The mob wasn't that big. There were two local white politicians who were afraid of being Crowleed, so they helped organized protests.
Apparently the location is surrounded by housing projects. Amazon should have known better. They were surely going to be held-up for some form of reparations.
The location wasn't surrounded by housing projects. About six blocks to the north were the Queensbridge Housing project with a population of about 7,000. The rest of LIC vibrant is probably one the fasting growing areas in the country. The amount of construction there over the last four years would rival the downtown size of many medium sized cities.
As I understand it, Amazon knew they were leaving when some local politicians who opposed them were placed on boards and committees that oversaw permits and such; they could’ve been tied up for years in red tape before getting anything going.
While people blame NYC folks for this, the people in the impacted district elected representative who supported the move (their representative Maloney, their mayor, and their governor). Cortez was just a brown interloper from a neighboring district; she made plenty of Dem enemies.