Cal Glover-Wessel grew up in Brattleboro and lives here again after a few years of doing humanitarian work on the southern border.
BRATTLEBORO-Recently, a slew of extremely bigoted comments and posts uncovered on social media sites have drawn scrutiny toward the motivations behind the political and social aspirations of their author, Henry Poitras, a.k.a. Planet Hank.
On Feb. 8, a collection of more than 80 images started making the rounds on Facebook, mostly screenshots of comments or posts from the official Planet Hank account on X, formerly Twitter. Almost all of the comments were made within the last two years and display unambiguous racism, homophobia, transphobia, and a deep resentment toward women.
One post he shared from March of 2024 shows a video of a short-haired woman (described in the original text as a "nonbinary woman") getting maced by an angry man, with Poitras commenting only, "This is the new way, 100%."
A comment from May of 2023 reads, "Black people hate all white people, this is why we carry weapons. […] We see you people, remember that next time you're targeted."
Another post from Febuary of 2016 reads "F-k 'black lives matter': No you don't matter you scumbag filthy animals."
More show Poitras denigrating women for "talking back," for being single mothers, or in one case, for commenting on an article about a woman reporting sexual assault: "Who would r-e this ugly woman?"
Another image shows Poitras calling for boycotts or violence in the face of LGBTQ+ rights. In another, under a video of former President Joe Biden speaking about Trans Day of Visibility, Poitras comments, "We need a civil war."
Further images, also from within the last two years, were leaked from a Facebook group called "Planet Hank's Locker Room," a private group with 2,500 members that only Poitras moderates.
The images include a web comic about a trans woman being punched by a man, a meme that jokes about sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, and an image of Poitras responding positively to a comment about homeless people dying in cold weather.
One resident of Brattleboro wrote about the images: "There is nothing moderate about saying 'we need a civil war' in response to trans people existing. There is nothing moderate about blatant violent anti-Black statements referring to weapons."
This person observed that "people like this do dangerous things with power."
"It doesn't matter if you agree with him about taxes," they said. "If you give this level of hate a pass, it grows. If this isn't a red line for you, you are increasing danger for everyone I love."
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For those in Brattleboro who don't yet know, Poitras is an online content creator who began his career creating commentary tracks for mixed martial arts matches. Recently, his output shifted away from sports commentary and moved towards a Cops-like reality show, where he films - up close - arrests and other interactions between police and private citizens, many of whom are people also struggling with addiction, homelessness, and mental health issues.
Poitras then takes these videos, with the private citizens' faces unredacted, and posts them online.
Recent videos have branched out to cover other topics tangential to the epidemic of homelessness in Brattleboro, such as the Special Town Meeting to discuss the Community Conduct Ordinance.
With the sponsorship of a few local businesses, Poitras calls this venture "Brattleboro News" and presents himself as a "moderate reporter," claiming that he's simply shining light on issues that he believes aren't receiving enough coverage in local media.
However, his "news" comes with a heavy ideological slant.
"The compassionate social justice fighters continue to contradict themselves while using every tactic they legally can to silence anyone who does not agree with them," he states in the opening of a video about the Community Conduct Ordinance being overturned.
And he continues to make the unfounded claim that empty seats at the town meeting were filled by people who "all share the same beliefs" to sway the eventual outcome of overriding the Community Conduct Ordinance.
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Poitras more recently turned his attention toward local politics, announcing his desire to run for as a Representative Town Meeting member. He organized an event and a political action committee that share the name "Real Progress" with the apparent goal of shifting the political landscape of Brattleboro toward an increase in penalization and policing and away from addressing the real underlying concerns that drive crime and homelessness.
The Real Progress event was covered in detail in The Commons [News, Jan. 15] but the ideological tone of the event was brought to the forefront by the remarks of one speaker, attorney Spencer Crispe, who claimed that "extremist progressive elites" will turn Brattleboro into "a crime-ridden, steaming handful of dogsh-t" because of what he calls "destructive empathy."
The Real Progress PAC promotes a similar sentiment.
An email sent by Poitras to potential Town Meeting candidates promises an endorsement if they answer "yes" to whether they agree with policies like supporting an increase in policing and opposing a safe injection site (despite overwhelming evidence that such sites actually decrease overdose deaths, used needles in public places, and 911 calls in a given area, reducing the burden on police and EMTs).
Despite all this, Poitras has maintained that he is a "moderate" who wants "everyone to come back to the center."
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Locals have been critical of his actions, saying his Brattleboro News videos are little more than exploitative entertainment, violating the privacy of the people he films.
Some worry they might promote violence towards already vulnerable people. In a recent Viewpoint [Jan. 29], Marta Gossage has written about the increase in violence aimed towards homeless people in Brattleboro, "such as a physically disabled man who got a full drink thrown at him out of the window of a car […] or a person who was sleeping in a tent and had someone collapse it on him in the middle of the night and start kicking him."
"A group had formed on social media. It had a dehumanizing name and it was dedicated to filming while mocking, belittling, or threatening homeless people in Brattleboro," Gossage wrote. "Hank's video was also posted to that group."
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The recent exposure of Poitras' hate-filled online comments brings a new light to his actions in our town.
This is a man who is trying very hard to shape the political and social landscape in Brattleboro, and despite doing it under the guise of a "moderate" who just cares about community safety, he clearly holds a deep resentment toward people who are already heavily marginalized.
These posts leave no more room for plausible deniability, and it's hard to see how his opinions about marginalized people would not shape his opinions about things like funding social services and the introduction of a safe injection site in our community.
On Feb. 10, two days after his bigoted comments were shared, Poitras made a post on the official "Planet Hank" Facebook page, taking credit for the posts, claiming that they were made during a time when he was trying to be a comedian, and that the comments don't reflect who he is now.
Yet he posted some of these within the last year, many since he began his "Brattleboro News" venture in earnest.
Even if we are to take this at face value - that Poitras spent years and years making vitriolic comments dehumanizing marginalized people, and created private spaces that encouraged others to do the same, and that now only months, if not weeks, after the most recent of those comments he is telling us that he's trying to change - it brings to mind a quote about compassion that should be very familiar to Poitras himself.
"You could also see a friend struggling with addiction and take the initiative to get them information and contact details for resources that could help them," this person said. "If that friend steals from your home you may not allow them back into your home […] while still encouraging them to seek treatment. Not allowing them in your home after they violated your trust would be a form of holding them accountable and completely warranted."
So wrote one Henry Poitras in "What Is Empathy and Compassion," posted Jan. 17 on planethank.com.
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I agree with Hank Poitras: It would be a form of holding him accountable to no longer allow him in our home - which is to say, to no longer give him a platform and a place of power in our community until he can well and truly prove that he's grown, that years and years of public and private bigotry no longer reflect who he is.
Voters are completely warranted in questioning his actual motives for trying to gain political power, the motives of people who support him, and the people he endorses. We have every right and reason to push back on policies born out of hate but disguised as coming from a "concern for community safety."
To quote Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." This is a lesson we are now learning on a national level, but locally we have a chance to resist our own escalation to violence.
And that means voting against and holding accountable Henry "Hank" Poitras and those who carry his banner.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at [email protected].