Darializa Avila Chevalier, the socialist Democrat running for a New York congressional seat with Mayor Zohran Mamdani's endorsement, was arrested Thursday after blocking a Manhattan roadway during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's UN address.

Police arrested Avila Chevalier, 32, along with roughly 100 other demonstrators who sat in the street near the corner of 1st Avenue and 39th Street and refused officers' orders to move. The Democratic nominee for New York's 13th Congressional District, which covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx, was photographed smiling and chanting "Free Palestine" as officers loaded her onto an NYPD bus, the New York Post reported.

The protest, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and the Democratic Socialists of America's New York City chapter, drew approximately 200 to 250 demonstrators to the streets near UN headquarters as Netanyahu prepared to address the General Assembly. Protesters blocked traffic before police moved in with zip ties and buses, Reuters reported. NYPD arrested 104 people in total.

Avila Chevalier was not the only elected official hauled away. New York City Council members Chi Ossé, Alexa Avilés, and Jennifer Gutiérrez, all Mamdani allies, were also arrested. Actress Susan Sarandon was among those detained.

A congressional candidate who campaigned on confrontation

Avila Chevalier's arrest was not an accident of proximity. Her campaign posted about it almost immediately, framing the detention as a badge of honor. The campaign's social media account declared Thursday afternoon:

"Darializa was just arrested while peacefully protesting Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations. Our government has unlimited funds to arm a genocide against Palestinians but tells us there's nothing left to feed and house our own people. Stop arming Israel!"

The campaign called the protest "peaceful." Fox News Digital reported that police made arrests only after demonstrators sat in the roadway and refused repeated orders to clear it, a deliberate act of civil disobedience, not a passive gathering that turned chaotic.

In a separate statement, Avila Chevalier made clear she viewed the arrest as part of her political identity. She told Bloomberg:

"Netanyahu belongs at the Hague, not in the streets of New York City, and certainly not addressing the United Nations General Assembly."

She also said, as the Washington Examiner reported, "I refuse to play host to a man who has overseen the slaughter or injury of more than 64,000 children in Gaza with American taxpayer dollars."

Mamdani endorsed her, then skipped the protest he helped stoke

Avila Chevalier's rise is inseparable from Mamdani's political machine. The mayor endorsed her in late May during an appearance on MS NOW, praising her commitment to working-class New Yorkers and saying he looked forward to fighting alongside her for their shared affordability agenda. DSA's New York City chapter backed her campaign. She defeated five-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in the June primary, riding the same progressive wave that carried Mamdani into City Hall.

But when the protest he helped inspire actually happened Thursday, Mamdani was nowhere near it. He shared a social media post expressing solidarity with families in Gaza but did not attend the demonstration himself. That absence fits a pattern: Mamdani has repeatedly stoked anti-Netanyahu sentiment while declining to put himself on the line alongside the activists who take his rhetoric seriously.

The mayor's own record on Netanyahu has been a study in retreat. During his campaign, Mamdani called for Netanyahu's arrest if the Israeli prime minister set foot in New York. Once in office, he admitted he had no legal authority to follow through. Netanyahu came anyway, dismissing Mamdani's threat as political posturing, and addressed the General Assembly as scheduled.

Columbia University ties and the CUAD controversy

Avila Chevalier's arrest near the UN was not her first brush with anti-Israel activism. She previously led protests at Columbia University and said she helped launch Columbia University Apartheid Divest, known as CUAD, a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign on campus.

CUAD drew public scrutiny for social media posts that included the phrases "Death to America" and a call for the "eradication of Western civilization." Avila Chevalier's connection to the group has been part of her public record since before the primary.

That background matters because she is not a fringe candidate shouting from the margins. She won a Democratic primary. She is the party's nominee in a deep-blue New York district. And the mayor of the nation's largest city put his name behind her candidacy.

104 arrests, zero accountability from leadership

Fox News Digital reached out to Avila Chevalier's campaign for comment and received no response. The outlet also contacted the NYPD, which directed the reporter to its public information phone line and declined to provide additional details by phone. Specific charges against the 104 arrestees have not been disclosed.

The scene outside the UN on Thursday was not spontaneous outrage. It was organized by established activist groups, attended by elected officials who knew they would be arrested, and promoted on social media within minutes. One Netanyahu supporter at the scene, Beth Phillips, pointed to the company Mamdani keeps. "His people that he surrounds himself with praised 9/11," Phillips said. "Jews are in danger. We are at risk."

Meanwhile, Mamdani's administration continues to face broader questions about competence and public trust. The socialist mayor was recently booed off stage at an NYPD event on Staten Island in under a minute, a moment that captured the gap between his ideological circle and the city's law enforcement community.

Avila Chevalier wants voters to see her arrest as moral courage. A simpler reading: a Mamdani-endorsed candidate, backed by DSA, tied to a campus group that called for the eradication of Western civilization, deliberately broke the law on a Manhattan street, and treated the whole thing as a campaign event. The mayor who made her possible stayed home.

When the people running for Congress treat an arrest as a résumé line, voters are entitled to ask what kind of government they plan to run once they get there.