Darializa Avila Chevalier (born ), also known as DAC, 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 spent her childhood in Miami, and many of her teenage years in Tallahassee, where she attended Hartsfield Elementary School and Fairview Middle School, graduating from James S. Rickards High School in 2012.
Avila Chevalier moved to New York City to study at Columbia College, Columbia University, where she was an illustrator for the Columbia Daily Spectator. She graduated in 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern studies.
As a student at Columbia College, Avila Chevalier organized with Students for Justice in Palestine and Mobilized African Diaspora. In 2014 Avila Chevalier lived in the Palestinian city of Nablus for around two months while interning for Tomorrow's Youth Organization to teach English to Palestinian toddlers and children. The 2014 Gaza War started shortly after she returned to the US. She credited this period with shaping her view that the oppression of Palestinians is directly linked to the American system, saying, "these are not only like systems, they are the same system. It was the same tear gas made in the USA that was being dropped on Gaza that was also being used against Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson." She co-founded student organization Columbia University Apartheid Divest, helping establish it in 2016.
Avila Chevalier began a PhD program in sociology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, becoming a doctoral candidate by 2025. Her research has focused on immigration law and policy and incarceration in the United States, especially on the ways Black immigrants from Latin America have been affected by the US criminal justice system and deportation.
Early career and activism Black Youth Project 100
After graduating from Columbia, Avila Chevalier organized with Black Youth Project 100. In 2018, the group demanded removal of a Central Park statue of J. Marion Sims, a 19th-century gynecologist who forcibly subjected enslaved Black women to experiments involving painful surgical techniques without anesthesia, despite later administering anesthesia to his white patients. 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.
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.
In November 2023, when Columbia suspended its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, Avila Chevalier said the university should "protect speech and protect the right of faculty and students to address these issues in an open and frank way". 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.
She works as an investigator at the public defender legal organization Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, where she is a member of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys – United Auto Workers Local 2325. Her work has investigated police brutality in the United States.
Political career Avila Chevalier is a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), which she joined in 2025. She has described her political views as having been informed by the Black radical tradition, specifically the writings of Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, as well as her experience in Palestine in 2014. In the 2025 New York City mayoral election, Avila Chevalier was an organizing lead on DSA member Zohran Mamdani's campaign. She ranked Brad Lander fifth on her ballot in protest of his comments about Mahmoud Khalil.
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. In September 2026, Avila Chevalier was arrested alongside over 100 protestors at a protest ahead of a speech by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly.
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. At 32, she would be one of the youngest members of Congress. 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, who had previously helped Ocasio-Cortez win her 2018 election against an incumbent. Avila Chevalier has been endorsed by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, United Auto Workers Region 9A, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action. She also has the support of former US representative Jamaal Bowman and political commentator Hasan Piker.
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. Espaillat characterized some Avila Chevalier voters as "the gentrifiers" raising rents. Avila Chevalier supports federal funding to build more social housing.
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, but apologized publicly to Harris during a debate. She later said her posts came from a sense of political disempowerment felt by many Americans. 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. Other tweets related to communism, COVID-19, and interracial relationships. In reference to its focus on Avila Chevalier's tweets, Mehdi Hasan criticized The New York Times for profiling her with more scrutiny than it has given right-wing figures. 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". Avila Chevalier said she regrets her past Twitter activity due to the division it caused. Mamdani reiterated his endorsement of her campaign after the report, citing her ongoing advocacy for immigrants and working-class New Yorkers.
Avila Chevalier defeated Espaillat in the Democratic primary in an upset. 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.