profane and incendiary social-media posts articulating contempt for such things as America, police officers, white people, capitalism, Jews, Israel, Republicans, and establishment Democrats — while repeatedly lauding the virtues of Marxism. Some examples:

• In an October 27, 2020 tweet, Chevalier called America “a fucking disgrace.”
• In a December 23, 2019 tweet, she wrote: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” The words were accompanied by a smiling-face emoji.
• In September 2021, she reposted a tweet that said: “A world without borders—just like a world without prisons or police—is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.”
• In September 2021, she reposted messages declaring, “Yes, literally, abolish the border” and “all deportation is wrong.”
• In February 2022, she wrote that Russia had invaded Ukraine earlier that month because the United States had “been bullying Russia ever since” the end of the Cold War.
• On numerous occasions she posted tweets that called for the abolition of police and prisons.
• In 2019, she emphasized that her call for the abolition of police “means ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever.”
• In January 2020, she asserted that white people should not be in interracial relationships.
• In response to a white Republican governor’s suggestion that corn husks could be used instead of toilet paper, which was in scarce supply following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, she wrote: “Like please how does one think to wipe their ass with corn husks before it crosses their mind to use soap and water[?]”
• In a May 2020 post, she amplified a claim that the coronavirus had originated in France, not China.
• In February 2019, she derided black and Arab men for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”
• In August 2020, she reposted a tweet that stated, “Israel doesn’t exist!”
• In November 2019, she mocked female soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces who had donated their hair to create wigs for cancer patients in Gaza.
• Chevalier’s social media posts from 2020-2022 repeatedly sang the praises of communism. For example, archived posts and retweets included a recommendation of Karl Marx’s Capital as an “essential must-read”; a lamentation that public libraries generally carried an insufficient amount of Marxist literature by Lenin and other revolutionary writers; and a retweet from a self-identified Communist complaining that bookstore displays highlighting “banned books” typically failed to mention The Complete Works of J. V. Stalin.
• In an April 2020 post, she wrote that while most of the political theory she had read was communist, “the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me.” The words were accompanied by a laughing emoji.
• In a 2019 post, she wrote, “Seize the means of production,” a phrase articulating Marxist doctrine.
• In April 2020, she retweeted a post reading, “I just cannot get over the fact that the universe has foisted upon us the perfect illustration of literally every failing of capitalism and people are still like we can’t be communists cuz there won’t be enough types of soup.”
• During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she reposted a message advocating that the federal government take over large parts of the American economy by employing such Communist policies as: nationalizing utilities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies; suspending rent and mortgage payments; dissolving private health insurance companies; and “seiz[ing] all properties from landlords.”
• Chevalier’s profile on The Story Graph, a social site that allows users to share information about what materials they like to read, indicates her interest in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist terrorist organization that participated in the barbaric Hamas-led attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023.
• Her “Recently Read” page on The Story Graph lists two books by the late PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972).
• Her Twitter bio in 2019 included the hashtag #FreePalestine — a phrase that, in the parlance of genocidal Jew-haters, constitutes a call for the permanent destruction of Israel. That same year, Chevalier co-hosted a series of podcasts with John Jay College instructor Nick Rodrigo, who, in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attacks, had attended an anti-Israel rally where he shouted: “Shout out to the resistance! The resistance storming that wretched border wall on Oct. 7. They are doing their resistance and they are freeing themselves and in turn freeing us.”
• In 2020, Chevalier retweeted a quote by Assata Shakur, the former Black Liberation Army member and revolutionary Marxist who murdered a white New Jersey state trooper in 1977 and later escaped from prison and fled to Communist Cuba, saying she “preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che [Guevara], or Fidel [Castro]” over Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. She did acknowledge, however, hat the two “white dudes” had made contributions to “revolutionary struggle” that were “too great to be ignored.”
• In a 2021 post responding to Vice President Kamala Harris’ suggestion that migrants should not try to illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border, Chevalier wrote:“I have no nuance to add. Fuck Kamala Harris.”
• In April 2020, as Joe Biden was clearly destined to clinch the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Chevalier called him a “rapist.”

