Social Justice Activism

Environmental Justice Initiatives
The Strategic Plan requires that EJ must be integrated into the strategies and
evaluations for sub-agencies' technical and financial assistance programs. It also
emphasizes public participation, community capacity-building, EJ awareness and
training within the USDA.
Transparency, Accountability, Accessibility and Community Participation
A stated goal of USDA's Strategic Plan is to expand public participation in agency
activities, to enhance the "credibility and public trust" of the USDA. Specifically, the
agency will update its public participation guidelines to include EJ, beginning this
process by April 15, 2012. The Strategic Plan emphasizes capacity-building in EJ
communities, and includes objectives that emphasize communication between USDA
and environmental justice communities, including Tribal consultation. Sub-agencies
must announce schedules for training programs in EJ communities and to develop new,
preliminary outreach materials on USDA programs by April 15, 2012. An additional
performance standard is to encourage EJ communities to participate in the NEPA
process, an effort the Strategic Plan requires on or before February 29, 2012, although
the Strategic Plan does not articulate a standard by which this could be measured. The
Strategic Plan also reiterates compliance with the Executive Orders on Tribal
consultation and outreach to non-proficient English speakers, and seeks more diverse
representation on regional forest advisory committees. [community participation,
outreach].
Generally, the USDA's process for developing the Strategic Plan demonstrates a
commitment to public involvement. The USDA EJ documents are currently housed
obscurely within the Departmental Management section of the USDA website, under the
Hazardous Materials Management Division, although the agency plans to update its
entire site in 2012 and create a more robust EJ page. The Strategic Plan was released
in draft form in December 2011 for a 30-day public comment period, and responses to
general types of comments received are in the Progress Report, although the
comments themselves are not online. The Secretary's message accompanying the
Strategic Plan requests that organizations and individuals to continue to contact USDA
with comments on the Strategic Plan and to identify USDA programs that have been the
most beneficial to their communities. The agency has a dedicated email address for this
purpose. Agency leadership has asked its sub-agencies to prepare responses to
additional comments that have been received, and the agency will release an interim
progress report, prior to winter 2013. [community participation, outreach, education]
Internal Evaluation and Training
The Strategic Plan also seeks to increase the awareness of environmental justice
issues among USDA employees. The Strategic Plan does not list any existing programs
in this area, but does list a series of performance measures going forward, most of
which must be met by April 15, 2012. The measures include environmental justice
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