Meet Darializa Avila Chevalier

Darializa is a working-class Afro-Latina who has been organizing in upper Manhattan for a fairer, more equitable, and more affordable New York City since she was a teenager.

Raised by working-class Dominican immigrant parents, Darializa’s experience seeing loved ones struggle with immigration issues, socioeconomic inequality, and structural racism shaped her worldview and deepened her commitment to organizing for a better future.

From successfully organizing to take down the statue of J. Marion Sims — a 19th century gynecologist who experimented on enslaved women without anesthesia — that had stood for 100+ years in Central Park, to working to free U.S. permanent resident Abdikadir Mohamed from his 1.5 year ICE detention caused by Trump’s 2017 "Muslim ban," to her current work as an investigator at a public defender’s office in Harlem, her career has always centered around fighting for New Yorkers in one form or another.

As a Columbia alumna, she was also a lead organizer of the encampment on Columbia's campus in 2023-2024, standing in solidarity with Palestinians and urging Columbia to divest its endowment from companies profiting from Israel’s genocide and apartheid system, in compliance with demands from the Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement.

When her friend and fellow organizer at Columbia's encampment, Mahmoud Khalil was abducted by ICE from his apartment building in March 2025, she organized and advocated for his release, and his reunion with his wife and newborn son.

She is currently a public defense investigator at the Neighborhood Defenders Services of Harlem. Through her work, she is a card-carrying member of the UAW and organizes her fellow rank-and-file members across NYC.

After graduating from Columbia, she fought against family separation as an organizer at Families for Freedom and as a paralegal in a law office, where she supported New Yorkers who had experienced violence at the hands of police or the prison system. In 2024, she also received a MPhil in Sociology from the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she specialized in interrogating concepts of race, deportation, and national security policy.

During the 2025 election cycle, she also served as an organizing lead for Zohran Mamdani’s successful — and historic — campaign for Mayor.

Darializa’s leadership is rooted in community organizing and the belief in equity and justice for her community in upper Manhattan and the West Bronx. She has seen the impact that years of divestment and policies of organized abandonment has had on her community.

She knows her community deserves better — and she won’t stop organizing until that promise becomes reality.