Investigator with Public Defender’s Office

Sometime in early 2025, while still enrolled in her Sociology PhD program at CUNY, Chevalier took a job as an investigator at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, a public defender’s office that provided, among other things, legal aid to people claiming to be victims of police brutality.

Joining the Democratic Socialists of America

In 2025, Chevalier joined the New York City branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). According to David Jenkins, a member of DSA’s National Political Committee: “Our goal is liberation. Our goal is Communism. We’re a diverse body of libertarian socialists, libertarian Marxists, anarchists, lefts, Communists, and other schools of thought within the sort of leftwing socialist movement.”

Campaign for the U.S. House: “Like AOC, But to the Left”

In 2026, while still pursuing her PhD at CUNY, Chevalier ran for federal political office, targeting the U.S. House seat representing New York’s 13th Congressional District. She was recruited to enter this race by Justice Democrats, the same organization that had backed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first congressional campaign against an establishment Democrat in 2018. A June 2026 headline in CityAndState.com described Chevalier politically as “like AOC, but to the left.”

Chevalier’s congressional campaign was endorsed by such notable individuals and organizations as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, former U.S. House Member Jamaal Bowman, then-U.S. House candidate Claire Valdez, New York State Senator Julia Salazar, the New York City DSA, United Auto Workers Region 9A, the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Indivisible, the Sunrise Movement, Our Revolution, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, and Emgage Action.

Depicting Both Israelis & White Americans as Evil Oppressors

After her 2014 summer internship with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization in Nablus, Chevalier joined the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, a Jew-hating entity whose UC Berkeley chapter once described Hamas not as a genocidal terrorist group, but rather as “a vast social organization” that “provides schools, medical care, and day care for a number of Palestinians who otherwise live difficult lives.” Chevalier also co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a campaign to pressure the Ivy League school to cut its financial ties with Israel. A decade later (in 2024), CUAD would spearhead a series of menacing tent-encampment protests against Israel on the Columbia campus – protests that resulted in the terrorization of Jewish students and professors, numerous injuries, damage to campus buildings, and dozens of lengthy student suspensions. Stated CUAD in an Instagram post:

• “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one — we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people.”
• “We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized.”
• “As the fascism ingrained in the American consciousness becomes ever more explicit and irrefutable, we seek community and instruction from militants in the Global South, who have been on the frontlines in the fight against tyranny and domination which undergird the imperialist world order.”

In August 2016, Chevalier and Khury Petersen-Smith, who would later join the Institute for Policy Studies, co-authored an article for The Electronic Intifada, an anti-Israel Internet publication, titled “Black Activists Owe No Apology for Charging Israel with Genocide.” In this piece, Chevalier and Petersen-Smith:

• lament “the systemic violence and oppression that target Black people in the United States”;
• condemn the “racialized poverty, police violence, environmental racism and myriad other issues that plague Black communities”;
• assert that as a result of “the state-sanctioned murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012 [and] the 2014 Ferguson uprising in response to the police murder of Michael Brown and the countless other Black lives lost to police violence,” “a movement has coalesced around a rallying cry that should be uncontroversial: Black lives matter”;
• declare that “Zionism is racism”;
• claim that “because the very principle of Zionism dictates that Jewish people be granted greater privileges by the State of Israel than its non-Jewish subjects, the result is necessarily a system of apartheid and inequality”;
• charge that Israel’s “racist dehumanization of the Palestinian people” has made possible the “systematic dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, along with other forms of brutal violence by Israeli police and military”;
• accuse Israel of maintaining “an apartheid regime with distinct laws and services that only apply to Jewish people” – a system reminiscent of “similar white supremacist laws” that had once pervaded the societies of America and South Africa; and
• assert that “it is entirely reasonable to argue that Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinian people and is therefore committing the crime of genocide.”

