Avila Chevalier attended the Oct. 8 pro-Palestinian rally Lander condemned

One of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed congressional candidates cut ties with the Democratic Socialists of America for promoting a controversial pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas attacked Israel. The other candidate attended that rally.

Brad Lander said at a NY1 debate Monday he canceled his decades-old DSA membership after the socialist organization “advertised a rally that I thought was heinous, that spoke about Hamas in ways that I just thought were vile.” He was referring to the gathering in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023 organized by leftist groups like The People's Forum and Al-Awda New York, where rallygoers held signs such as “Resistance is Justified when People are Occupied.”

The rally was widely criticized by political leaders who saw it as condoning the violence by Hamas fighters, who killed nearly 1,200 Israelis the day before. Gov. Kathy Hochul called it “abhorrent and morally repugnant” when it was announced. NYC-DSA even distanced itself from the rally, and apologized for the “confusion” caused by its social media post advertising the event. All of the democratic socialist legislators, including then-Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, avoided the rally.

But Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is now running for Congress against Rep. Adriano Espaillat, was there in Times Square.

“I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life. And as someone who has seen a pattern, whenever anything happens on the ground (in Israel), there's always a really outsized reaction that costs thousands of people their lives,” Avila Chevalier told City & State on Thursday. “And that is what I was worried about.” 

By the time people were rallying on Oct. 8 2023, Israeli forces had immediately responded to the Hamas attack with airstrikes on Gaza, killing hundreds of people.

“At the core of it all for me is human dignity. And I think so often we get lost in the ‘well on this date, and on that date’ when it's all cyclical, if we don't get to the core of how we disregard the human rights and dignity of some people over others,” she said.

Photographs and video from the rally, including one published by The New York Times, show Avila Chevalier at the rally. Her presence there was previously reported by Canary Mission, a controversial website that serves to blacklist pro-Palestinian activists. The site doxes even civilian activists who are not prominent leaders or public figures. In fact, Avila Chevalier was relatively unknown in 2023. But the Columbia University alumna, who’d organized with Students for Justice in Palestine as an undergraduate, soon took a leading role in pro-Palestinian activism on campus.

Avila Chevalier launched her campaign against Espaillat in November, soon after Mamdani won the mayoral race. She earned NYC-DSA’s endorsement in January, and she exploded onto the national political scene when Mamdani endorsed her last week in a joint television interview on MS NOW.

NYC-DSA and Lander’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

But Avila Chevalier and Lander are now working together, appearing in a campaign TV ad, along with Mamdani and congressional candidate Claire Valdez. In the ad, which aired after the Knicks finals game, Lander passes a basketball to Avila Chevalier, before the group stands together in front of a basketball hoop.

The 32-year-old Avila Chevalier’s politics and past statements have earned more attention as she appears to gain ground on Espaillat. Her social media posts calling to abolish the police and open borders reflect someone willing to take more radical stances than even most socialist elected officials. A 2022 X post, first reported by Politico, shows her criticizing DSA’s racial justice organizing and “anti Palestinian racism” after the national organization sanctioned its Palestinian Solidarity Working Group.

Asked about those social media posts on WNYC Thursday, Avila Chevalier said she’s “grown considerably” in the years since, adding, “I'm not interested in relitigating the politics of my tweets, which are politics of the past.”

Lander’s shock at the October 8 rally Avila Chevalier attended is not the first time the progressive pair have disagreed on pro-Palestinian activism. Avila Chevalier said she ranked Lander fifth in the mayoral race – at the bottom of her ballot – as a subtle protest of his politics, City & State first reported. She criticized Lander in a candidate questionnaire for not being sufficiently supportive of Mahmoud Khalil, a fellow pro-Palestinian activist who the Trump administration attempted to deport for his role helping to organize Columbia campus protests.

The difference highlights the nuances between two candidates who are both challenging Democratic incumbents who they accuse of being too soft on Israel.

Lander, who is running against Rep. Dan Goldman, identifies as a liberal Zionist who has harshly criticized the Israeli government for its violence against Palestinians while defending its existence as a Jewish state.

Avila Chevalier, meanwhile, has been unequivocal in condemning Israel as an apartheid state committing genocide.

At a March forum with the Broadway Democrats political club, she declined to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, when asked directly.

“The premise of that question, to me, ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were were living under before this genocide began,” she responded in part. “Palestinians have been living under a state of dispossession, of exile, of apartheid for 75 years.”

But Avila Chevalier may be changing her rhetoric as she gets closer to election day. Asked on WNYC Thursday she said “yes, I do condemn Hamas,” but noted that “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”