In Harlem, a Democratic Socialist Takes On the Dem Machine
Darializa Avila Chevalier has spent years as a grassroots organizer fighting mass incarceration, opposing ICE detention, organizing for Palestine, and knocking doors for Zohran Mamdani. Now the democratic socialist is running for Congress.
Next door to AOC’s district, in a city that just elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor, grassroots organizer and unapologetic democratic socialist Darializa Chevalier is running an insurgent campaign for Congress. (Justice Democrats)
- Interview by
- Meagan Day
When Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race last fall, he proved that socialism could win citywide, even against a well-funded establishment opponent and a media-enabled red-baiting campaign. In the wake of Mamdani’s victory, a new cohort of democratic socialist challengers is looking to build on that momentum.
Darializa Avila Chevalier is one of them. A Harlem-based organizer, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member, and former organizing lead for Mamdani’s campaign in Upper Manhattan, she’s challenging four-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat in New York’s Thirteenth Congressional District. The largely working-class and immigrant district went heavily for Mamdani in both the primary and general elections, and Avila Chevalier is betting its residents are ready for the same politics in Congress.
Avila Chevalier cut her teeth as a student activist at Columbia University, where she was involved with Students for Justice in Palestine. After college, she organized with Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) against mass incarceration and unjust police practices, worked with immigrant justice groups to oppose family separation and inhumane detention, and helped organize the Columbia Palestine solidarity encampment in 2024. She’s currently a PhD candidate in sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY) and works at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
Espaillat, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, has drawn criticism for accepting large donations from the real estate industry and broadly aligning with corporate interests over those of his working-class constituents. He is also well-funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and is a longtime supporter of Israel, including through its recent genocide in Gaza.
By contrast, Avila Chevalier is running on a platform of affordable housing for all, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and resistance to the United States’ deportation and detention machine. She is backed by Justice Democrats, who helped power Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress in the district next door. Avila Chevalier has been recommended for endorsement by New York City DSA’s Electoral Working Group; her candidacy will need to be approved by the chapter’s branches and its Citywide Leadership Committee in order to receive the group’s official endorsement.
Jacobin spoke with Darializa Avila Chevalier about the affordability crisis gripping her district, the machine politics she’s running against, and the prospects for the democratic socialist movement in Donald Trump’s America.
Describe for us the social reality of your district. Who lives there? What acute pressures are people experiencing day to day?
The district includes parts of Manhattan and the Bronx. It spans Harlem and Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan and extends through Marble Hill into Kingsbridge and other northwest Bronx neighborhoods. The majority of people who live here are people of color. Harlem is historically home to many black Americans, and also many black migrants from West Africa and the Caribbean. East Harlem is demographically similar but also has a lot of Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Latinos of various identities. And then you have a lot of Dominicans in Washington Heights, Inwood, and the Bronx. So it’s a very demographically diverse district, and Latinos are the biggest group.
It’s also a particularly young district and a particularly poor district. The biggest issue people face here is affordability, particularly in housing and raising kids in the city. Additionally, because this is such a heavily immigrant part of the city, the way that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been terrorizing people all over the country, but specifically in New York, has been top of mind for a lot of people here.
How do people in the district lean politically? And how will you speak to as many people as possible in a way that emphasizes shared interests rather than divisions?
There are a lot of registered Democrats in this district, and folks here are more progressive than in other parts of the city. We saw that with Zohran Mamdani’s elections. If you look at the map, this district went heavily for Zohran in the primary and then even more heavily in the general. When I started knocking on doors for Zohran in February of last year, people very rarely disagreed with the vision or the politics. It really was a question of whether we could win with these politics. And now that we’ve proven we can, I think people in this district are ready to push for more.
As an Afro-Latina who does work on the intersections of economic and racial justice, I’ve seen that the common thread in people’s lives is that the system of capitalism is built to exploit and extract all our labor. Capitalism pits us against each other, but the struggle to prioritize human lives over profit can unite us too. To paraphrase Fred Hampton, you don’t fight racism with racism, you fight racism with solidarity; and you don’t fight capitalism with capitalism, you fight it with socialism. That’s at the heart of how I think about movement building.
Your campaign frames you as an anti-machine insurgent. Can you tell our readers what the Democratic Party machine is like in this district?
Adriano Espaillat currently holds the seat. He’s been in Congress for almost ten years, but he’s been in elected office for almost thirty — in the state assembly, then the state senate, and now in Congress. He’s the head of the Democratic machine uptown, and he’s worked to consolidate power by supporting allies for city council and state legislature seats while running candidates against those who challenge him.
The machine is backed by AIPAC, corporate landlords, and lobbies that have been working against the interests of working people in this district. It’s $4,000 for a two-bedroom in Harlem or Washington Heights now, and Espaillat is taking money from the very landlords and institutions that are pricing people out. He’s been on housing committees in the state assembly, the state senate, and Congress, and yet this district still has a serious lack of affordable housing. His record shows he hasn’t been fighting for what people here desperately need.