In a November 14, 2023 piece in the Columbia Spectator, CUAD:

• identified “Palestine” as “the vanguard for our collective liberation” from Israel’s relentless campaign of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and innumerable other “atrocities” —a liberation effort modeled on the tradition of “the Vietnam anti-war movement and the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa”;
• asserted that Israel, through its “Zionist project,” “is bombing hospitals, schools, and homes while cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, half of whom are children”;
• accused Israel of having perpetrated “over 75 years of violence, dispossession, and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people—funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars, and further enabled by financial investments made by institutions like Columbia University”;
• vowed to not rest until Columbia divests from apartheid Israel, Palestinians are free, and liberation is achieved for all oppressed people worldwide”;
• stated that “our chief goal is to challenge the settler-colonial violence that Israel perpetrates with the support of the United States”; and
• explained that “antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism—in particular racism against Arabs and Palestinians—are all cut from the same cloth: Western colonization, imperialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.”

On one of the web pages for her 2026 congressional campaign, Chevalier accused the U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) of having “kidnapped” her friend, pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, outside his Columbia University apartment in 2025.

In reality, Khalil was arrested for the prominent role he had played in a series of June 2023 rallies in New York City – events where, in the Trump administration’s calculus, his presence and advocacy had posed “serious adverse foreign policy consequences” for America.  The Trump administration was further vexed by the fact that Khalil had:

• willfully omitted information about his prior work history and organizational memberships on his green card application;
• defended protesters’ chants of “From the River to the Sea” – a call for the complete eradication of the state of Israel, which is situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea;
• likewise defended protesters’ chants of “Globalize the Intifada,” a term denoting violent, deadly uprisings by Islamic extremists;
• maintained that both the First Palestinian Intifada and the Second Palestinian Intifada were “largely a mass civil resistance against Israel[i] apartheid and Israeli occupation”; and
• repeatedly refused to condemn Hamas in the aftermath of its October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks that resulted in the murder of more than 1,200 Israelis.

Chevalier’s 2026 “DarializaforCongress” web page boasted that she personally had “publicly advocated for [Mahmoud Khalil’s] support, participated in protests [on Khalil’s behalf] outside Trump Tower, and arranged support for Mahmoud at court.”

Chevalier’s Positions & Campaign Platform

Immigration

Via her 2026 congressional campaign web pages, Chevalier articulated her wish to:

• ”abolish ICE,” an agency she considered part of “the deportation machine” that “exists to control our [immigrant] communities, not to keep us safe”;
• “reunite” the members of families that had been “separated by ICE”;
• “expand pathways to citizenship, including for DREAMers [people who were first brought to the U.S. illegally as minors] and undocumented immigrants”;
• “mandat[e] free legal representation for immigrants’ interactions with DHS [the Department of Homeland Security], and … support them through the immigration process”; and
• outlaw the apprehension of illegal aliens at “pre-schools, places of worship, and other sensitive sites.”

In a 2021 repost on Twitter, Chevalier said that the abolition of borders, prisons and police was “possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward.” She later amplified and echoed social-media posts claiming that: (a) “all deportation is wrong,” and (b) it would be desirable to “literally abolish the border.”

In a June 2026 exchange with Vox Media’s Astead Herndon, Chevalier stated: “I still believe that all deportations are wrong.” When Herndon then asked if deportations were also an improper way of dealing with “people who were convicted of breaking U.S. criminal law,” Chevalier replied that such a punishment would be “discriminatory”:

“The reason I say that is because we have a criminal system; it is imperfect, but it exists, and it is one that if we accept as the process by which we want to engage with these issues, right, the issues of harm, the issues of criminality … then we need to make sure that it is one that isn’t also discriminatory on the basis of where people were born.

