CHICAGO (CBS) — Are you already preparing for Thanksgiving dinner? That certainly includes nonprofits, which will be handing out thousands of turkeys in Chicago and the suburbs on Saturday.
A line wrapped around the corner at St. Sabina Church in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, some people waited hours for a free turkey, including Helen May who was first in line at 6 a.m. for the giveaway that officially opened at 12 started in the afternoon.
‘Too early. Too early. I thought there would be a lot of people there. You have to come early. I came too early,” May said.
St. Sabina distributed 1,000 turkeys donated by film director Spike Lee, offering a helping hand as food prices remain high.
‘Yes, yes. That’s a big problem. They’re going up, but you gotta do what you gotta do,” Brenda Lester said as she waited for her turkey.
There’s good news as you start planning your holiday meal. Experts say they expect Thanksgiving meals to cost less this year than last year. Prices have fallen for the second year in a row.
However, costs are still estimated to be 19% higher than five years ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic spiked inflation.
“We understand the struggle, we understand the pain, but we are here for you,” said Deontae Tanner, CEO of Servants for Hope, which runs its own turkey giveaway at Englewood STEM High School on Saturday.
Tanner purchased more than 600 turkeys for his Englewood giveaway.
“I’m excited to see these all go away,” he said.
Servants for Hope visited several grocery stores at once this week to make sure they had all the food they needed. They packed their truck until 1 a.m. Saturday morning, before their 8th annual turkey giveaway.
In addition to frozen turkeys, they handed out canned food and warm jackets, some of which went in the back of Dajay Thomas’ car as they will celebrate with 20 people this Thanksgiving.
“It was actually special. Something special,” Thomas said.
In the meantime, it was a community effort to provide Thanksgiving meals for families in West Humboldt Park and Austin. Black Men United and volunteers from Rush University Medical Center partnered with Amazon to distribute 400 turkeys, along with side dishes and fresh produce.
Volunteers were also busy Saturday making sure thousands of suburban families had a meal on the table for Thanksgiving.
Teams of people spent the day packing boxes of food for a project called the Basket Brigade. On Sundays, drivers spread out through the northwest suburbs to deliver meals. In total, the group expects to feed about 9,000 people this holiday.
