Transcript

3.12.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian magazine dated March twenty
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twenty six. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for the first article, which is part
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two of The Sahara Desert hasn't always been a dry,
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desolate landscape. Some scientists see signs it may be greening
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again by Henry Weissmayer. The first part of our story
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explored scientific and archaeological evidence showing that the Sahara Desert
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has not always been the barren landscape it is to day.
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Through vivid descriptions of newly documented petroglyphs and shad's and
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a d natural and cultural reserve, the article revealed that
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the region once supported abundant wildlife and human societies during
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past North African humid periods, when shifting climate patterns brought rainfall, rivers,
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and vegetation to the desert. Geological research and satellite data
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indicate that these wet phases occurred cyclically over millions of years,
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with the most recent ending around six thousand years ago.
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Forcing animals and human populations to migrate as the land dried.
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The narrative followed archaeologist Dejeitte Wimona's work cataloging thousands of
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rock art sites that chronicle this greener past, while also
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documenting signs that parts of the Sahara may be experiencing
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renewed rainfall today. Scientists cited in the first part of
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the article explained that subtle changes in Earth's orbit can
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intensify monsoon systems, triggering feedback loops that temporarily transform desert
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into savannah. While this potential greening could restore ecosystems, uncertainty
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of out its consequences for modern communities, conservation efforts and
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long term climate stability remain, framing the Sahara as a
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landscape defined by constant and dramatic environmental change. Here now
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is part two. Enide's record of the last humid period
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will endure only until the advent of the next, when
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it will be vulnerable to the turbulence of a resurgent monsoon.
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The petroglyphs are at once a flashback and a premonition
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for the desert's current state is only provisional. The ratchet
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controlling the Sahara's weather systems is no longer just astronomical,
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but also human already. In fact, Stefan Kroppelen, a renowned
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geo archaeologist at the University of Cologne in Germany, has
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concluded from testimonies of local herders and from his own observations,
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that present warming is strengthening the West African monsoon and
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that anides relictive abundance may be replicated across the Saharan
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dead zones within a matter of centuries, not millennia. Fluctuating
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rainfall rates across North and Central Africa make forecasting long
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term trends difficult. Still, a Kropellin says, regions that were
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until recently completely lifeless, where you could not find a
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single scorpion, are now showing signs of reanimation. Cropellin has
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become synonymous with efforts to decode the desert's climate history.
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He has spent decades working in some of the Sahara's
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most inhospitable environments, and he was instrumental in securing UNESCO
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World Heritage Site status for both the Lakes of Winnianga
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and Endy, which he describes as a wonder world One
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of his celebrated studies involved extracting a unique sedimentary core
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from Lake Joan, the deepest of the Lakes of Winnianga,
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where a chemicline, a chemical boundary separating fresh water from
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the anaerobic depths, had allowed organic material to accumulate undisturbed
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on the lake floor over centuries, providing a pristine record
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of the Holocene humid period. Cropellen seventy four has officially retired,
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but he continues to study the desert that has been
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his life's obsession. His recent hypothesis that the Sahara's next
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greening is underway is not uncontroversial, but he insists the
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signs are there. Plants don't care whether there is more
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rainfall due to orbital forcing or man made warming. Propellen
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told me, if current warming trends continue, increased rainfall will
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eventually recharge subterranean reservoirs throughout the Sahara. He said, once
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the roots reach the groundwater table, there will be a regreening.
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He says other observers are more skeptical. Francesco S. R. Pousata,
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a climatologist at the University of Quebec and Montreal, describes
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Gropellen's notion as a bit of a stretch, asserting that
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the claim isn't supported by the available data. Projected changes
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in solar radiation over the coming centuries are far too
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small to reproduce the strong orbital forcing that triggered the
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green Sahara in the past. Pouzada told me. The one
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thing that all green Sahara experts share, however, is an
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intuition that there remain many unknowns, and that here, as
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everywhere else, whether patterns are bound to become more volatile
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in the coming decades. Tempting though it may be to
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conjure visions of a wetter, more habitable future for Northern Africa,
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with more arable land and the return of long exiled
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wild life and the reconstitution of diverse, interconnected ecosystems, the
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short term ramifications of such a shift are as likely
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to be catastrophe. We were half way through the return
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trips south, overnighting in the transit town of Abbachet when
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the rain caught up with us. The storm came an
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hour after dusk, announcing its arrival with a sudden gust
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that sent plastic furniture skittering across the tiled terrace of
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the hotel where we were staying. Beyond the railings, rain
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began to fall in billowing sheets, and corrugated iron roofs
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rattled in a squally wind. Lightning strikes peppered the open
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space of the airfield near by. The advent of the monsoon,
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which one might have expected to fall on a parched
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land like a benediction, struck instead as something violent and supercharged.
