Jackson Jambalaya

 A whistleblower report accused Greater Jackson Arts Council Executive Director Silbrina Wright of maxing out the credit cards, misspending grants, and bullying behavior as GJAC finances were drained.  Former Managing Director John Salem submitted the report to the Board of Directors on August 3, 2022, two days after Ms. Wright suspended him.  She fired him on August 19.   

 Mr. Salem worked at the Council since 1994.  He rose to Managing Director, second in the organization to only Executive Director, Silbrina Wright.  Ms. Wright became Executive Director in January 2021. He accused the organization of firing him after he reported Executive Director mismanaged over $500,000 in a lawsuit filed March 10 in Rankin County Circuit Court.Earlier post and copy of complaint.

The memo makes several damning allegations against Ms. Wright: 

* American Express Gold Card Account. The spending patterns on this account are disturbing and unsustainable. In June of this year alone, three payments (totalling $100,000) had to be issued to keep the account current and flexible for continued use. As of this writing, the balance is approximately $88,000. And a payment of approximately $58,000 was required on 8/1/2022 to keep the account in good standing. There is no discernable method of proper receipt management, explanation of charges, or rigorous monthly statement reconciliation.

Mr. Salem recommended freezing the account.  Unfortunately, retired Executive Director Janet Scott opened the account in the mid-90's.  The account had to stay in her name although "she is not personally responsible for any card activity."  He recommended opening a new account under the name of current management. 

* Community Bank/Surdna Foundation Thriving Cultures Project.  $400,00 was deposited into a new account at Community Bank for the project.  Mr. Salem reported "large amounts" were transferred from the project account to the general operating account for "other program spending, operations, and American Express payments (sounds familiar to Zoo followers).  Other checks were written to pay Ms. Wright's daughter who served as an intern.  Bank statements often were not properly reconciled.  

My panic was met (via text and in-person) with gross belligerence and a vulgar verbal assault (“Get the fuck out of my face”). I was also accused of hostile behavior toward Silbrina, which is categorically untrue. Because a staff person under her charge (Xhana Thompson) was in the outer office, I followed Silbrina into her executive office and closed the door in the interest of privacy. She took immediate affront to this, accused me of being aggressive, and opened the door to join Xhana in the conference room. I calmly asked Xhana to give us some privacy. Silbrina ordered her to stay. I asked again. Xhana refused. A partial Voice Memo recording of the altercation is included here. My tone and demeanor reflected in this evidence was constant throughout the incident, from my encountering Silbrina in the Arts Center parking lot to following her out when she drove away. Any claim otherwise from Silbrina or Xhana in the future is an absolute lie. Silbrina can be heard on this recording indicating that she is on the phone with GJAC Board President Julian Miller during our altercation. I do not know whether this is true or not. But this claim, her charges of insubordination, and her text responses to me were clear threats to my job security.

The city of Jackson announced a $1.2 million grant from the Foundation in 2020.  Rest of article. 

I don’t know how this contractor was discovered or selected. In my view, the professionalism of the work left something to be desired. Reneisha Price, Silbrina Wright’s Administrative Assistant who resigned abruptly last month, was put in the strange position of running supply errands (flooring, paint, etc.) for the contractor and witnessed one of the workers (under the influence of the drug Lean) sprawled shirtless on the floor of the Arts Center loading dock.

The former Managing Director recommending firing the contractor and obtaining a proper itemized invoice.  

Mr. Salem reported her management style deteriorated as time passed: 

For the first year, things were generally smooth. We had a good rapport and worked together on almost everything GJAC related. But something shifted at the end of last year. It began with a call on Christmas Eve rudely demanding that I edit our holiday message video because she was not featured in the footage. That was the beginning of a intermittently hostile work environment that has ebbed and flowed between tolerable and completely untenable.

