As a critical take on the primaries, we speak with the Palestine organizer and congressional candidate, New York City, and her experience of a surprisingly vicious campaign.
Congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier speaks at a Get Out the Vote rally at the King’s Theater on June 18, 2026, in New York.
(Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) This time last year, few people outside left-wing circles in New York had heard of Darializa Avila Chevalier. That was before the longtime organizer and activist decided to challenge powerful incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary in New York’s 13th Congressional District, a diverse, largely working-class district that stretches from East Harlem to Washington Heights and into the Bronx. (Full disclosure: I live in the neighborhood.)
Today, Avila Chevalier finds himself engaged in one of the fiercest struggles of a particularly fierce election year in New York. Espaillat, who has served in Congress since 2015 and has deep political roots in the city, enjoys the support of much of the old-guard Democratic establishment. Avila Chevalier was endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats. If she wins, she will instantly become one of the most resolutely left-wing members of the House of Representatives.
With the primaries fast approaching on Tuesday, polls watch Avila Chevalier has a real chance of overthrowing Espaillat, something very few outside observers saw coming. As the race tightens, outside spending from super PACS has flooded the district. Israel’s main lobby group, AIPAC, spent millions on pro-Espaillat ads disparaging Avila Chevalier over past tweets criticizing Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, as well as his long history of pro-Palestinian activism. Justice Democrats, among other groups, responded with ads highlighting Espaillat’s ties to AIPAC and voting to defund ICE in Congress.
I spoke to Avila Chevalier last Friday. We talked about why she’s running, the importance of Palestine in her campaign, the super PAC’s deluge of spending against her, the war in Iran, and much more. But I started by asking this question at the top of every New Yorker’s list.
Jack Mirkinson: Did you go to the Knicks parade yesterday?
Avila Knight: Unfortunately, I couldn’t go. I was running around doing a number of things for the campaign, and everyone was coming back, and it was just a lot of FOMO.
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JM: I have never seen anything comparable to the atmosphere that has taken over the city in recent weeks. Have you seen anything like this in the years you’ve been here? What do you think is going on there?
I remember the day of the fifth game, the weather was so nice. It was also the Puerto Rican Day festival. Everyone was so happy. And I think New Yorkers are in a really good place right now in terms of the hope that we feel. To feel that there are possibilities for our future, that there is hope in terms of our political and personal prospects. The things we need to live a happy and dignified life seem within our reach.
JM: Have you seen this kind of optimism you talk about as you walk around the neighborhood?
THAT : Absolutely. A lot of people have thanked us for showing up because they really believe it gives them hope – that what we started last year with Mayor Mamdani’s candidacy wasn’t a fluke, right? That we could actually have a government that actually responds to people’s needs.
What has really comforted me is especially what comes from our elders: the enthusiasm they show when I tell them that they can have representation that will actually fight for them and get results for them. Because they’ve felt a politics of cynicism for much of their lives, and they just want to grow old and be happy with their families, but their families are moving.
So the possibility of a change of course is really the emotion we feel on the ground.
JM: And you think that Adriano Espaillat prevented people from staying here, from living better in this neighborhood?
THAT : Yeah. He has been in Congress for almost 10 years. He has held political office for almost 30 years. And things haven’t gotten any easier for the people here. More and more black Harlemites are leaving the city, and more and more uptown Dominicans are leaving the city. And as people are really struggling to get by, rents keep increasing. There are fewer and fewer resources to really support people in these very difficult times.
I just ask people, “Has your life improved over the last nine years of his leadership in Congress?” And the answer is mostly no. And I knew at first the answer would be no, because that was my answer. My life has also become more difficult over the last 10 years.
JM: In what ways?
THAT : The rent becomes untenable. I see more and more of my neighbors sleeping on the street. I see more and more people joining the lines for food pantries. I talk to elders, and their kids are moving because they want kids and they can’t afford to raise them in the city.
I see more and more charter schools popping up and more and more public schools struggling to provide basic necessities to their students. I was working towards an academic career before starting this campaign, and I was excluded. I couldn’t afford to pay my rent while teaching multiple courses at CUNY because CUNY is deeply underfunded.
I was stuck in a cycle where I could either decide to pay my rent and teach classes, or work on my thesis and graduate without having to pay tuition. And so it was just a race to the bottom in a lot of ways, and I had to find work outside of that.
I love my job at the Neighborhood Defenders Service of Harlem as an investigator. But it wasn’t the career I had been working toward for many years.
JM: Many people in this situation would say, “I need to make some sort of change in my life. » They wouldn’t necessarily say, “I think I’m going to run for Congress.” This is not the average decision someone makes. So why did you make this decision?
It’s been a journey and it’s one that I’m truly grateful for. But you’re right, it’s not something most people would do, and I myself hadn’t considered doing it.