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It was the leading edge of a weather event that
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would only gather in force in the days to come.
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Within weeks, torrential rains caused flooding throughout Chad, killing more
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than five hundred people and displacing nearly two million more.
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Similar deluges is sailed communities across North Africa, from Morocco
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to Sedan. In their wake. Satellite imagery showed grasslands pressing
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in from the desert's margins. On some future day, the
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Sahara will green again. The big question is when, And
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with this article fun facts, the world's largest hot desert
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is not as dry or sandy as you think. The
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seven million year old desert was full of rivers, grasslands,
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and forests as recently as five thousand, five hundred years ago,
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but even today, only about a quarter of the desert
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floor is covered in sand, and at higher elevations it
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can snow. Most of the desert's surface is rocky, and beneath.
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The Eastern Sahara is the world's largest underground aquifer system,
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holding more than thirty six thousand cubic miles of water,
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some thirty times the volume of Lake Michigan, or more
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water than flows through the Nile in five hundred years. Next,
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organized labor took a huge step forward when GM workers
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sat down in Unison in nineteen thirty seven. Instead of picketing,
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striking autoworkers in Flint, Michigan tried a bold tactic that
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gummed up the works and forced the company to recognize
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their union. By Luke Savage. As the clocks struck noon
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on January eleventh, nineteen thirty seven, roughly one hundred men
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camped on the second floor of a Flint auto plant
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suddenly found themselves without heat. Under normal circumstances, there might
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have been one thousand workers inside the Fissure Number two facility,
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bustling to produce auto bodies, sending four hundred and fifty
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of them to a Chevrolet assembly facility across the road
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every twenty four hours, but the day's more austere climb
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that owed itself to decidedly unusual circumstances. On December thirtieth,
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the men inside the plant had joined fellow workers in
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a daring strike action with the aim of forcing a
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reluctant General Motors to recognize their union, the United Auto
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Workers UAW, as shewing the traditional method of picketing outside
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their primary chosen tactic. The sit down strike was as
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disruptive as it was rare. As Greg Zeipes, an attorney
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who teaches at New York University's School of Professional Studies,
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has written, workers stay at their workstations to prevent any
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other workers, presumably non union strike breakers, from taking their place.
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Because the processes involved in automobile production were so tightly integrated,
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relatively small numbers of workers placed at strategically chosen show
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points could effectively paralyze production, even at an industrial leviathan
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like GM. Since the sit down had begun, the thousands
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of strikers had passed the time in relative peace, undisturbed
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by GM management and the police, but feeling a sudden
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burst of winter air at midday, the workers realized something
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was afoot. Sure enough, the company had switched off the heat,
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and company guards outside were also blocking the delivery of food,
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marking the first in a series of escalations that culminated
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in a violent clash that night. When police arrived to
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relieve the beleaguered guards, they began hurling tear gas and
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eventually fired bullets and buckshot at the strikers. The workers
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replied and kind with water from fire hoses and ad
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hoc projectiles. It was like a war a revolution. A
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union photographer who witnessed the melee recalled with broken glass
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and lumps of coal and hinges from chevrolets. At least
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nine police and fourteen strikers were injured. Most of the
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latter suffered bullet wound. Receiving news of the battle a
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little over fifty miles away at his office in Lansing,
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Michigan's newly inaugurated Governor, Frank Murphy promptly decided to intervene.
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Accompanied by the state's police commissioner and the Adjutant General
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of its National Guard, he set out to visit Flint.
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In any other state, Murphy's arrival might have easily been
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the prelude to an even more dangerous confrontation, but in Flint.
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Once word reached the auto workers that Murphy was on
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route and planned to send in troops, the atmosphere was
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one of jubilation. The governor was interceding on their behalf.
