Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – The FBI Raid on the home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao brought one name to the attention of the general public: The Duong Family, owners of California Waste Solutions (CWS). The Duong Family is accused of what is called “political money laundering”. The Duong Family is also at the center of the fundraising activities of a number of Oakland and East Bay Political candidates and officials. And The Duong Family is receiving a lot of one-sided media and has no way to show what it is separate from what paid media says about it. The Duong Family needs to hire Zennie62Media, Inc. And so do you.
The central reason why The Duong Family needs to hire Zennie62Media is that there is no fair and balanced organization out there that practices traditional journalism, where both sides of a story are told. Now, it’s all gossip. The mainstream media is not objective anymore has become more like bloggers and vloggers – which is what Zennie62Media consists of. My company does not hide its bias.
Zennie62Media was born as an idea in 2006, because its first client, Kofi Bonner, then of Lennar Urban, and my UC Berkeley Planning Graduate School Classmate (Class of 1987) and good friend to this day (he’s now CEO of Bedrock in Detroit, managing the $6 billion real estate portfolio of Cleveland Cavaliers and Rocket Mortgage Owner Dan Gilbert) was being hammered by a man irate about a number of issues with respect to The Bay Area Hunters Point Shipyard, a Lennar Development.
But the problem is, the man who was online harassing Kofi Bonner was writing a lot of insulting, racist, and personal website posts about him. In 2006, the laws and practices around what are called “takedown notices” were only just emerging. But Kofi needed an online response to protect his reputation and his psyche, and that’s where Zennie62Media came in.
Zennie62Media Is Purpose-Built Around A Unique, Smartphone-Powered Media Tech
Zennie62Media, Inc. consists of 108 websites that I, Zennie62Media CEO Zennie Abraham, built for the purpose of opinion and news, and several are tied to a network that automatically distributes our Zennie62 YouTube videos. So the Zennie62Media website network consists of sites we have built for celebrities like SF Giants Legend Rich Aurilia, and to announce his MLB All Star Game Party when the event was in San Francisco. Or Gary Bauer, the Founder and President of Bauer Limosines, another one of our first clients. Gary wanted to have a website that had YouTube videos and a YouTube channel in the name of his firm. Zennie62Media delivered.
Bauer’s Worldwide Transportation San Francisco Limousine Party Bus Video Tour
And that brings me to the real reason why The Duong Family should hire Zennie62Media, and sports organizations and athletes: we make platforms for them and help fill in what we call “online gaps” in keyword coverage. What that means in lay terms is if someone is writing about you or your firm, and a constant set of what we call “keywords” are bad, and guess what? There’s no set of “good” keywords to present the other side of the story about you. Is that right? Of course not. We’re supposed to live in a democracy. That’s the point.
Zennie62Media is the online match to the spokesperson and the content-maker and website master. And for another good reason: most of what are called online “bots” are what are characterized as “bad”. That means they are made to take down sites. And I can tell you that a lot of bots are aimed at news sites as much to reduce their ranking in search results as to stop their servers from working. That’s why Zennie62Media has a constant and daily effort to built systems and write code that fights bad bots. After 16 years of doing this, I can tell you the World looks quite different to me, and that’s what I am most concerned about.
I am concerned that not enough African Americans tell the news via platforms they own. I am concerned that not enough women and people of color tell the news via platforms they own. I am concerned that most of the mainstream media news reporters looking at The Duong Family in Oakland are white, male and, by the way, not LGBT, or Q. We need Asian media personalities to give their view. We need Vietnamese media personalities to give their view. I say that because there’s way too much subtle racism going on in the story of The Duong Family. And The Duong Family does not have anyone telling the real story about its humble beginnings.
By contrast, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is using her bully pulpit to tell her story. Mayor Sheng Thao has allies in the media willing to twist a story to make her look good. Those, like me, who thought her crying was a mistake, just may be wrong. It might turn out to be a work of genius under investigation, as time goes on. The bottom line is Mayor Thao was clearly anguished and had a right to be. She made a mistake in not telling her story as the Raid was going on. But she has the mainstream media at her disposal if she wants – The Duong Family does not.
The Duong Family Has A Good Story To Tell But No One Is Telling It In America
So, Zennie62Media believes The Duong Family has a good story to tell, but no one is telling it – just the bad parts. And they don’t have active, current, social media to show anything they do. They’re set up as using 20th Century thinking in a 21st Century media world. Zennie62Media clients understand if we tell the truth, good and bad, as long as they get out the balanced truth, the public will understand.
Did The Duong Family buy influence? That would point to changed legislation as a result of a donation. And to date, there’s no evidence that happened. But we’re not getting the balanced story. But more important by far is telling The Duong Family story away from this matter, and not spend time wading only in the ugly weeds of constantly bad news.
No Stories About The Duong Family Other Than Those Related To The FBI Raid
There’s virtually nothing out there about The Duong Family other than stories connected to the Mayor of Oakland and the FBI Raid, and that void points to how damaged our media is. Progressives use non-profit media and if you look at the law, for nonprofits to wade into politically partisan waters is illegal. Conservative media is for profit, and more direct about its non-partisan position. But both reflect the state of media: you need a champion to deal with it. Zennie62Media can save media. Bloggers, Vloggers, Web Platform Developers and Influencers can be the course correction we need in this world.
Zennie62Media has stood tall and stood up for the little company, powerless person, and small business. When I was told that evidence that the City of Oakland ordered the exploration of coal as a market for the Bulk and Oversized Terminal, and not CCIG Boss Phil Tagami, and the evidence of that fact was in sealed court documents, I begged California Capital Investment Group to get Insight Terminal Solutions to hire Zennie62Media. The result? We presented the other side of the news, and exposed how unfair the news media was being toward our client. And revealed the many untruths the City of Oakland was telling.
For Zennie62Media client the former Transbay Joint Powers Authority Executive Director (1998 – 2016) and Founder Maria Averdi Kaplan, Zennie62Media revealed that she was being treated unfairly because she was a Latina in a male-dominated industry. I say this: there should be a statue of Maria Averdi Kaplan in front of SalesForce Transit Center.
I have never cried more for any single client than I have for how Maris was treated. Maria is the picture of leadership and innovation under pressure and her good work should never be forgotten. Willie Brown made the right choice in putting her in charge of creating a solution to the need to replace the aging Regional Transit Center in San Francisco. I was proud to gain the help of black-owned The Oakland Post and its legendary owner Paul Cobb in telling her story, and I am forever grateful for the association.
So, if you respond with what you think you know about Mayor Sheng Thao and The Duong Family, just remember that it’s because you read it in a media bought and paid for by special interests. The Duong Family deserves its own special interest platform maker like Zennie62Media. Not to spread lies, but the truth and build platforms and to be direct.
Stay tuned, and remember to always question the news, and not just the news you disagree with.