Social Justice Activism

Impacts relevant to socio-economic environment including changes in
employment and income variations in the distribution of social welfare.
[community participation, education, outreach, ej as evaluation criteria]
Permitting
The USDA does not have any permitting initiatives specific to EJ.
Title VI
The USDA has an Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Civil Rights whose mission it is to
provide leadership and direction "for the fair
and equitable treatment of all USDA
customers."
In 2003 the USDA revised DR 4300-4, internal
regulations requiring a Civil Rights Impact
Analysis of all "policies, actions or decisions"
affecting the USDA's federally conducted and
federally assisted programs or activities. The
analysis is used to determine the "scope,
intensity, direction, duration, and significance of
the effects of an agency's proposed ... policies,
actions or decisions." USDA's departmental
regulation on EJ, DR 5600-002, required DR
4300-4 to be revised to "require that Civil Rights
Impact Analyses include a finding as to whether
proposed or new actions have or do not have a
disproportionately high and adverse effect on the human health or the environment of
minority populations, and whether such effects can be prevented or mitigated". Although
DR 4300-4 was revised in 2003, the revised regulation does not explicitly require a
finding on adverse environmental or health impacts. [study, compliance and
enforcement]
Right-to-Know Movement
Right to know, in the context of United States workplace and community environmental
law, is the legal principle that the individual has the right to know the chemicals to which
they may be exposed in their daily living.
Emergency Planning and Right to Know Act of 1986
After the Bhopal disaster, where a Union Carbide plant released forty tons of methyl
isocyanate into the atmosphere in a village just south of Bhopal, India, the U.S.
government passed the Emergency Planning and Right to Know Act of 1986.
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