Her face lit up. She walked across the street to our bus and filled out a voter registration form. And she persuaded her friend to do the same.

Don’t parachute in.

Even if a place is tiny and rural and practically off the map, we always assume there’s already a culture of activism to tap into. To start, we sit in a circle with local leaders and ask questions: What do people want? What are the community’s strengths? What is the civil rights history here? What are the local conflicts?

Our local partners, most of whom are black women, are essential because they know their community’s needs best. We support their phone banking, peer-to-peer texting, canvassing and voter education efforts. When we leave, we ask: Are more people engaged than before the election?

In many of these areas, there are still remnants of the civil rights movement. This can be a good thing, as when legends from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee pass down their advice. But there can also be trauma from lynchings and other brutality that’s passed down from generation to generation and shrouded in silence. This can make our work trickier, but the key is to really get to know a place.

Let the local people lead.

Ask people what they care about and what their community needs from their government. We hear a theme everywhere we go: People want to end mass incarceration , although the specifics take on a different texture in each place.

Last spring, for example, black folks in Lowndes County, Ala., asked us to help them with a primary race where Ashley Smith was campaigning to become the county’s first black district judge , a race with major implications for the courtroom. Although nearly 75 percent black, the county has never elected a black district or circuit court judge.

We told local residents that a black judge whose values aligned with theirs may refuse to hand down excessive sentences. Ms. Smith lost the primary, but it wasn’t all bad: More Democrats in Lowndes County voted in that race than for the primary for governor. And the political education that people received about the importance of the local judiciary will most likely spill over to future races.