When I walk out my door, more and more of my neighbors are homeless. I see more people lining up at food pantries. I see fewer children because families are moving away — they can’t afford to raise their kids here. Over a hundred thousand public school children in this city are homeless, and that statistic has held for nine years. The establishment is not meeting this crisis. We’re facing an affordability emergency and an authoritarian administration that’s making everything worse, and rather than standing up, establishment Democrats have been spending their energy attacking progressives and protecting the interests of their donors.
I refuse to take any corporate money. I refuse to take any AIPAC money. I refuse to take money from landlords who are pricing us out. People are ready for someone who sees their struggle, and I’ve lived it. I’m a working person in Harlem who has had to think about whether I can afford to stay in the city I love.
You’ve been a grassroots organizer for years. What has your political arc looked like, and what made you decide to run for office?
I really never thought I would be going for office. I was really more of a grassroots organizer.
In college, I was part of the student left. I organized with the black student organization, with Students for Justice in Palestine, and against sexual violence on campus. After college, I worked with BYP100 around policing, did immigration justice work to get people out of ICE detention, and continued organizing for Palestine. In my professional life, I’ve worked at law offices and currently work as an investigator at a public defender’s office. The through line has always been supporting people on the hardest days of their lives, people who have been abandoned by the broader society.
We had wins over the years, but not at the scale this moment demands. Before I started canvassing for Zohran, I was in a really dark place. It felt like we had tried everything I knew how to do as an organizer, and nothing was shifting. What got me out of that hole was knocking on doors for Zohran and talking to my neighbors. Going back to the basics reminded me that so many people are with us — they believe in what we believe. They just needed a sign that we could actually win.
When Justice Democrats recruited me, I knew I had to seriously consider it. This is a strategy that’s attempting to meet the moment at the scale that’s needed, and we just got an incredible example of it working. It would be irresponsible as an organizer not to build on the momentum we have right now.
Are you worried about red-baiting or smears related to your Palestine activism?
I’ve been targeted for most of my adult life. I was put on Canary Mission very early on for my Palestine organizing. This isn’t new for me — my values are public, they’re on the internet for anyone to see, so attacks like this were inevitable. I expect they’ll use the same playbook they always use, but I’ve dealt with these smears before, and more people are waking up to the fact that there’s no basis to them. I do this work because I believe in the dignity of all human lives. That’s at the crux of it for me.
We’re in a moment where fascism is at our door. It’s going to require bravery from every single one of us, and what that looks like will be different for each person. For me, running for office is how I’m trying to meet this moment. I don’t want to play defense before an attack has happened — I think we do ourselves a disservice that way. But we should be prepared. The way I think about it is: plan for the worst, but move forward as though you’re going to win it all.
Are you concerned about the amount of money that’s going to pour into this race from pro-Israel groups?
AIPAC is an institution that a lot of people have been concerned about for good reason — we saw huge amounts of money spent against Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. But folks are waking up to what AIPAC actually does. The incumbent I’m running against takes AIPAC money and has already been heavily criticized for it. People are starting to see that kind of lobby money as a moral and political failure.
I’m not saying I’m not concerned about it, but we’ve proven that organizing can beat money. And the money establishment Democrats accept is being scrutinized more by everyday voters than it used to be.
You’ve worked in nonprofits and grassroots organizing, and now you’re running for office. How do you see these different approaches working together? And how do elected officials stay accountable to movements?
The point of government is to be responsible for the welfare of all its people. We’ve been fed this lie that our resources are too scarce for that, which is why nonprofits pop up to address issues the state has abandoned. But we live in the richest country in the history of the earth — we have the means to take care of everyone. It’s on government to provide for people, not to outsource that responsibility. We pay taxes for a reason, and for us to not be able to live dignified lives despite that is an indictment of how government has functioned for so long.
The way we currently engage with electoral politics has been so disappointing and disempowering that we’ve brought organizing outside of that realm — because we’ve been forced to. But bridging them is crucial. Organizing can be a vehicle for making government do what it’s supposed to do.
When it comes to elected officials staying accountable, I think that starts before they enter office. You need to be entrenched in the communities and movements you’re seeking to represent before you get there. It’s hard to build those relationships while you’re finding your footing in a new role.
As a sociologist, I think a lot about what structures encourage or discourage the behaviors we want to see. One thing that was heartening when I was deciding whether to run was that Justice Democrats recruited me because of my organizing. When I asked them “Why me?”, they said: it’s your values, and they’re so public you couldn’t back away from them even if you wanted to. And as a DSA member, I knew Socialists in Office would be a structure where I could talk regularly with people who share my values, strategize about building power, and face these pressures together.
This is about way more than winning one seat. It’s about building something lasting.
How did you come to identify as a democratic socialist, and what does it mean to you?
I came to democratic socialism through my organizing work, as well as through study and reading in undergrad, in graduate work, and just in my free time. I came to it especially through the black radical tradition, reading people like Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, but also being part of community organizing where that was the language that was being spoken.
For me, democratic socialism means workers and people in general having ownership and dignity over their lives and their work, and achieving that democratically. There’s this perception in American society that socialists don’t want to work, but the opposite is true. The work we do is what gives our lives meaning, whether it’s paid work or work we do out of love. That should be dignified. We build relationships through our work; we build communities through our work. To find dignity in that, rather than exploitation, is at the core of what democratic socialism means to me.