Her management style is basically management by chaos. She became an information hoarder. I was not consulted on key decisions and sidelined from key financial matters. EXAMPLE: For our Arts Infusion funding proposals for Summer 2021 and Fall/Spring 2021-2022, I was a key participant in proposal writing, program and budget development, budget narrative presentation, and invoicing. For the Summer 2022 program, which includes the aforementioned Disney trip, I was blocked from the entire process.

More recent months have revealed Silbrina to manage not by team but by fiefdom. She hires and surrounds herself with college interns or students who just recently graduated. She shows extreme favorability to some in her orbit and hostility/abuse to others. Her ability to admit a mistake (even on the most trivial matter) is nonexistent. She is routinely unapproachable and dismissive and resistant to compromise. It is a toxic storm of ego, belligerence, narcissism, power/authority hunger, and recklessness.

 However, the Managing Director credited Ms. Wright with an increase in the GJAC's budget: 

The reasons for my delay in coming forward are complicated. Year to year, GJAC’s budget has nearly tripled by funding from the Jackson Public Schools District and the Surdna Foundation, and Silbrina Wright is largely, if not exclusively, responsible for those awards. She routinely put on display and declared her tight working relationships with JPSD administration officials, the Surdna Foundation principals, City of Jackson officials, even Congressman Bennie Thompson. She gave me constant assurances of other “big money” coming in, and because of our fast budget growth, I believed this to be true. In all honesty, there is also an element here pertaining to race. Silbrina Wright is the first African American director in GJAC’s 40+ year history. Her appointment was greeted with great enthusiasm and immediately opened funding relationship doors previously closed to the agency. I was kept outside the loop of most if not all discussions/meetings with powerful people in decision-making positions, all of them African American. On some level, I felt like my voice was unwelcome and that raising concerns or asking too many questions would send the wrong signals.

Note: In case Jackson deletes the press release, here it is. 

The City of Jackson announced today that they received a $1.2M award from the Surdna Foundation to work with the Community Aid & Development Corporation as part of a regranting and municipal partnership, to invest in artists from communities of color. The award will be distributed in equal parts over the course of three years.

This grant award will fund the Live. Impact. Create. Initiative, which is geared toward empowering people of color to use their artistry and voice to address social justice radically through the arts. The initiative will financially support fellows and offer training to develop leadership and social injustice resolution skills. Fellows will be tasked with curating projects which shed light on community needs and will partner with young creative people of color to cultivate unorthodox solutions to community problems. The project will launch in two phases. The first will be dedicated to gathering valuable community impact, followed by the selection of fellows and individual project implementation. 

The award is part of a three-year artist regranting initiative through Surdna’s Thriving Cultures program, which will support up to 260 projects by artists of color working with their communities around the country to imagine and practice racially just systems and structures. Through this award, regranting partners, such as the Community Aid & Development Corporation, will distribute Surdna’s funds to artists, artist collectives and small artist organizations and will provide direct, on-the-ground support and technical assistance.

“Art has been a means of influencing culture and speaking to social concerns for generations. And so, we’re happy for this partnership that allows us to continue a necessary conversation about how we confront issues of racial justice and inequity,” said Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

“As communities across our nation work together to survive COVID-19, artists are uniquely positioned to help us imagine and build a more just future in which we all can thrive,” said F. Javier Torres-Campos, Program Director of the Foundation’s Thriving Cultures program. “We are proud to partner with organizations that provide direct, on-the-ground support and technical assistance to artists of color. Our artist regranting cohort invests in the leaders and communities most impacted by injustice because they bring the necessary lived experience, strategies, and creativity to realize racially just societies.”

The City of Jackson joins a diverse cohort of 11 regranting partners, which are national and regional in focus, and include several learning clusters of organizations attempting to impact prevailing inequities in arts grantmaking in specific ways. Among the clusters are organizations focused on the U.S. South, local cross-sector partnerships between municipal governments and local arts nonprofits, and culturally specific intermediaries serving Latinx and Indigenous communities. The City of Jackson is a proud member of both the U.S. South learning cluster as well as the Cross-Sector Partnership learning cluster.