I was approached. I was asked to consider running. I knew that people were generally unhappy with the representation we had, and I knew this because I have been organizing in this district for over 14 years. I am someone who has contacted the Congressman’s office multiple times, sometimes daily, and never got a meaningful response. And I knew that was the case for others. Additionally, over the last year when I was knocking on Zohran’s doors, it was also a constant theme: people would talk about how Cuomo was emblematic of the politics of the past, and then in the same breath they would talk about Espaillat without me asking. And it became very clear that this was a widely held sentiment.
When Justice Democrats emailed me and asked me to consider [running]I met them and asked them: “Why me?
JM: Was running a concern for you?
THAT : What concerned me was the belief that we really needed new representation. And I was actually connected with [Justice Democrats] months ago, and I was like, “Hey, I just want to report this district for you. This district is ready for something different.” I went back to my organization, I went back to my job. I didn’t think much about it. And then they were like, “Hey, so you were actually nominated.” » At first I thought it was a friend playing a joke on me, but they wanted to meet. And they said to me, “We have the opportunity to present ourselves on the basis of principles that we hold dear with someone who has already expressed his principles very clearly. »
I said that accountability is important to me, and the fact that my opinions are expressed, I think, is a form of accountability. Additionally, I had just seen an incredible example of how electoral politics could be used as a vehicle to get people to work in a movement.
I spent many weeks wondering if this was something that made sense to me. I would have casual conversations with friends about the things they were going through. As a sociologist, I kept hearing in my head “this is a political failure.” And at some point the question stopped being, “Should I run?” And it started with asking how can I look at my community knowing that we have an opportunity to change the structural issues that impact their daily lives and not seize that opportunity?
JM: Fast forward to now. I live in the neighborhood. And I came home yesterday, and I was waiting in my mailbox for this big mailer from the Bold America PAC with your face on it. [Afterthisinterviewhewas[Afterthisinterviewwasconducteditwasreported that Bold America is funded by AIPAC]. Your photo is superimposed on three words in giant letters, which are, pardon my French, “Fuck Kamala Harris.” [Thequoteisfromasince-deleted2021tweet;AvilaKnight[Thequotecomesfromasince-deleted2021tweet;AvilaChevalierhasapologized for the language she used in this and other tweets.]
THAT : Yeah.
JM: I can’t escape the ads being run against you. Did you ever imagine it would get this ugly?
THAT : I knew they would come after me. I couldn’t know what form it would take. Nor could I have imagined the degree and magnitude [of it]. It really reflects the kind of politics we’ve had for too long – divisive, dehumanizing, cruel in many ways.
I’ve been very intentional throughout this campaign in making sure to criticize Adriano on his policies, on his absence, on the impact that his performance as a congressman has had on our community. [I’ve had] no clear answer to any of the questions about his voting record, about the money he takes from special interests. No clear answer as to why he refuses to call it genocide [in Gaza].
And yet he engages in the type of politics that causes people on my social media to call me a gorilla, a rat, trash. And they call me Haitian, like it’s a bad thing. They question my Dominican heritage. He turned this into a race about Dominican identity against everything he thinks I am, which is crazy. My parents are Dominican. My grandparents are Dominican. My eight great-grandparents are Dominican.
Now I have to explain to people, hey, I’m Dominican. And also the way you dehumanize Haitian identity at a time when the Voting Rights Act is being gutted, in a context where the President of the United States has used incredibly racist and dehumanizing language against the first black president of the United States…
JM: And against the Haitians.
THAT : Yeah, and against the Haitians. This is so deeply anti-Black. And as a proudly black woman, I think all of these things are at play here.
JM: I don’t want to hold you accountable for all your tweets, but, for example, your tweet about Kamala Harris – you said you regretted saying the exact words that you said. But you were answer for her now pretty infamous warning has [potential migrants from] Latin America, saying, “Don’t come.” Do you regret the sentiment behind the tweet: objection to the Biden administration’s immigration policies? Or do you always stay true to the feelings you had, even if you don’t stick to the exact words you used to express them?
THAT : The tweet itself was really just about feeling deeply frustrated and helpless, as a person without political power, in the face of established politics that has brought us to the moment we find ourselves in – where, for whatever reason, it is acceptable for the language my opponent uses against me to exist. Where he doesn’t have to answer for the policies that funded ICE, that allowed the rise of fascism, that caused us to spend more of our tax dollars on war than on our own children.
I will apologize for the things I have to take responsibility for as many times as necessary so people know how sincere it is. But I wonder why someone who had no power when I said these things, no institutional power, is deeply dehumanized by over $5.5 million spent against me, when my opponent has yet to answer any substantive questions about the things that actually matter to the community here.
