Daria Liza Avila Chevalier

And still, I got priced out of the career that I was working towards.

And wondering whether I can make my rent and teach the classes I wanted to teach, right?

And for so many, that is the reality.

And so, you know, the things that people are facing day in and day out uptown in the Bronx are the results of the failed leadership that we've had for far too long.

The lack of fight, right?

The lack of a vision for how we address these issues.

And we had an example last year of how that can change when we put in folks in office who actually share our values.

It's not enough to share identity.

We also have to share our values and share our fight and share a commitment to winning for our people.

Not only is it votes, right?

He is someone who refuses to align with the position that most Democrats in this country hold, which is that we need to stop arming Israel and has voted time and time again to send more arms to Israel, despite the fact that we live in the second poorest congressional district in the state and by some measures the country and could really benefit from having those resources come back to our home, to our community.

I think that the district understands, right, that we are constantly being told that there are not enough resources for us while watching a live stream genocide being committed with our tax dollars.

It is a direct connection.

And I think people understand that, right, where we have folks who are 26 percent of our people are living below the poverty line.

Our budgets are moral documents.

They tell us exactly what we actually prioritize in our society.

And when we have a representative who is voting to send billions upon billions of dollars to endless war and to slaughter, what that tells us is that, you know, they are more concerned with sending that money there than bringing it back to our communities.

In many ways, I think it's an argument about life, right?

It's an argument of making sure that our resources are investing in life and not in death.

And I think we save lives abroad, but we're also saving lives here, right, by investing in our communities here.