The political game in New York City just took a wild turn. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old socialist candidate backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, just took home the win in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for the 13th Congressional District. But while her supporters are celebrating, she’s facing major heat over some wild statements made by the activist group she helped start back when she was in college.

Avila Chevalier, who was born in Florida to Dominican immigrants and recently converted to Islam, has made community organizing her entire career. In a bio she wrote for the independent site The Electronic Intifada, she proudly claimed her role as a co-founder of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). But the group landed in hot water after putting out a wild social media post that called for some extreme measures.

In a deleted 2024 Instagram post, CUAD straight up wrote: "We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization." The post didn't stop there, adding, "We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our Intifada is an internationalist one — we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized." While they deleted the post after it caused a massive uproar, the damage was already done.

Even though she graduated back in 2016, Avila Chevalier was right back on Columbia's campus in May 2024, rocking a keffiyeh and a CUAD t-shirt. She was right there in the middle of the famous campus protest encampment, even doing an interview with the Associated Press before the police showed up and shut the whole thing down.

Columbia University has since washed its hands of the group, putting out statements denouncing CUAD and making it clear they aren't affiliated with the school. But the drama has spilled over into national politics, with some heavy-hitter Democrats refusing to back her play. Senator John Fetterman, D-Pa., went on social media to put the whole situation on blast: "Anti-Israel. Anti-America. Anti-Western Civilization. Why am I the only Democrat in the U.S. Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any of those self-identified communists?"

Still, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party is making major moves in NYC. They swept the primaries on Tuesday after getting some serious backup from Senator Bernie Sanders and Mayor Mamdani at a massive Get Out the Vote rally at the King's Theater on June 18, 2026. Regular working-class voters are backing platforms that call for big changes, like Medicare-for-all and abolishing ICE.

Over on the other side, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and the Republicans are warning everyone that the Democrats are shifting way too far to the left, calling the new wave of primary winners straight-up "Marxists." At the same time, online progressives like Hasan Piker are cheering it on, saying the country is "closer than ever" to a socialist reality.

At the end of the day, regular folks in the neighborhood just want to see real change and real help on the streets. But with Avila Chevalier heading to the general election, the conversation is going to be dominated by this massive debate over her radical activist past and what she really stands for.

Sources: * [New York State Board of Elections](https://www.elections.ny.gov) * [Columbia University Office of Public Affairs](https://www.columbia.edu) * [Office of U.S. Senator John Fetterman](https://www.fetterman.senate.gov)