A conservative street artist is putting up these #ZuckSchumer posters across NYC

A poster hanging on a phone booth outside of Facebook’s New York office in Astor Place, Manhattan.
A poster hanging on a phone booth outside of Facebook’s New York office in Astor Place, Manhattan.

Late Monday evening into early Tuesday morning, a right-leaning street artist known as Sabo put up scores of posters and signs featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer across New York City.

The signs, created to protest Zuckerberg and Schumer, were posted near Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, Facebook headquarters in Astor Place, and Times Square. A myriad of signs referenced the senator’s daughter, who works at Facebook. Faux-road signs reading “Caution Facebook sells your data” were planted into the ground or bolted onto other signs. The signs suggest a conflict of interest, since Congress makes laws that regulate Facebook.

Many signs featured Zuckerberg and Schumer’s faces blended together, similar to the Face/Off movie poster, as well as the hashtag #ZuckSchumer. Others added a third face, that of the scandal-ridden former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who was sentenced to prison for sexting with a minor. “You can’t watch your kids 24/7, but we can,” the posters read. The hashtag mildly trended in alt-right circles. A spokesperson for Schumer declined to comment.

A poster hanging in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
A poster hanging in the Prospect Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.

The campaign’s website features language critical to Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal and President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, but despite that language, the guerrilla messaging was executed by William Sabatini, who goes by the pseudonym Sabo and runs the website and social channels, Unsavory Agents.

“Zuckerberg snoops into our private lives and sells our personal information to customers like Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon,” the site reads.

Who is Sabo?

Sabo, who calls himself “the only true rebel artist of LA,” is the conservative counterpart to progressive Banksy. Best known for his faux ads attacking Hollywood, Sabo was in the spotlight this February. Days before the Academy Awards, he plastered messages across three billboards (a nod to the Oscar-nominated film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, MIssouri”), criticizing the entertainment industry for protecting pedophiles and sexual harassers for so long.

Tuesday morning, Sabo clipped a mic to his beard and filmed a seven-minute Periscope video of him strolling through Times Square looking for a bite to eat.

“I’m working, working, working. Almost no rest. Last night was a trip. A lot of weird shit happened, that much is for sure. I don’t normally take on clients but I know this client that I had this weekend, they normally hire these people that I know, these friends of mine I guess, but they’re no longer in the game, so they hired me. Talk about stress, man. It’s like you’re constantly worried you’re not going to pull the job off, but you always manage,” he said.

While Sabo didn’t name the clients who commissioned the project, it’s evident that this was a fairly last-minute request.

“Let me tell you man, I pulled this thing out of my ass. One miracle after another…The hit was an amazing success and it shouldn’t have been. I don’t know what it was — I lucked out. I busted my ass and I guess it just kind of paid off. Is it going to make press, I don’t know. But i did my part, that’s the best I could do. I’ll catch you later,” he said.

Sabo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Advertisement