“To subject someone who has committed a crime to both a criminal system but also an immigration system that also detains them in the very same facilities that criminal detainees … people who are convicted of criminal convictions, are also held, and then deported and ripped away from everything they know and love, that is also a punishment, and that is a punishment not on the basis of the crime they committed, because they already served their time…. It is double punishment.

“If we truly believe that double jeopardy is something that is unconstitutional, something that is unethical, something that is against the principles of equality in this country, we cannot subject people to that on the basis of where they were born.”

Babies, Not Bombs

Lamenting that the U.S. federal  government has “used billions of our taxes to fund senseless wars abroad,” Chevalier’s 2026 congressional campaign website said: “The U.S. sends more than $3 billion to Israel in military aid each year. We spend $1 billion per day in the U.S. war in Iran. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 children in New York City’s public schools are homeless. We must stop funding the bombing of children and families overseas, and start funding the programs here at home that can support our children reaching their full potential instead.”

Toward that end, Chevalier pledged to promote the implementation of:

• child tax credits of $800 per child
• federally-funded savings accounts, known as baby bonds, for each newborn child
• free breakfast and afterschool programs for all children
• paid family leave for all workers

Housing for All

Asserting that “housing is a fundamental human right,” Chevalier’s 2026 congressional campaign website vowed that she would work to:

• “increase federal funding for rental vouchers like Section 8”;
• “cap rent increases on existing units at 5% annually for large landlords”; and
• “create more affordable housing through programs like the Northern Manhattan Community Land Trust,” whose mission is “to take land off the speculative market” and place the ownership of homes into the hands of residents rather than a landlord.

Notwithstanding Chevalier’s negative view of private home ownership, and her calls in favor of government seizure of properties from landlords, her own father had been renting out his own Florida condominium for some 27 years, collecting $1,750 per month as of 2026.

Medicare for All

On the premise that “healthcare is a human right,” Chevalier’s 2026 congressional campaign website pledged that she “will fight for Medicare for All” i.e., a government-run “universal healthcare system” covering all expenses associated with “primary care, mental health services, substance abuse treatment, dental, vision, and hearing aids.”

Her plan would also cover all abortion services as well as “gender affirming care for everyone, especially LGBTQ+ communities.”[2]

Economic Security for All

Vowing that Chevalier would “reject corporate greed” and “fight for working people across our district,” her 2026 congressional campaign website said she would fight to pass the PRO Act, which, according to InformationStation.org:

• would require employees “to join their workplace’s union, even if they personally do not support it”;
• “allow unions to bypass secret ballot elections in favor of a ‘card-check’ system” that “often allows for unions to coerce and intimidate workers” into joining”; and
• “require employers to share workers’ contact information with union organizers without the approval of the employees themselves,” thereby “opening up doors for harassment and intimidation” by union leaders.

Also on her campaign website, Chevalier vowed to work toward:

• enacting a federal jobs guarantee to ensure that anyone wishing to work could find employment in the form of a government job;
• “rais[ing] the minimum wage to $15 an hour”;
• “enshrin[ing] cost-of-living adjustments, paid sick [leave], and paid family leave in[to] federal law”;
• “establish[ing] a universal basic income,” whereby all people would regularly receive an unconditional, recurring cash payment, regardless of their employment or immigration status;
• ensuring that everyone has a “secure pension” for their retirement years; and
• “creat[ing] a four-day, 32-hour work week with no loss in pay” below the existing levels for a five-day, 40-hour week.

Quality Education

On the premise that “everyone has a right to free, quality public education, no matter their zip code,” Chevalier’s 2026 congressional campaign website said that she would fight to:

• “establish free universal childcare and pre-K”;
• “create more childcare centers in communities [that currently have] too few options”;
• “increase wages for early childhood educators”;
• “expand access to Head Start and Early Head Start” programs[3]
• “protect and expand students’ civil rights, especially for undocumented, Black and brown, and LGBTQ+ students”;
• “halt” the expansion of charter schools[4]
• “make public colleges tuition-free”; and
• “cancel $1.7 trillion of student debt.”

