Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 31-year-old Democratic Socialists of America, endorsed candidate challenging Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York's 13th Congressional District, is now facing scrutiny over a series of public social media posts targeting white women and interracial relationships, posts that sit alongside a campaign platform built on abolishing prisons, abolishing ICE, and ending U.S. military support for Israel.
The New York Post reported that Chevalier wrote on Twitter in February 2019: "Black men [handshake emoji] Arab men fetishizing ugly colonizer women." Months later, in September 2019, she posted about holding the door for an "old white lady" at a Popeyes restaurant, then letting it close on her mid-sentence during an exchange about a BDS shirt.
Chevalier did not respond to The Post's request for comment.
The posts are only one layer. Chevalier's DSA candidate questionnaire reveals a set of policy commitments that read like a wish list from the party's furthest-left faction. She committed to abolishing prisons, legalizing prostitution, and legalizing the private consumption of all drugs.
In her own words from the questionnaire:
"I am an abolitionist and oppose reform that entrenches the expansion of the carceral state. I will support steps to reduce its impact and support reforms that meaningfully address the root causes of harm in our communities through prevention as well as reparative and restorative justice programs."
She also told the DSA that the federal government should "create government-run agricultural cooperatives to tackle awful labor and environmental practices, as well as the immense food waste in our system." Add to that her platform planks calling for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the end of U.S. military support for Israel, and the picture comes into sharp focus.
JC Polanco, a political analyst and professor at Mount St. Vincent, told The Post the DSA endorsement process functions as an ideological filter. His assessment was blunt:
"It's a litmus test for the crazies at DSA. You have to check all the boxes: 'Have you terrorized Jewish students at Columbia University? Check.' 'How do you feel about white people? Hate them? Great.' These are the people taking over the Democratic Party."
Polanco also took aim at the language in Chevalier's 2019 post about "colonizer women."
"If every other word you use in a sentence isn't 'colonizer,' you're not going to do well in the Democratic primary. To talk about black and Arab men with this terminology is terrible."
Chevalier's political biography didn't start with this congressional race. She told the DSA she worked with Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia University from 2012 to 2016 and claimed credit for starting the movement to divest from Israel on campus. The group has since been suspended.
She also helped lead what became known as the "tentefada" encampments on Columbia's grounds, protest camps that drew national attention and fierce criticism for the climate of intimidation Jewish students described on campus. Columbia University eventually reached a $221 million settlement after a Trump administration lawsuit related to the campus environment.
Chevalier's opposition to Israel extends well past campus activism. The Post reported she criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), the most prominent democratic socialist in American politics, for not being pro-Palestine enough. That is a striking position to stake out, given that Sanders has been among the most vocal Senate critics of Israeli military operations.
On March 6, Chevalier spoke at the Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens, where she said she had converted to Islam three years earlier. The center is led by Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani, who has drawn scrutiny of his own.
The Post described Al-Sahlani as having denied the Holocaust and praised Hamas's October 7, 2023 attacks. Separate reporting from the Washington Free Beacon added further detail: Al-Sahlani told the New York Sun in a 2006 interview that the six million Jewish Holocaust death toll "has been exaggerated" and that "the numbers which have been mentioned are too much." The Free Beacon also reported that Al-Sahlani praised Hamas in a November 2023 sermon, stating that Hamas had made "a major difference" after the October 7 attacks.
That same Free Beacon report noted that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the same Mamdani whose campaign Chevalier once helped lead in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, had met with Al-Sahlani at least three times since January 2025, including a February Ramadan visit. During that visit, Mamdani said, "It feels like returning home to be here." A Mamdani spokesperson later condemned Al-Sahlani's Holocaust-related and Hamas comments, saying visits to religious institutions should not be read as endorsements.
That disclaimer may satisfy the mayor's press shop. Whether voters in Harlem, Washington Heights, and the Bronx find it satisfying is another question.
Chevalier is not a fringe protest candidate in terms of money. Federal Election Commission records show she outraised incumbent Espaillat $270,000 to $230,000 in the first quarter of the year. For a political newcomer running against an entrenched incumbent, that is a real financial foothold.
The 13th Congressional District encompasses Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of the Bronx. The most recently available U.S. Census data cited by The Post puts the district at over 50 percent Hispanic, 24 percent Black, and 17 percent white. Chevalier's racially charged social media posts, mocking white women as "ugly colonizer women" and bragging about closing a door on an elderly white woman, will land in a district where every demographic group has reason to wonder what kind of representative she would be.
Her platform is a full-spectrum progressive wish list: abolish prisons, abolish ICE, legalize all drugs for personal use, legalize prostitution, create government-run agricultural cooperatives, and cut off military aid to Israel. Each of those positions has a constituency on the activist left. Taken together, they describe a candidate who has positioned herself well to the left of even Bernie Sanders, and who has the DSA endorsement to prove it.
The Democratic primary in NY-13 will test something specific. Not whether far-left candidates can raise money, Chevalier has already answered that. Not whether the DSA can find candidates willing to check every ideological box, that too is settled. The test is whether a candidate who publicly derided interracial relationships using racial language, who boasted about shutting a door on an elderly woman over a political disagreement, and who built her activist career on a campus movement that made Jewish students feel unsafe can actually win a congressional seat in one of America's most diverse districts.
Chevalier's social media posts are not ancient history dug out of a teenager's account. They were written when she was in her mid-twenties. Her DSA questionnaire answers are not off-the-cuff remarks, they are written policy commitments submitted to earn an endorsement. Her speech at Al-Sahlani's mosque was a public event she chose to attend.
These are choices. They form a record. And records are supposed to matter in elections.
When a candidate's trail of public statements includes racial mockery, her policy platform calls for dismantling law enforcement at every level, and her activist résumé runs through some of the most contentious anti-Israel protests in recent memory, voters deserve to know all of it before they cast a ballot. The DSA may have found its ideal candidate. The voters of the 13th District will decide whether that says more about the candidate or about the organization.
If this is the Democratic Party's bench, the party's voters ought to take a long look at who's sitting on it.
