Greetings, Washington County Board, County Attorney, and City Administrator,

We, the undersigned collective, write with grave concern to demand immediate action to protect Commissioner Nafisa Fai from the unwarranted and ongoing misogynistic, racist, and Islamophobic harassment, discrimination, and hostility being directed toward her social media posts and in person, as an employee, creating a hostile and unsafe work environment.

Washington County must intervene and take any meaningful action to protect Commissioner Fai, who continues to endure harm to her psychological safety, well-being, and ability to carry out her official duties free from discrimination and harassment.

The persistence of ongoing and continued discriminatory treatment raises serious concerns about Washington County’s compliance with its legal, moral, and ethical obligations to ensure a workplace free from harassment, threats, discrimination, and retaliation. The County’s failure to act proactively and address these concerns allows harmful behavior to persist, further harming Commissioner Fai’s dignity, safety, and ability to effectively serve the people who elected her.

Accordingly, we respectfully demand that Washington County:

1. Immediately implement physical and cybersecurity protections for Commissioner Fai, including a formal assessment of in-person, web-based, and social media threats to her safety and the provision of appropriate security resources. Washington County's continued failure to act stands in stark contrast to neighboring jurisdictions that have invested public resources to protect elected leaders facing harassment and threats. Commissioner Fai should not be expected to endure ongoing intimidation without the protections afforded to others in comparable positions. Washington County has both the capacity and obligation to extend a similar level of protection to an elected official who continues to face ongoing Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, and hostility.

2. Coordinate and collaborate with public safety agencies to develop a comprehensive security approach to protect Washington County's leadership, including Commissioner Fai, through integrated security planning, physical safety measures, and technology safeguards, though specific operational details are not publicly disclosed.

3. Report Commissioner Fai's repeated threats, intimidation, and harassment as bias crimes; investigate and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent allowed by law.

4. Implement protective measures immediately, including comprehensive security and safety protocols for county leadership. Such measures should encompass physical security protections, integrated safety planning, and robust cybersecurity safeguards designed to address ongoing threats and harassment. For security and safety reasons, certain operational details, including specific security personnel assignments, facility access controls, threat assessments, and tactical protection plans for individual leaders, need not be publicly disclosed. Maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive security measures is standard government practice and necessary to protect their effectiveness and the safety of those they are designed to protect.

5. Provide a visible security presence at all public and community meetings attended by Commissioner Fai and other county leaders who are the subject of credible threats, harassment, or intimidation.

6. We further urge the County to explore and implement policies consistent with those adopted by other local jurisdictions, including prohibiting the possession of concealed firearms, whether licensed or unlicensed, within county facilities and public service spaces, including but not limited to libraries, health clinics, safety-net service locations, and other county-operated buildings open to the public.

7. Washington County Commissioners must publicly denounce the ongoing harassment, intimidation and threats aimed at Commissioner Fai and take all reasonable measures to ban the offending individuals from their social media, campaign fundraising activities, etc. Failure to take action signals complicity with the harassment and is a dereliction of duty of elected officials and County leadership to uphold the laws, values and policies they have sworn an oath to protect and defend.