Equipto
Equipto is the stage name of Ilyich Yasuchi Sato, a rapper and political activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In his teens, Equipto founded Bored Stiff, a long-running hip-hop group, and has performed and toured with many notable hip-hop acts, including KRS-One, De La Soul, Mac Dre, and Nas. He has also released music with Andre Nickatina.
Equipto led the Frisco Five hunger strike outside San Francisco's Mission District police station, to protest police brutality and killings of unarmed civilians. The hunger strike has been discussed as direct action similar to that of Martin Luther King Jr. by three law professors, while another scholar argued that the hunger-striking rappers exhibited the same type of political power as Malcolm X when he attempted to thwart the military draft.
Equipto is of mixed Japanese and Colombian ancestry. He is named after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union. His father, Art Sato, was born in a Japanese internment camp in Colorado.
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