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With the clash still raging. Twenty five year old organizer
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Victor Ruther, then outside the buildings in a car with
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an exterior sound system, seized on the news to taunt
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the police. You'd better go home before Governor Murphy gets
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after you. Ruther's optimism was soon to be vindicated on
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Murphy's or. A throng of armed guardsmen arrived the next
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morning and took up positions outside the occupied factories to
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create a buffer between the strikers and local authorities. Officially,
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according to the governor's neutrally worded public statements, the troop's
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row was simply to preserve order and prevent further violence. Unofficially,
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their deployment represented an unprecedented political intervention on the side
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of organized labor, and ultimately enabled the auto workers to
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defeat one of the world's largest corporations and score a
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monumental union victory that would help define American labor relations
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for decades to come. When workers at the two Flint
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GM plants had abruptly gone idle at their machines and
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refused to move in December nineteen thirty six, they ignited
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an industrial dispute in the automotive heartlands of Michigan that
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quickly spread to plants in Toledo, Ohio and Janesville, Wisconsin,
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lasting forty four days and involving some one hundred thirty
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six thousand workers. The strike had been decades in the making.
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Well before the mid nineteen thirties, Flint was an important
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center of industrialization as a leading producer of carriages in
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the late nineteenth century. It was already an established hub
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of transport manufacturing by the time GM was founded in
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nineteen o eight, earning the Moniker Vehicle City. The ensuing
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decades saw a boom for American cars, as new factories
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sprang up and vehicles streamed off the assembly lines in
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ever greater numbers, and sales accordingly increased nearly twenty five
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fold between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty nine. Flint's population
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exploded too, rising to one hundred fifty six thousand, four
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hundred ninety two by nineteen thirty, roughly twelve times its
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population when the century began. GM, in turn, soon grew
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into a globe obe spanning industrial colossus, and by the
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mid nineteen thirties it had more than sixty plants across
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fourteen states, the cars and trucks produced by its one
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hundred seventy one thousand, seven hundred eleven hourly workers accounting
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for an astonishing thirty seven percent of all global sales.
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Like most of their fellow industrial workers in the nineteen thirties, though,
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the company's laborers received no sick benefits, pension plans, or
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paid time off, and they lacked basic job security and
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stark contrast to many of GM's white collar and managerial staff,
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whose employment often came with insurance and sick pay. Industrial
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work could be incredibly dangerous, and safety precautions were virtually
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non existent. One Buick metal working shop was so prone
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to injuries that it was nicknamed the slaughter House. Things
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worsened with the depression, which created an unemployment pool so
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vast that GM could and did treat its workers as
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more or less disposable and fired them at will. Wages
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were paid out only if the line stayed running and
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the company sometimes punished workers with cuts to their hourly
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pay for failing to meet quotas working conditions were atrocious.
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One former employee reflected to a BBC documentary crew several
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decades after the strike, the line was so fast you
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didn't have time to go to the restroom. When he
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got home after work, I would clean up and go
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to bed. I couldn't even eat. I was that tired. Yet,
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against this bleak backdrop, the political ferment of the emerging
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New Deal era saw both a growing climate of worker
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militancy and a new found pro labor bent among some
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of the country's leading Democratic politicians. Signed into law by
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt in nineteen thirty five, the National
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Labor Relations Act established a legal framework for union, though
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amid legal challenges by big employers, the legislation rested on
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shaky ground, and actually organizing a union, especially in the
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automotive sector, remained incredibly difficult. G M was determined to
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crush even the thought of any collective action, and throughout
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the mid nineteen thirties it surveiled its employees so aggressively
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that a subsequent congressional inquiry dubbed its contract with the
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Pinkerton Detective Agency, a monument to the most colossal supersystem
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of spies yet devised in any American corporation. Despite the
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company's best efforts to cover up such espionage, g M
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official Merle Hale conceded as much, saying in his testimony
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before a nineteen thirty seven Senate committee that he had
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retained the Pinkerton Agency because he wanted to know the
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source of labor dissatisfaction, as well as monitor meetings with
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labor organizers and track criticisms of management. Working under another
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labor group, the Committee for Industrial Organization CIO, the fledgling
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ua W launched an organizing drive in the summer of
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nineteen thirty six, but found only modest success. Its efforts, however,
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were soon buoyed by Roosevelt's landslide re election in the
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November presidential contest, and closer to home, by the concurrent
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election of Democrat Murphy as Michigan's governor. A lawyer of
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Irish descent and a devout Catholic with an innate sense
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of justice, Murphy had campaigned aggressively for labels labor support
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and arguably owed his own narrow victory to workers votes.
