Anti-Israel protesters take a page from anti-vaxxers and try jamming 311 with messages

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It used to be a joke that New York City had its own foreign policy. Not something for other cities to aspire to. (It's not as though renaming street corners after Soviet dissidents was going to persuade the Kremlin to do anything.)

Aren't these more likely to be the same people who reported people playing sports or dining without masks?

I saw two of the posts you linked to before they were taken down (the other had already been removed). Both posts called for a cease-fire in Gaza. This is not anti-Israel, it is anti-indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.

This is not just a technical distinction. Speaking as a jew, I feel it's important to note that criticism of Israeli policies and its apartheid government's actions should not automatically be read as criticism of the existence of Israel.

This reminds me of the recent protest method of using museums and high value art to protest environmental degradation. The museum or art - whether the Gardner, or tomato soup thrown onto paintings - is used because trying to protest the actual issue seems to be without effect. Protesting the policy choices of people who have so much wealth and privilege that they are able to insulate themselves from everyone else creates the sense that protest against their decisions is wasted energy. They are powerful and the rest of us are powerless against them. Whether "they" are the executives at Exxon or other international corporations, the law makers at the tops of governments and any other major organization (for the matter the executives at local institutions such as hospitals - people who are disconnected from everyone else). The people at the top are so insulated, the 1% or even 10% of decisions makers, are so disconnected from the rest of us that they seem to be unreachable. They exercise power over the rest of us while we are powerless against them and their decision.

Lily Tomlin offered a sublime, unplanned commentary that so fits today: "We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company."

Just replace Phone Company with government, hospital, oil and energy corporation. And of course anyone who has to deal with Comcast or Verizon can also report that the frustration of dealing with the is no less with the Phone Company today than it was nearly 50 years ago.

For decades the belief was that New York City would function far better as a state instead of being a city that is part of a state. Perhaps the same is true of other major institutions and corporations. When the people who run something are so far disconnected from the people served it's time to shorten the distance. Instead of these unfathomably large institutions that are too large to fail, perhaps they are too large for the rest of us to succeed.

The phrase too large to fail is thrown about. Perhaps the reality is that there are too large is to dangerous to continue.