Resources

Earnest Johnson Credit Union Tape Available

“Where Credit is Due” is a half hour video that pays tribute to the life work of RDLN graduate Earnest Johnson. The tape places the credit union movement in history, showing it as an outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement and a modern tool against predatory lending.

The video jacket quotes Clifford Rosenthal, Executive Director of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions as saying that “Earnest is the single most indespensible figure in the history of our movement." The tape feature commentary by Earnest’s biographer Joan Browning of the University of West Virginia, whom he met when she was a member of SNCC in the sixties.

Earnest is former Credit Union Specialist for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives. He earned his master’s degree through the Rural Development Leadership Network, working with Advisors John Zippert of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and Dr. Karl Wright of South Carolina State University.

At his graduation ceremony, in 1991, he was presented with an RDLN plaque as a "Hero of the Credit Union Movement."

In 1993, he received the Helping Hand Award from the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions. He was featured in the Ford Foundation Report for Winter 1998, and in 1999 he was honored at two separate banquet ceremonies in Washington, D.C.: the National Credit Union Foundation presented him with a Liftetime Achievement award and he was inducted into the Credit Union Hall of Fame by the Cooperative League of America. The Congressional Black Caucus honored him for his work in 2004, and he previously receeived a Silver Award for work in South Africa.

Order the tape ($21 including shipping) or DVD ($26 including shipping)

Center for Public TV and Radio
University of Alabama
P.O. Box 87000
Tuscaloosa, AL
(205)348-5320

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Satya Gabriel’s Book on China Arrives

Satya Gabriel, Academic Coordinator at RDLN’s Rural Development Institute, has written a book on China entitled Chinese Capitalism and the Modernist Vision, The volume has been published by Routledge Press (http://www.routledge-ny.com), which says of the book “[o]ne of the most comprehensive analyses of the contemporary Chinese economy, this book covers industry and agriculture, rural and urban enterprises, labour power and financial markets. Satya is Associate Professor of Economics at Mt. Holyoke College. He has been involved with RDLN folk since he was a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, when he began teaching Economics to rural leaders.

At the Socialist Scholars conference in New York in April, Satya described his theory that rather than having been a communist country, China has been a feudal country, with the state as the sole owner taking the place of the traditional “lord.”

Evelyn Conley Promotes Book on Cherokee History

RDLN Leader Evelyn Conley has been traveling around the country with her husband Robert to help promote his latest book, Cherokee Nation: A History, published in 2005 by the University of New Mexico Press (unmpewaa.xom (800)249-7737). The book was prepared with the cooperation of the Cherokee Nation, which shares the copyright with the author. Robert Conley has written thirty-four novels, many of which are take place in a Cherokee setting. He is an enrolled member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.

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Earnest Johnson Credit Union Tape Available   Satya Gabriel’s Book on China Arrives   Evelyn Conley Promotes Book on Cherokee History