Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – My once good friend, Oakland Business Owner and politico Mario Juarez, recently posted a very thoughtful blog post on the platform called Medium. It’s called “When Government Abandons Its People: Oakland’s Moral, Legal, and Economic Crisis”.
Mario Juarez’ basic message is clear, and one paragraph from his post describes it:
“City Administrator Jestin Johnson and Assistant Administrator Harold Duffey are actively shutting out Black, Latino, and Women-Owned businesses from city contracts — while millions of our taxpayer dollars are funneled to firms from outside Oakland. These are not allegations. These are documented realities backed by procurement data and city budget reports. And it’s time we say what too many are afraid to say: This isn’t just bad management. This is economic theft. This is moral failure. And it’s illegal under both civil law and God’s law.”
I support what Mario’s explaining, and expand on it: Oakland has forgotten how to do simple economic development: business retention, business attraction, and business development. The Oakland that did that got the Oakland Raiders back to Oakland from Los Angeles, took Cirque duSoleil from San Francisco, developed its Port to be one of the best in the World, created a government headquarters nexus, and built a new arena for the Golden State Warriors, and built a lot of affordable housing. And I could go on, and on.
The Oakland of today lost the Warriors, Raiders, and Oakland A’s, a lot of Black folks, and its soul, too. Today, Oakland is tarting to feel like East San Francisco, and that’s a bad thing. But if we are going to get the Soul of Oakland back, then it starts with folks like Mario Juarez using themselves as the light to show the way. Mario writes as if he wasn’t recently under the gaze of the legal system for failing to pay Samari Johnson, a black Oakland printer, $53,000 for his work. Want to see Samari Johnson tell his story? It’s a near-hour-long interview at The Vlog Report With Zennie62 on YouTube here:
When I learned of that, I could not believe Mario Juarez would do that to a person like Samari Johnson: black, business owner, caregiver for his 86-year-old father. If anyone needs that money, Samari Johnson certainly does. But when I reached out to Mario he was not at all concerned about Mr. Johnson, but about telling me he was having sex with his wife.
Okay.
And then I realized that the claim written about Mario as a comment in my video interview with him back in 2011 really had more than a grain of truth. But, in an effort to defend my friend, I deleted the comment back then 12 years ago. And that was when I came to Mario’s defense against a CBS KPIX report that was more than questionable in nature.
But that did not stop someone named @claudiarojas8140from writing a comment I will not repeat here. The point is, Mario Juarez has stiffed more than one business person in Oakland. And while Mario beat the rap in court (and managed to turn federal prosecutors from bulldogs to lap dogs as Frank Parlato tells it here) it does not at all erase the fact that he harmed Samari Johnson and for doing good service for him.
Mario also had someone make a racist postcard about me. Yep, Mario Juarez was so pissed off I tipped off the Oakland Police regarding how he extorted Mr. Johnson, he had a postcard made about me:
So when Mario writes “When Jestin Johnson and Harold Duffey refuse to enforce these laws, or worse, design around them to favor outsiders, they are not just failing in duty — they are violating the law. Every time they bypass a local vendor with 25+ years of service in favor of a firm with no Oakland footprint, they are saying: “Your effort, your loyalty, your sweat equity doesn’t matter.”And that, too, is a form of violence.Mario has to apply that view to what he’s done to Oakland business owners like Samari Johnson. I pray the Mario Juarez I thought I knew does that.
The Mario Juarez I thought I knew was a smart, funny, engaging, caring family man who made it his business to know what was happening in Oakland Politics. And brother he did that better than anyone else. Plus, Mario was one word: smooth. Always with the right word or thought. I was only too happy to give a positive light to my friend for so many years. I just now wonder what happened, or if I was just being a fool all of the time.
Regardless, my call to Mario is to walk his talk. I don’t care that he put out a stupid and racist mailer about me, heck, I am an Oakland Blogger who came to the defense of the idea of the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal OBOT handling commodities as “dirty” as iron ore, because it was designed to shield their impurities from the local environment. But the No-Coal-In-Oakland types focused on coal because it was the market the City of Oakland identified for OBOT and Phil Tagami via The Tioga Group Report and I was only too happy to get out that truth for the public to see. Have a read here; https://oaklandnewsnowblog.com/insight-terminal-solutions-bombshell-tioga-report-shows-city-of-oakland-planned-obot-for-coal/
Thanks for the publicity, Mario.
Bad Mario Juarez Should Give Samari Johnson His Money
But where I part company with Mario is not just in what he did to Samari, but Mario implying a threat to me by sending me a photo of me and my Mom on Twitter. See, Mario hated that I reported what he did to the authorities, but I was shaking in anger with how little Mario cared about Samari’s need for his $53,000 so he could help his father. That was wrong!
So if Mario Juarez wants to see Oakland Government do better by Oakland, he should start with Black Oakland Business Owners like Samari Johnson. Give him his $53,000 back. Maybe take it out of that $100,000 Mario claims to have for his political action committee.
Or Perhaps Mario Juarez Can Help Samari Johnson Via XUAREZCREATIVE.COM?
Maybe Mario can help Samari Johnson revive the business he started called Butterfyl Direct Marketing, it’s a a direct mailing agency in Oakland. As told in the video above, Johnson said his company printed the attack flyers and mailed them out in 2022. Mario started a new online platform called XUAREZCREATIVE and is at XUAREZCREATIVE.COM. Mario’s got a page where he’s advertising himself as a political strategist with his new non-profit 501(c)4 company called the Oakland Latino Business Association & Committee at OaklandLatinoPac.conm , and he had different membership levels from $400 to $99,000.
The Oakland Latino Business Association & Committee has this page explaining what it does:
We are a nonprofit 501(c)(4) formed to protect the civic, economic, and social rights of marginalized business communities. We engage in direct lobbying, protests, policy organizing, and public pressure to hold decision-makers accountable and to dismantle systems that harm our people.
We exist to:
• Advocate for equity in city contracts, economic development, and government spending.
• Expose and oppose discrimination in public policy and business access.
• Pressure elected leaders to act—or prepare for public consequences.
• Demand the dismissal, replacement, or recall of officials who perpetuate exclusion.
We don’t wait. We don’t water it down. We move with strategy and purpose—and we win when we move together.
Stay tuned.