Tax the Wealthy

On her 2026 congressional campaign website, Chevalier called for the passage of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026 (introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal) and the Equal Tax Act, “so millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.”

Winning the Democratic Primary

In the Democratic Party primary which was held on June 23, 2026, Chevalier defeated the incumbent Representative of New York’s 13th Congressional District, Adriano Espaillat, by a margin of 49.4% to 45.9%.

Following Chevalier’s victory in the primary, far-left Democrat Ilhan Omar wrote, in a semi-literate post on the social media platform X: “We are very lucky to have a principled leader [Chevalier] and someone who understands who [sic] it means to be a leader carrying [sic] for their whole constituency. Congratulations sis and welcome to Congress!”

Also in the afterglow of Chevalier’s triumph in her primary – which had been accompanied by wins by two additional DSA-affiliated congressional candidates, Claire Valdez and Brad Lander — the DSA boasted that its rapidly rising influence represented an unstoppable trend that was destined to continue gaining momentum. As Osman Chaudhary, co-chair of the New York City DSA Electoral Working Group, put it: “We have a Democratic socialist mandate in New York City.” To anyone contemplating the possibility of mounting a challenge against the DSA’s preferred candidates, Chaudhary said: “Don’t even try it. We control these areas; we won by massive margins.”

Footnotes:

[1] https://www.darializaforcongress.com/about
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/24/darializa-avila-chevalier-win-new-york
https://ballotpedia.org/Darializa_Avila_Chevalier
https://www.linkedin.com/in/darializaavilachevalier/
https://www.darializaforcongress.com/about
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rising-socialist-stars-track-congress-darializa-avila-chevalier-brad-lander-claire-valdez

[2] The Daily Wire explains: “Gender-affirming care is a phrase used by transgender activists and media to mask the more grisly sounding transgender top and bottom surgeries, including removing a biological woman’s breasts, removing a biological man’s genitals, sculpting a fake penis on a biological woman, and more. Social affirmation, puberty blockers, and hormones also fall under the ‘gender-affirming care’ umbrella.” According to DoNoHarmMedicine.org, “gender-affirming” care is “based on the dangerous premise that any child who has distress that he or she thinks is related to their sex should automatically be treated with social transition to the sex of their choice followed by hormonal interventions and then possibly surgery to remove healthy body parts,” while “underlying mental health problems are usually not addressed.”

[3] Established in 1965 and currently serving almost 800,000 children from low-income families at an annual cost of nearly $15,000 per pupil, the Head Start program is ostensibly intended to provide a boost—in the form of education, nutrition, and health services—to disadvantaged three-to-four-year-olds before they enter elementary school. From Head Start’s inception through 2012, American taxpayers spent more than $180 billion on the program.

But what are taxpayers—and the children enrolled in Head Start—getting in return for all this money? To find out, Congress in 2002 commissioned a scientifically rigorous, longitudinal analysis known as the Head Start Impact Study to evaluate the program’s effectiveness. The results, which were released in 2010, indicated that Head Start had little to no effect on the participants’ cognitive abilities, socio-emotional development, or physical health. Moreover, whatever meager benefits may have been detectable while the children were actively participating in Head Start “almost completely disappear[ed] by first grade.”

Then, in 2012, the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) published the findings of another scientifically rigorous, landmark study that tracked some 5,000 three- and four-year-old children from the beginning of their Head Start experience, through the third grade. This analysis, which was commissioned by HHS, likewise concluded that Head Start had no measurable impact on cognitive, social-emotional, or health-related variables. On a few measures, in fact, access to Head Start had harmful effects on the children.

For further details on the data regarding Head Start’s efficacy, click here.

[4] Charter schools often serve as outstanding alternatives to failing, substandard public schools — particularly in poor urban areas. They operate as schools of choice and are exempt from many state or local regulations related to operation and management.