American voters are hearing a clear message in the presidential race: the fate of the country is at stake

A rally-goer drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens of others. President Joe Biden has said the overt display of racism and anti-Semitism prompted him to enter the 2020 race for the White House.

Associated Press journalists spent three days in early October in and around Charlottesville interviewing voters about the election now days away. These voters have experienced one of the most visible recent examples of the vitriol and division that has long been brewing beneath the surface of the country, a reminder of what can happen when hatred is unleashed and extreme ideas are allowed to fester unchecked.

Here’s what they had to say about the presidential election and its implications.

As an activist for racial justice, Jalane Schmidt tried to sound the alarm early in the summer of 2017.

The University of Virginia religious studies professor said that while she helped Charlottesville residents prepare for “Unite the Right” and the other racist demonstrations that preceded it, she was too often told to “just have a dialogue and shouldn’t be so polarizing or dismissive. .”

“I thought, how am I supposed to have a dialogue with someone who desires my destruction?” said Schmidt, who is black.

Looking back on that summer, Schmidt says she and other activists saw then what others have since come to see: that extremists pose a real danger that won’t go away.

Schmidt said Trump’s return to the White House poses a threat to democracy that the Founding Fathers warned about.

“I think we can learn things from some of the warnings we’ve been given about demagogues,” she said. “It is no exaggeration to say that democracy is at stake in these elections.”

Senior Pastor Rob Pochek gathered a small group of men in a meeting room at First Baptist Church on Park Street, a Charlottesville institution approaching its 200th anniversary.

Overall, they denounced the “Unite the Right” rally as hateful and contrary to their values. Pochek said the protesters’ anti-Semitic comments came “straight from the hellhole.” Christians worship Jesus, who was a Jew, he said.

While the group had nuanced views on Trump, they all agreed that they cannot support Vice President Kamala Harris because of her position on abortion. Pochek said Trump’s lies, particularly about the 2020 election, and other rhetoric make it a difficult decision.

“I think the fact that we have former President Trump and Vice President Harris as two candidates for president of the United States is in itself a judgment on America, that this is the best we have out of nearly 400 million Americans ” he said. .

He also tries to build bridges, emphasizing to his congregants that people with different points of view should not be seen as their enemies.

Referring to the symbols of both major parties, Pochek tells them that their allegiance is not to a donkey or an elephant: “We worship the Lamb,” he said.

Susan Bro lives in a single-family home in Ruckersville, about a half-hour drive outside Charlottesville, a town so small it sometimes doesn’t appear on the map.

The car that struck Unite the Right counter-protesters killed her daughter, 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Bro said the summer awakened her and other white residents to the hatred long known by people of color.

“I think the blinders are off,” she said. “This existed. We just pretended it wasn’t so.”

She said she is terrified of what will happen to the country if Trump wins. She worries about his lies, his promises of retaliation, and the Republican Party’s inability to stand up to him. She is not sure whether democracy can survive.

But she also realized that events like what happened in Charlottesville seven years ago can make people think hate is exclusive to extremists.

“We all have to watch ourselves with the virulent rhetoric that we go into because once you start doing that, it’s very easy to say these phrases and cling to these ideas,” Bro said. “We have more in common than we think.”

At a polling place in Charlottesville, Dan and Ruth Suggs said they voted for Trump. The couple, who were married for 53 years, did not see Trump or Harris as an existential threat to the country’s future.

“It’s not the end of the world. No matter who wins, it will still be pretty much the same,” said Dan Suggs. “The biggest difference will be the economy.”

They both disagreed with the city’s handling of the removal of the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a downtown park, a decision that sparked the 2017 rally. They said the city ​​should have held a referendum on the issue and that she had mismanaged the protest.

“I believe in freedom of expression. I don’t think anyone has the right to try to shut it down, and that’s basically what they tried to do with the alt-right,” said Dan Suggs.

Ruth Suggs said not everyone present was there to cause trouble.

“There were people who just wanted to hear what they had to say,” she said. “Trump was right when he said there were good people on both sides.”

Nineteen-year-old Kushaan Soodan’s parents are Indian immigrants. Eighteen-year-old Arturo Romero is from Mexico and legally immigrated to California with his parents and younger sisters while in high school.

The two are now students and acquaintances at the University of Virginia. But they see the election very differently, in part because of their experiences from immigrant families.

When Soodan registered UVA students to vote last Friday, he said the elections are crucial to preserving democracy and made a statement that hate should have no home in America.

“That kind of hate — we’ve already seen what it can cause,” Soodan said, standing near the campus walkway used by “Unite the Right” protesters seven years ago. “And I think this election is one of the ways we can do that to the point where we can say, no, we don’t want this, we don’t like this.

Romero said he feared a Harris win would push the country to the point of no return. He defended Trump and said his words were often misunderstood, including when he suggested that migrants who are in the US and have committed murder did so because “it’s in their genes.”

Romero said Trump was not talking about all immigrants. He said he had seen Mexico change for the worse as more migrants passed through to reach the US. He said crime was increasing, and he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to America.

Romero praised Trump’s overall impact on the country’s economy, borders and international stability, saying Biden’s policies fell short: “If we get four more years, this will not be reversible.”

Leslie Scott-Jones was born and raised in Charlottesville and has lived her entire life aware of the worst effects of racism. So she was perplexed after the ‘Unite the Right’ rally when she saw the news media portraying it as shocking.

“How did you come to believe that we lived in a post-racial society?” said Scott-Jones, who is black. “Because the rest of us went through a very different experience.”

The violent rally was a “bubble burst,” she said, but “the pot is still on the stove.”

Still, it was a very painful moment for Scott-Jones, who was organizing an event for artists, when she heard crashing sounds that turned out to be the car attack on the counter-protesters. She stopped what she was doing and rushed to help.

Scott-Jones, curator of learning and engagement at a local African American heritage center, said she has heard the pleas to save democracy with her voice, but they seem unconvincing. She believes the system needs to be rethought.

“This country hasn’t worked for Black people since we’ve been here,” she said. “Why would I want to save something that my people have literally treated like property for hundreds of years?”

She said she is voting for third-party candidate Cornel West and hopes that America can one day live up to the ideals it cherishes.

Could the country descend into political violence and deeper divisions after the November elections?

“That is a concern,” Scott-Jones said. “But I honestly don’t think it depends on who’s in that chair.”

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Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.