Hundreds rallied at the state Capitol and marched through Chinatown on Saturday in a show of unity against targeted attacks on Asian Americans in the U.S., most recently highlighted when a man shot and killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent, at three spas in the Atlanta area earlier this month.

The Honolulu event coincided with other “Stop Asian Hate” rallies and protests held around the country in response to the apparent spike in discrimination and violence toward Asian Americans since the onset of COVID-19, which is believed to have originated at a wet market in Wuhan, China.

By the 10 a.m. start of the local rally, about 200 people had already gathered at the Capitol with signs condemning discrimination against Asian Americans and, specifically, Asian American women.

“I am not a virus, a fetish, a model minority — I am human,” one sign read, while another said, “Solidarity with Asian communities — fight racism!”

More than a dozen speakers, from elected officials to students to teachers, addressed the crowd.

State Rep. Jeanne Kapela (D, Naalehu-Captain Cook-Keauhou) referred to the March 16 shooting in the Atlanta area “as another outbreak of the ongoing epidemic of mass gun violence here in our country, and it was also an act of racial terror against Asians and Asian Americans.”

The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes against Asian Americans grew 6% in 2020 despite a 145% drop in overall hate crimes. The Anti- Defamation League found that Asian Americans have experienced the greatest jump in online harassment this year compared to last.

And Asian American women were found to have reported 2.3 times more “hate incidents” than men during the pandemic, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting center launched by the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University.

That is likely linked to stereotypes placed on Asian American and Pacific Islander women, Kapela said.

“I’ve often seen violence against women linked directly to a man’s sexual aggression,” she told the crowd. “Women, especially women of Asian and Pacific Islander ancestry, are exoticized as objects of male fantasies and valued for nothing more than their sex appeal.”

Though the most blatant racist acts have taken place on the mainland, for some in Hawaii it’s still all too easy to empathize with what’s been happening out of state.

Jamie Goya, the lead massage therapist at a luxury spa in Waikiki and one of the organizers of Saturday’s rally, said she could have easily been targeted in an attack like the one in Atlanta.

“I realized that no matter how prestigious the place I work at, it wouldn’t matter, because I look the way I do,” Goya, a Japanese American, told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser. “That could have been me — that is me. I would still be targeted by people who have that racism within them.”

The California native said she was called to action after news reports of an 84-year-old man, native to Thailand, who was attacked in San Francisco and later died from his injuries.

Speaking to the crowd, Jen Kanoelani Noborikawa, who lives in New York City but grew up in Hawaii and is visiting family, said she’ll be “afraid for her life” when she heads back.

“I know some people think this is kind of a personal, irrational fear. I definitely know it’s not,” she said, also citing a recent attack on an Asian American senior. “In the neighborhood next to me where I live, last year an 89-year-old Asian woman was lit on fire.”

Cindy Jurgens, who lives in Kaimuki, attended the rally with her husband. Jurgens, who is Chinese, Vietnamese and Japanese, said one of her biggest concerns is that discrimination against Asians will end up being a short-term issue in a year that’s been full of problems.

“I’m concerned that this is just going to be a rally and a social media hashtag,” she said. “But it’s been a year full of stacked stresses,” noting the impacts of the coronavirus and the growth of other social justice causes, in particular the Black Lives Matter movement that sparked even larger global protests last year.

“And now that we’re getting vaccinated, mass shootings are happening again,” she said, referring to the Boulder, Colo., mass shooting that killed 10 people just a week after the Atlanta shooting. “I feel like people are really tired.”

The Rev. Cristina Moon, a Zen priest and monk at Daihonzan Chozen-ji, urged the crowd to use the momentum to make change.

“It’s really important to figure out what to do with this moment. … Some of you guys might not like to hear this, but this is a fight for freedom. Freedom struggles are long,” she said.

Goya said her goal is to create an online repository of resources to help Asian American and Pacific Islander communities learn “how to protect ourselves.” She noted one resource, a movement called “Hollaback!,” that offers training “to respond to, intervene in, and heal from harassment.”

Rep. Adrian Tam (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako) asked those at the rally to testify on House Concurrent Resolution 112, which declares racism as a public health crisis.