Organize the South

If you attended the US Social Forum, then you probably met your share of wackos. If you submitted a workshop proposal, then you probably are getting email from said wackos. One of them is Rick White, and, to answer my question, he's a public relations guy in Atlanta. He may or may not be a wacko, but he's definitely a spammer and possibly a bit of a hack.

White works for a public relations company called Alisias. One of Alisias's clients is the Atlanta Housing Authority. Other Alisias clients included the Lamar Willis Foundation, When I googled him and the company I came upon an email exchange related to the technology of the US Social Forum. The spamming came to light before the forum as evidenced in this blog by Ana. Apparently, Rick believes it's OK to keep spamming.

I emailed him a list of questions back on January 1, but haven't heard from him. I'm putting the full email below. What can we learn from this? 1) the Atlanta Housing Authority doesn't know good public relations from a hack job. 2) spam doesn't work for politics (but maybe for viagra sales). Most important, though, is 3) anything you put on the internet stays on the internet.

Here's the email sent to Rick White:

• Can you confirm you work for the public relations firm Alisias?
• Is the Atlanta Housing Authority one of your clients?
• Did you pull down emails from the Social Forum website? Are you sending email bursts to this list on behalf of AHA?
• Were you hired by Alisias to attack the Forum? If not, what were you hired to do?
• Were you asked by the USSF technology group to stop spamming?
• Did you make an agreement to delete emails pulled off the USSF site? Did you delete those emails?