And I think as someone who has been organizing around immigration justice for so long, it still breaks my heart to think that so many people are coming to this country because of the failed foreign policy that has destabilized their country, and then our leaders are treating them like they’re the problem. I think what we’re seeing right now is the difference between a campaign that wants to tackle issues, to bring results to communities, to make sure that we actually get the resources that we need to live dignified lives, and a campaign that just wants to hold on to power, no matter how ugly and dehumanizing it gets for the other candidate.
JM: You’ve said you oppose super PACs and would seek to abolish them if you make it to Congress. Millions of dollars are being spent against you. You also have super PACs spending money on your behalf, but not as much money as Espaillat. Do you want the money not to be spent, or do you feel like if this is the field the game is being played on, then I’m happy to have someone play it on my behalf?
THAT : I have been very clear about the role of money in politics and how it actually disenfranchises people. This causes the votes of the people to be devalued in the face of millions of dollars coming from corporations or special interest groups. And that’s why I said we must abolish [super PACS].
I don’t control what outside groups do. What I control is my campaign, right? I am very proud to have led a campaign in which we raised over a million dollars, for an average contribution of $66. Because that tells me that’s what people are hungry for.
JM: We speak just as the Iran-US deal was revealed. Some Democrats in Congress have spoken out very strongly against this measure. If you were in Congress right now and a vote on whether to approve the Iran deal took place, would you vote for it?
THAT : I will say quite frankly that I haven’t had time to look at all the details, but I always push for diplomacy. We have the instinct to run to our war machine and use it in really horrible ways, and what we really need is to make sure that we’re actually engaging in diplomacy and saving human lives. I should obviously think carefully about all the details of this agreement, but also consult my community on this subject because these are human lives which are at stake. And this is not something that we vote on lightly.
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This is an extremely costly war in terms of human lives, but it is also costly in a financial sense because it is the poor people of this country who are paying the cost of this war. This doesn’t compare to the incredible loss people face elsewhere, where their children are slaughtered indiscriminately. But I don’t think anyone in this country would say that they would rather see their tax money used to slaughter children abroad than to improve the lives of their own children here.
JM: This leads very directly to Palestine. You have been organizing around Palestine for a very long time. You spent time in Palestine. You were an organizer of the encampments in Columbia. Why has Palestine been so important to you for so many years, and why do you think it matters so much in this campaign?
THAT : I went to Palestine when I was 20 in 2014 and it was a deeply formative experience. The day after I returned, Israel began bombing Gaza. [Thousands of people] were massacred during this attack on Gaza. I remember looking through the photos and names of the people who had been killed, and all I could do was sob. I had just left a community that looked so much like the people whose faces I looked at.
It was the same summer that Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. And I remember seeing tweets from people in Gaza telling people in Ferguson how to deal with tear gas. The tear gas canisters, both in Gaza and in Ferguson, all said, “Made in the USA.” [It made me realize]oh, these are not similar systems; they are the same system. And the older I got, the more I organized, the more I saw the direct link between the oppression that exists there and the oppression that exists here.
One of the things I was really excited to be able to say to people participating in this campaign was “babies, not bombs.” I want to lead with the value of life, lead with the things that all members of our society benefit from when we care for our babies. I wanted to be able to explain very succinctly that we could have a city that valued our babies if we didn’t spend our resources bombing babies overseas.
And knowing that my opponent is taking money from AIPAC is something that, for a lot of people, is just disqualifying. It is [about] Palestine is at the heart of the issue, but it’s also what it says about someone’s inability to stand up to something so obviously horrible, someone who refuses to call it genocide. Can you trust someone who doesn’t even say the word to fight for you on the most fundamental issues? If I can’t trust you not to take money from developers who force us to leave the city, how can I trust you to fight so I can stay in the city? If I can’t believe you won’t take money from the corporate hospital CEOs who forced nurses into a six-week strike during one of the coldest winters we’ve ever experienced, then how can I believe you’re going to fight for my health care? Are you ready to fight for life and human dignity, or not?
JM: If you enter Congress, you will join this growing faction of left-wing members. But within that, people chose different ways to accomplish this work. There is AOC, who has become an increasingly powerful player within the party. And then you have someone like Rashida Tlaib, who doesn’t try to play this inner game in the same way. Which of these paths would you consider following if you have considered it?
THAT : I’m an organizer and that’s really all I want to be. I want to do this in the House because I believe that in order for us to truly meet the expectations of our community, we must be willing to organize together. This requires us to think strategically about all the different roles that need to be played to be able to deliver on our promises, right? And I think that requires us to really come together as a unit and be willing to organize. As an organizer, I always tell people, “Organize me into something bigger,” because we have to be able to build something much bigger than any representative in Congress and much bigger than any seat.
I am always ready to stand up for the right thing. I am always ready to challenge power when necessary, and I deeply believe that this can only happen when we do it by making decisions with the community. Because all of these roles are important, but they must be performed in a way that advances our larger goal.
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Jack Mirkinson Jack Mirkinson is editor-in-chief at The Nation and co-founder of Speech blog.