For immediate release
(DETROIT) – The CEO of the International Toothpick Company has announced the organization will hold a press conference at noon today to issue a statement about Black Lives Matter.
Frank Wooden, who has helmed the global giant, headquartered in Newark, NJ, since he left Craft Toothpicks, a start-up in Waltham, MA, in 2016 that featured leather and alligator-skin toothpicks and folded in 2017-and-a-half, said that in light of the protests taking place all over the world and the racial climate, his company is donating $44,000 to the educational fund for all the fry masters at black-owned fried chicken and chicken wing establishments in the U.S. (Of which there are none in Newark.)
This statement was met with outrage from LaMarckesse Jones, the CTO (Chief Toothpick Officer) of the International Brotherhood of Toothpick Workers and the United Tooth Picks, labor unions in Detroit.
“Wooden you know it, again? He ain’t doing nothing for us, because before the pandemic, it was only a few of us still around. Now, all the Big Momma’s in Detroit and Flint and Cleveland and Newark have closed. In the DMV, Saln Peppa Catchups have always been owned by the Koreans, and all the rest are owned by Ahmed and Habibbi & ’nem.”
Jones, a third-generation round toothpick maker, said all the Captain Jay’ses are thriving because they are ubiquitous.
“So we are out here protesting because WHO is getting the money, one, and most of these niggas (sic) kids ain’t going to school no way?”
Caitlin Mendelssohn, 34, a Detroit transplant from Grinnell, Iowa, and her husband, Detroit native JaRaymond Greene, 31, are the owners of the 3-year-old Cluck Clucks, a chic chicken wing establishment in West Village and James Beard Award Winner. It employs eight (8) full-time Culinary Institute of America Wing Masters and two (2) Executive Wing Masters, along with a registered Craft Kool-Aid Cocktail Master, and they were delighted to hear the news.
“We had this vision that we would pay homage to all the Big Momma’ses and City Wing Thingses of the world because we met at Dartmouth and both had a love for wings, so now, to know that our wing masters will be able to send their kids to school because of our dream… " Mendelssohn said.
In yet another surprising turn, activists from the Rainbow Toothpick Coalition and the Flat Toothpick Alliance, as well as Black Lives Matter, have been boycotting Cluck Clucks because they say the establishment doesn’t even use toothpicks — round, rainbow, used, recycled, cellophane-wrapped, or other.
Mendelssohn and that nigga Greene declined comment.
Detroit satirist Oneita Jackson, author of Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome and Letters from Mrs. Grundy, always has an opinion, but rarely unleashes it this searingly. This piece, a reaction to Amazon’s recent solidarity-with-the-black-community statement that flashed on her TV screen, is the former award-winning Detroit Free Press copy editor’s first McSweeney’s contribution.