Chuck D is a rebel without a pause. The co-founder of seminal hip-hop group Public Enemy is a rapper, author and activist. He refers to himself as a "raptivist," and "an ambassador for hip-hop." Thursday night, D will give a free speech at Sacramento State, where he'll be talking about rap, race, technology and communication. The event will also be a celebration of Black History Month. D likes to talk. Given that he writes a blog, tours the world on speaking gigs, and owns the SLAMjams music label, which recently threw together an iTunes album for Haiti, he is surprisingly available. He called me for an unscheduled interview, just a few minutes after I e-mailed him. "You can't go throug

Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services welcomed around 29,000 participants in their sixteenth annual Run to Feed the Hungry on Thanksgiving Day.  Here are a collection of photos taken by The Sacramento Press along with participants' photos from the run submitted to us.   As the sun comes up Thanksgiving morning, trucks set up the time marks along the race route on the CSU, Sacramento campus SFBFS volunteers prepare the after-party area to re-fuel runners and walkers   Corporate teams/sponsors gather in the crowded VIP tent to have group photos taken Corporate teams have their team photos taken  Teams fuel up with doughnuts, bananas, coffee, and energy bars provided by

The Tour de Sacramento kicked off today and will continue for three weeks of activities and ride-alongs around the Sacramento area. The event coincides with the Tour de France. The three-week event in Europe is a world-famous race, but tour organizer Dawn Dais says that the Tour de Sacramento has a different feel to it. "We don't really want to encourage a competition. Its going to be super laid back and fun." Dais has written a book called "The Noncyclist's Guide to the Century and Other Road Races," that details her training for a bicycle race and breaks down the process to encourage people of all backgrounds to participate in cycling. Today, a bike safety check and a Safe Cycling Cli

 Watura "Wat" Misaka's name might not register on even the greatest sport buff's radar, but he certainly holds a prestigious place in the history of the National Basketball Association as the first person of color to be drafted into the NBA. Husband and wife producer team Bruce and Christine Johnson are doing their part to shed some much-deserved spotlight on Misaka with their documentary, "Transcending: The Wat Misaka Story." "Sports really do transcend...this is a great story of this person who triumphed and broke down barriers with such grace. I think it also teaches us to look at what problems still exist and how we can transcend them," said Christine. Presented by the Sacramento Asi

Let’s not mince words: political conventions are boring and a party convention is an oxymoron plain and simple. If you’ve been to one then you know. Sure, the Democrats throw better parties than the Republicans. Hell, the new chairman of the Democratic Party, John Burton, is an admitted cocaine addict and known womanizer. But I digress. For anybody who's been to a party convention, whether as a delegate, officer or volunteer, it's a fact that the highlight of a convention weekend is the dozen or so "hospitality suites" wherein various caucuses host parties inside the hotel. Usually the best party is hosted by the California Young Democrats who rent out a large hall and host a DJ, full bar

Come Valentine's Day, Sacramento will be home to America's largest cycling event, the Amgen Tour of California. Lance Armstrong, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France, will be participating as a member of the Astana Cycling Team. Sixteen other teams from around the world will also be competing.   The Tour of California is a Tour de France-style road race. The Sacramento stage of the race will take place on the Capitol Mall and begin at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14, with an estimated end time of 4:00 p.m. Since the 2009 race begins in Sacramento, this stage is called the 'prologue' and will consist of riders completing the course one at a time, racing against each other's time. "Thou

Friday evening, you may have run into a crowd of cyclists pedaling their way downtown, uptown, and back again. The racing term for this group is a peloton. These rather enthusiastic riders were in the midst of the Sacramento Alley Cat bike race.  The Alley Cat is an unsanctioned bike race, checkpoint-to-checkpoint, where the emphasis is placed not on speed, but on knowing the layout of the city. Races are always open course, taking place in street traffic.  40 riders took off for the five checkpoints of the race which stretched from Lucky Lefty's on 16th Street all the way to West Sacramento and back.  Many others who came chose not to race, but remained at Lucky Lefty's, watching a bik

It was a Tuesday like any other or at least that what I thought as I worked my day job board as can be watching the people pass by on J St. When I got word of a large fixed gear ride that night and I knew my day was looking up. As I sat longer at work I started to hear more and more word of mouth about this ride, and that this was no regular ride. But a race rather and not just any race a scavenger hunt race, once I heard this there was no way I was going to miss this. So some friends and I showed up around 10pm to see what was happening with this ride. When we rolled up there was about 45-50 people so all of us were pumped for this ride, and couldn’t wait to hear the rules. So turns out t