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A correction to an earlier version of this article has been appended to the end of the article.

PALO ALTO — With recent hate-fueled shootings of minorities in Kansas and Washington — and an alarming confrontation closer to home in downtown San Jose — about 75 community members gathered downtown Sunday to urge action in what they called an increasingly hostile post-election atmosphere.

“This is not something that’s just happening far away,” said Anirvan Chatterjee, one of the unaffiliated activists who put together the afternoon event at Lytton Plaza. “This is happening right here at home.”

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Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. contribute $11 billion in taxes, report finds It was Chatterjee’s friend, Bangladeshi film director Bijon Imtiaz, who was subjected to racial slurs and a physical confrontation after attending a Cinequest event at a San Pedro Square bar on March 4. His film, “Kingdom of Clay Subjects,” had screened earlier that day and he was just leaving a gathering around 11:30 p.m. to hail a ride when he noticed a nearby group of young adults laughing at him.

“I looked over and when I made eye contact, a man came over, put his forehead against mine and started saying all these things, using the N-word a lot,” said Imtiaz, who was back home in Los Angeles on Sunday.

Imtiaz said he tried to be non-confrontational, but the man, whom he described as drunk, well-to-do in appearance and in his early 20s, punched him in the chest. Imtiaz took out his phone and called 911, at which point the man and his companions — two men and a woman — fled.

“I’m not going to paint my time there based on a group of very ignorant people — the festival was amazing, the town was amazing,” said Imtiaz. “And I’ve been called names before, but that was the first time it has gone in a physical direction.”

Vlad Khaykin, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League’s San Francisco office that was evacuated two weeks ago for a bomb scare, told the gathering that in the 104-year existence of the organization they haven’t seen as many hate-crime incidents as they are seeing now.

“We’ve scarcely stepped into 2017 and we’ve seen 150 bomb threats and four mosques set ablaze,” he said. “We’ve seen men shot by their fellow Americans and told to ‘go back to your country.’ We’ve seen Latino students blocked from entering classrooms by other students forming human walls. This is not normal — we have never seen anything like this before.”

Jayati Sengupta, who lives in the Tri-Valley area, said she was alarmed by incidents happening at high schools in San Ramon and Danville and wanted to hold an event to stress the importance of a community sticking together and speaking out.

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“This is the fringe that we’re seeing,” she said. “These acts, they don’t represent the average American at all. But the fringe is energized, emboldened.”

As Indo-Americans, Sengupta and another participant, Mita Mayoraz, both said they used to feel that they had “model minority” status that enabled them to avoid being the target of racist attacks.

Neither feels that’s any longer the case.

“Now it’s hitting home,” Mayoraz said. “Maybe it will be something small, something passed off as bullying. But that’s the start, an indication that much worse things can happen.”

Much worse things like what happened Feb. 22 in the Kansas suburb of Olathe, where Adam Purinton was arrested after the shooting of Alok Madasani and Srinivas Kuchibhotla, both 32, and Ian Grillot, 24 at a neighborhood bar and restaurant. Witnesses told police that Purinton, 51, yelled, “Get out of my country” before going out to fetch a gun. Kuchibhotla did not survive the shooting that followed.

A poster at Sunday’s event honored the three. Speakers also talked about the shooting of a Sikh man in Washington — an act that, according to the victim, followed a similar statement from the gunman regarding getting out of the country.

And Sengupta said such horrific acts start with “garden-variety bullying.”

“What we need to do is stop the complacency,” she said, urging people to report any and all possible hate crimes. “These shootings have shaken me — being a model immigrant group will not save us from this fate.”

Correction: March 13, 2017

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there was a hate crime incident at a school in Dublin. The school is in Danville.