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While other Democratic governors, like Ohio's Martin L. Davey, had
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no qualms about deploying troops against striking workers, Murphy proved
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remarkably resistant to repeated calls for the use of force,
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even as the u a W made use of the
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radical and disruptive sit down tactic. From GM's point of view,
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the sit downers were illegally trespassing, plain and simple. In
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this spirit, the company duly secured an injunction from state
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Circuit Judge Edward D. Black for their removal, but Murphy
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refused to enforce it. When GM escalated by cutting off
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the heat at Fisher Number two on January eleven, the
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governor responded by making his most consequential and faithful intervention
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in the strike. Murphy demanded that the company restore heat
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in the plants and ordered Michigan's Welfare department to provide
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direct food aid to the striking workers. And while Murphy
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played the role of neutral mediator in public, he effectively
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sided with the union by deploying the National Guard as
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a buffer, privately telling UAW organizer Robert Travis and CIO
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leader John L. Lewis that the troops would protect the
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strikers inside and outside the plants and prevent their ejection.
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Even by the pro labor standards of the New Deal era,
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Murphy's conduct during the strike made him an outlier among
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democratic governors. With sit downs protected, the union was soon
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able to go on the offensive with the daring feint.
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On February first, workers at Flint's relatively insignificant Chevrolet number
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nine facility launched a mock sit down action that lured
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GM guards to converge on the scene, enabling other workers
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to blockade themselves inside the more strategically valuable Chevrolet number four,
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which made engines for Chevrolets. We have the key plant
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of the g M, and the eyes of the world
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are looking at us. One worker who participated in the
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action wrote in a letter to his wife, we sure
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done a thing that GM said never could be done.
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Served with a new court injunction ordering them to leave
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the occupied plants, the workers held their ground and and
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on the morning of February third, their ranks swelled as
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fellow U a W members and other supporters came in
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from Detroit and Toledo in a mass gesture of solidarity.
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By the afternoon, some three thousand picketers had assembled outside
20:16
Fisher Number one as other strikers occupied Flint's main arterial
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road and paraded through its downtown. Amid this show of strength,
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g M soon had no choice but to yield. On
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February eleventh, having produced a mere one hundred and fifty
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one cars in the United States since February first, the
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company capitulated and officially pledged to recognize the ua W
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an a signing ceremony presided over by Murphy himself, victorious
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workers streamed out of their factories and formed a triumphant procession.
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They marched, and they sang, and they danced all night
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long in the streets of the city of Flint. Organizer
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Gendora Johnson Dollinger recalled in a nineteen seventy six documentary
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buick workers and AC workers from a nearby g M
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spark plug plant. These plants weren't even on strike, came down,
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and they celebrated with us. Murphy, though, was defeated in
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his bid for re election as governor in nineteen thirty
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eight in part because of a backlash from pro business
21:23
forces following his intercession in the strike. He would go
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on to serve as U S Attorney General and sit
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on the Supreme Court ultimately, says Harry R. Rubinstein, Curator
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Emeritus in the Division of Political History at the Smithsonian's
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National Museum of American History. The strike should be remembered
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as a story of how individual workers, unorganized, decided to
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take a militant kind of tactic to change the balance
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of power between labor and business. And it wouldn't have
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happened without the New Deal. It was the biggest, most
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important corporation in the world being challenged and successively challenged
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by labor, says Nelson Liechtenstein, a labor historian at the
22:09
University of California at Santa Barbara. It was unquestionably the
22:14
most consequential strike of the twentieth century. Once they win
22:18
in Flint and they have a signed contract, hundreds of
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thousands of workers pour into the U. A. W and
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other managers. Other capitalists say, Okay, if the most important
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company in the world is signing with the union, well
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maybe we'd better do it too. Thinking back nearly forty
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years later, one retired worker explained to day, I'm sitting
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here with over six hundred dollars a month in pension.
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It all came through organized labor. At my old age,
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I'm able to sit around and do what I want to.
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They got forty years of me down there, the best
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years of my life, and now I'm able to enjoy
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a little bit of it. And if we hadn't struck,
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we wouldn't have had nothing. We had to do it.
