Rapper Equipto, a name in the West Coast hip-hop scene, has been taking on a new role in the last six months: bête noire to Mayor Ed Lee. He's heckled the public official on multiple occasions  you'll recall him calling Lee a "disgrace to Asians" last October, to his face, and disrupting the mayor's speech on MLK day  and most recently, the Chronicle reports, he tried to disrupt a speech Lee was giving at a private event held in the Fairmont yesterday. There, 48 Hills adds, he was among three hecklers arrested and charged with trespassing and “disturbing a public meeting."

The events occurred before 800 guests at the annual Mayor's Economic Forecast breakfast, an event hosted by the San Francisco Business Times at the Fairmont Hotel. “As soon as the mayor stood up up to say his first words, a guy in the back with a loud voice got up and started talking over him, and lectured the mayor for an uncomfortably long time,’’ a guest told the Chronicle.

Others in the back appeared to be part of the protest, and supporters attempted to drown out their cries with applause. In the end, the Mayor was forced to wait for security to make them leave. According to a spokesperson for him, the Mayor “made an effort to address every one of their concerns” and was “unfazed’’ by the interruption. Equipto and the two others who were arrested at the Fairmont said they had purchased tickets for a total of $460 to enter the event.

The root of the protestors anger was again Mario Woods' death, a subject on which Lee was mostly silent and through which he seemed to support SFPD chief Suhr. That is, until recently calling the police shooting "horrifying" and a "firing squad."

Nevertheless, Lee's seeming complacence has gotten him heckled now three times at speeches. Keeping track, that's his inauguration, at which he was drowned out by boos and calls to fire Chief Suhr, and at that MLK event last month.

Equipto first confronted Lee on camera in a coffee shop last October, months before Woods' death, calling the mayor a "disgrace to Asians" and deriding his policies around housing, prior to the November election. Ed Lee is, of course, the first Asian-American mayor of San Francisco.



Previously: [Update] Video: Mayor Lee Shouted Off Stage By Protesters At MLK Day Event