Re: City Blocking my emails

Got notice an email at 6:10 Eastern today, Friday March 13th, that was sent by the Worcester City Law department with a letter from the City mManager.

They are saying that because I've disregarded their Cease and Desist (only one sent by the city manager's office ever, this is a huge accomplishment) they've changed their settings so that anything from d@vidwebb.com goes directly to law@worcesterma.com - and are explaining how it's not a violation of my first amendment. In the footnotes, the city cites the reasoning as

1. In 12 months you have sent over 14,000 emails to city employees.
2. You have included the phrase “Delay, Deny, Charge” in several of your emails which appears to be a runoff of “delay, deny, defend” which were written on the bullets that killed the Healthcare CEO in 2024.
3. Email sent on or about February 18, 2026, providing a list of employees, salary, position, including the statement that you “may eventually add home addresses to this public database, to assist the public in pursuing accountability from individuals through all lawful measures even if the city fires them to cover their ass

Maybe they received that many, I am pretty sure I haven't actually sent half that. Anyways, here's my response, sent from "davidsnewemail1@pm.me" to about thirty city employees.

Hello Manager Batista, Solicitor Kalkounis, and all CC'd and BCC'd,

I received your notice today, and will largely disregard it. As a gentle reminder, the law department has already been CC'd or BCC'd on nearly all of my communication. If they had ANY legal grounds to do ANYthing about ANYthing I've said, they would have already, but they don't so they won't, unless the city would like to pursue more frivolous charges against me, chilling my first amendment rights further than you already have.

To be clear, I am VERY glad that the mayor and city manager's chief of staff have quit, that you are struggling to find replacements, and think it's a good thing that former members of the Law Department are suing the city. I am looking forward to more of your internal behaviors coming to light, and as promised - will continue to ensure that the people who stood by and did nothing in an oppressive government are held accountable by the public they are expected to serve.

Thank you for any credit the city would like to give me for the issues they are experiencing, but I see your current city-wide retention and hiring troubles as a direct result of the poor management the city has observed the past few years under Eric Batista and Tim Murray's management. It's not my fault the law department staff is cherry picked of people who left their prior city under scrutiny for their patterns of practice, and it's not wrong to make their coworkers aware of this fact.

I'm not sorry for disrupting the status qup, and popping your bubbles of comfort - you should be uncomfortable while oppressing people. If the feedback from the public makes them feel bad, then maybe they shouldn't be upholding practices that are harmful to the public.

While I may prepare a more offical response after actually reading the document, I encourage you for the time being to stop unlawful activity you are performing on behalf of the City of Worcester, as these are public records, and you will not be able to claim ignorance. Please find in response to today's letter a response initially included in regards to your unlawful NTO, which a Worcester Police officer incorrectly told me at the time of delivery included the city common, and you refused to clarify for months

Here's a snippet from my response to the original NTO, when I reminded you that public officials are subject to public opinion and input, and that if they cannot handle that then they should not be public officials.




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To be clear discomfort or fear of accountability, and increased social responsibility due to my actions as a journalist publicizing which city employees do what, is not a threat, is not criminal, and is not harassment. CCing and blind CCing public officials in state and local government to create a sense of accountability, as well as inter-departmental communication is not harassment. There is nothing unlawful about BCCing city employees, especially if it is something that may come across their desk in the near future. Unless you're claiming I threatened anyone, or that I tried to start a fight with your employees, I believe my speech to be entirely protected under the first amendment.

I have engaged with city hall in my role as an activist and journalist, documenting injustices, problematic practices and procedures, and the demonstrated lack of congruence between the ideology behavior and words of the city managers office. The problem I am mitigating is the systematic accountability avoidance built from the top down into Worcester government. It seems that the function of your office, and the law department, is to allow other departments to perform insufficiently while certain people and organizations develop exponential wealth and power in our city.

Your municipal systems seem to be designed to distance peoples names from the issues they cause, and so I have focused on ensuring the public is able to be aware of who makes decisions and carrys out acts of the government within this city. I have special interested on public records, and over the past few years I have been systematizing and identifying the ways that the city of Worcester obfuscates, delays, and denies public record requests rather than complying with the public record laws.

In further support of my statement regarding the pattern of practice of the city, I would like to acknowledge that this city and it’s law department was previously sued by the Telegram and Gazette for doing something very similar to one of my current complaints and on May 22, 2025 the city was sued by The Boston Glove for refusing to provide documents in accordance with the public records law.

Considering that for all intents and purposes it would appear that city employees have been ignoring my emails, I do not think they would have caused any of them a significant amount of distress. I believed it was a possibility you had technical services blacklist my email months ago. In the past when I did receive responses, it was rarely from the person I actually emailed - I realized that all people in decision making positions had an assistant, chief of staff, or aide. I concluded that part of their responsibility was to be a buffer so that public officials with power did not have to consider what their constituents wanted, they could receive a summary or have it not relayed to them. In consideration of this I started CCing these communication buffers on all my communication so that it was an option for people to respond themselves, if they so chose, and I could claim I sent it to both them and their chief of staff when telling the public what actions I had taken to try and resolve issues. Unfortunately, directly contacting people in the city never really seemed to solve issues.