Fear and Loathing in Spanish Harlem
Seismic movements often begin with small sedimentary changes – sand and rocks begin to be pushed, then shoved, until the entire tectonic plate shifts into an entirely new position. Earthquakes, like the dozen or so that have hit places as far away as Japan and Venezuela, simultaneously this year, often include aftershocks as the movement settles into a new stable equilibrium.
Something similar seems to have happened in New York City, when Primary Day (June 23rd, 2026) returned the most recent aftershock of Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2012 presidential run against one Barack Obama seeking re-election. Senator Sanders mounted a more viable effort 4 years later against Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run for the Democratic nomination and managed to emplace outriders like the (in)famous Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the 14th congressional district of New York – a Democrat safe seat covering most of the Bronx which the party had kept as a sinecure for one of its congressional leaders, old Joe Crowley – Speaker Pelosi’s left-hand man.
So far, very sedimentary. This year has seen a repeat performance by young new arrivals, including the much-maligned for good reason DSA’s Darializa Ávila-Chevalier in NY-13 unseating 5-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat. A historic figure in the populous Dominican American community of upper Manhattan, Espaillat headed the congressional Hispanic caucus and goes down in history as the first Dominican elected to the House of Representatives. Darializa will now face Manual “Jomo” Williams on the Republican ticket in November.
Jomo is has an open appeal against the NY Board of elections in the 1st Dept of the Apellate Division of the NY State court system. Relief involves implementing the SAVE act by respecting existing laws, since the greatest debating house in the world thinks its controversial to get ID’d by your municipal officers when exercising rights. There is urgency to winning, given NY provided the margin in 2022 which was essential in defeating lockdowners like Kathy Hochul federally. Control of the White House is downstream from that political achievement in history, as is the current House majority. Hochul is in a statistical tie for her re-elect and cannot afford to lose margins in her heartlands.
This strategy has no better target than NY13 and her neighbors.
What makes this a tectonic shift rather than just shifting sands?
Primary races in safe seats are determined by the activist base, low-turnout from members of the party (NY Democrats) delivered a slim 3-point margin for Darializa, just over a mere 2000 votes, with no candidate breaking 50% of balloting. Espaillat had incumbency, Darializa has a divided and controversial party faithful considering their options.
The Dominican plurality in NY13, which reliably delivers results north of 90% Democrat in statewide elections, makes up more than a third of the district. If you include other Hispanic groups you’ll have just under half of the whole electorate, with black, Jewish and other “minority” groups adding up most of the district’s population.
Divisions were sharpened during the pandemic and especially when Black Lives Matter protests pitted minority small business owners against the lawless looting America suffered nationwide. Frequently robbed, The members of the Bodega Association endorsed Donald Trump for President in 2020 and 2024, and the police and firemen unions withheld their endorsement from Democrat candidates, which was as far as they could go.
Mayor Mamdani has rewarded them with the publicly owned communist grocery stores, rent freezes that hurt the overwhelmingly minority homeowners who worked decades to pay off mortgages on single digit amounts of properties; and the creeping gentrification movement looking to replace the beating heart of hard-working immigrant New York with trust-fund transplants, Columbia graduates like Darializa for whom the district is a ticket to ride for the Revolution, not a population to deliver representation, love and care for long term.
Much like the dictatorship of the proletariat, which promised workers’ paradise and delivered nothing but misery, this effort attempts to turn the ethnic minorities of America into the woke Revolutionary Class, a weapon against the established power structure – with not much regard for their own interest in the matter.
This teleology already gave us the presidency of Barack Obama, but remains conceptually handicapped by the (ironic, to say the least) application of Klansman-level thinking – including the one-drop rule that allegedly makes “minorities” of anyone with so much as a suntan.
Relevant example: “Dominican” is not a race, but a nationality. At best, an ethnicity – a cultural signifier applicable to the civic category which can include anyone willing to defend the precepts of a young, New World republic and the revolutionary movement which successfully fathered a Nation – and established, in 1844, the nation state it inhabits.
It is no coincidence that, having modeled the Dominican Republic on the pioneer of such revolutionary New World Republics, the United States of America, Darializa would define herself in opposition both to traditional American liberty (and its Founders) as well as the Dominican independence – the effort to separate from the Republic of Haiti. Haitian imperialism has, over the centuries, become the laughingstock it always deserved to be, through the irrefutable measure of the results it produced, much like the later communist revolutions.
Darializa’s racialized ideology pines for a “united black republic” on the island of Hispaniola, presumably because the Dominican Republic’s 87% black population is too low for her standards. Buyer beware what this “Global Rhodesia” attitude would augur for Manhattan, not least because she apparently ignores the fact that in Haiti a “light skin” like her would never be seen as “Black”, much less as a Haitian. Such is the ivory tower curse of reading these things in leftwing books and journals, without ever seeing or experiencing it firsthand – it is they who are to blame for the current failed state of Haiti, more than any geological plate tectonics. She insulted veterans like Jomo too, calling them War Criminals.
Her opponent, Republican candidate Manual “Jomo” Williams, served as an E-5 in the US Army and remains a pillar of the local small business community. Born in NYC the black son of Puerto Ricans, he doesn’t speak Spanish for never much leaving New York. The choice seems an easy one – denying the AOC-Mandani strategy of imposing radicals through primary elections necessarily means voting in the alternative in November general elections, even if your idea of holding your nose is pulling the lever for a war hero.
For these and many other reasons endorsing Mr. Williams make sense, hoping this seismic shake-up settles into a more reasonable equilibrium than we had before. Otherwise, expect ever-more after-shocks, and Marxism galore.