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Accompanying this article, did you know what our other famous
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sit in protests? The nineteen thirty seven sit down strike
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in Flint was a national sensation. That same year, many
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workers emulated the tactic, including at Woolworth's in New York
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and at the Hershey Chocolate Company in Pennsylvania. By the
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year's end, almost half a million US workers had participated
23:28
in a sit down strike. The tactic lost its luster
23:32
in nineteen thirty nine when the Supreme Court ruled that
23:35
employers could fire workers for sit down strikes. In n
23:39
l RB versus Van Steel Metallurgical Corporation and finally, also
23:45
with this article, a city within a factory, the g
23:49
M strikers established a whole parallel society with processes for governance, logistics, management,
23:55
and even entertainment by Jackie Shine on wheels and pulleys
24:02
operating from a sympathetic owner's restaurant across Fisher number one
24:06
and directed by cooks from a Detroit culinary union. The
24:10
strike kitchen and its many volunteers turned out three meals
24:13
a day, plus coffee and dessert, for as many as
24:16
two thousand people. Of the hundreds of pounds of food
24:20
used each day, some was bought by the union. The
24:23
striker's food committees also sent men to solicit donations from bakeries,
24:27
doughnut shops, grocers and farmers. Local striking bus drivers ferried
24:32
hot meals to the plants in giant kettles and tin
24:35
gallon milk cans, and wives of the strikers brought food
24:39
for their husbands to be hoisted through the windows clean
24:43
As a whistle, strike leadership stressed the necessity of health
24:47
and order. At three p m. Each day, Fisher number
24:50
one's sanitation committee threw open the windows and sent everyone
24:54
through the plant to clean up. Rules forbade skipping, clean up,
24:58
abandoning dirty dishes, and littering. Tobacco tours were encouraged to
25:03
spit into provided plates filled with sand, and smoking areas
25:07
were restricted. The men were expected to shower daily. Assigned
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workers would keep the idle plant and its equipment clean
25:14
and thoroughly maintained, though the Flint Journal later claimed that
25:18
the Fisher number one employees left behind wanton destruction, filth
25:22
and disruption. Visitors, reporters, state officials, and at least one
25:27
sympathetic shareholder reported they'd always found the facilities clean and
25:31
well tended. An evening's entertainment, the striker's daily seven p
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m All hands meeting was always preceded by some sort
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of entertainment. A local theater impresario sent in visiting tap
25:45
dancers and singing troops. There were movies too, including a
25:49
screening of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. Theatrical ensembles staged skits
25:55
about labor issues. There were also impromptu talent shows, and
25:59
even in a dance contest that culminated with an invigorating hula.
26:04
On typical nights, rousing grounds of the traditional union anthem
26:09
Solidarity forever opened and closed the meetings afterward. At two plants,
26:14
workers orchestras, which might include mandolin, guitar, banjo, accordion, and harmonica,
26:20
played eight p m concerts broadcast over loud speakers to
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picketers and supporters outside I never knew we had so
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many entertainers in this little shop, remarked Francis or Rourke
26:32
of Fisher Number two. Order in the court rule, violators
26:38
were hauled before the plant's kangaroo courts, where usually a
26:42
gray haired old timer. In the words of reporter George
26:45
morrissone served as judge, prosecutors and defends. Attorneys argued before
26:51
peer juries, and the men all kept their hats off.
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But this solemnity was out of keeping with the often
26:57
comic nature of their crimes. The worst offense was shirking
27:03
one's work. The sentence in such cases was extra work.
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Other serious crimes included spreading rumors and bringing alcohol into
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the plants. In at least one case, the guilty party
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was obliged to make a rousing speech. A journalist writing
27:19
in Harper's found more substantial and original humor in a
27:23
single session of the Fisher Striker's kangaroo courts than in
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a session of Broadway musical comedies. Keeping busy, even with
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six hours of work each day, which might include picket duty,
27:36
outside patrol, or manning the information window through which visitors
27:40
came and went, the sit down gave the men more
27:42
free time than they'd had in years. There was plenty
27:46
to do. One plant hosted basketball, boxing, and wrestling matches,
27:50
while in less sportive moments, men would read newspapers and magazines.
27:56
There were also classes on labor bargaining, card games to
28:00
des and chess. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine
28:04
for to day. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank
28:08
you for listening, and have a great day.