DSA congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier on her bio and goals

**Brian Lehrer** (0:05)
From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Wednesday, July 15th.
After the New York primary last month, we invited the winners of all five of the really competitive races to come on the show, the races for Congress, for brief interviews after their victories and what comes next. As many of you know, we had held candidate forums on the show in each of those races. So far, we've had Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Kate Conley who won their primaries. We're about to speak with Darializa Avila Chevalier.
We're working with Michael Lasher to schedule a time with him after he won the primary to succeed Gerald Nadler, so look for that on a future show. Darializa Avila Chevalier is with us now, along with Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. She was one of the three Democratic socialists endorsed by Mayor Mamdani. In what was probably the biggest upset, she defeated incumbent congressman Adriano Esparza, as many of you know, in Upper Manhattan and nearby parts of the Bronx. In this very blue district, this almost certainly means she is going to Congress next January. Ms. Chevalier, thanks for coming on again and congratulations on winning your primary.

**Darializa Avila Chevalier** (1:25)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to talk with you, Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:29)
Can I start as hopefully a service to you and our listeners?
By just asking you to say your name, I feel like I've heard it five different ways and five different media outlets, and I want everybody to get it right. This happened with Mamdani, some people intentionally, I think, and some not. So for the record, would you say your full name?

**Darializa Avila Chevalier** (1:50)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I say it two ways. One in full Spanish, so Darializa Avila Chevalier, and the other just for a little more accessible to folks, Darializa Avila Chevalier.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:02)
Okay. Thank you very much for that.

**Darializa Avila Chevalier** (2:04)
You had it correct, so thank you, Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:06)
Thank you. All my colleagues in the media, take notes.
You grew up in Florida, I see, before attending Columbia University here, and I read your maternal grandfather had fled the Dominican Republic after protesting the Trujillo dictatorship there. Is that right? And do you think that heritage contributed to you becoming an activist?

**Darializa Avila Chevalier** (2:29)
Yeah. So my grandfather, he was part of the resistance in the Dominican Republic against the US-backed dictator there, Trujillo. And he did leave for a bit, but he eventually went back to the Dominican Republic. And his story is something that has really inspired me growing up. And, you know, recently I was talking to my grandmother, and I was telling, asking her to tell me a little bit more just about what it was like for him. And she was telling me, you know, they used to call him a communist, they would call him a radical, but the reality was that he was just someone who could not tolerate to watch people suffer.
And so I've always wondered in myself, like, where that comes from. And when she said that, it very much clicked for me because I always felt it very viscerally in my body, wanting to be able to do something when I see the suffering of other people and trying to find where I do have power to change those conditions for folks. And so, you know, I think that that legacy and his legacy, right, is something that has deeply shaped me and my upbringing.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:34)
Maybe it's worth describing your background in activism a little bit. Maybe our listeners know you were a leader in the Columbia University pro-Palestinian divestment protest in 2024
But they may not know that you had done a lot before that, like protesting for the removal of the Central Park statue of gynecologist Marion Sims because of his exploitative experiments on enslaved black women. And that statue was removed. You also worked for the release of a person from ICE detention during President Trump's first term. So how would you describe your life in activism so far and what has motivated it the most?

**Darializa Avila Chevalier** (4:11)
Yeah, you know, I started out as a student organizer on campus, and I began doing work to end sexual violence on campus, was doing work around Palestine with Students for Justice in Palestine, was doing a lot of work with the Black Student Organization, which was very much about organizing, right? Black students, which I think in a lot of university campuses, it's usually called the Black Student Union. But at Columbia, I was very much about organizing.