dealt a serious blow to the Alliance, and the group halted operations in July 1971 after the Auto Workers (almost bankrupt from a lengthy strike at General Motors) was unable to continue to fund its operations. In 1948, the UAW founded the radio station WDET 101.9 FM in Detroit. It was sold to Wayne State University for $1 in 1952. Politics and Dissent The UAW leadership supported the programs of the New Deal Coalition, strongly supported civil rights, and strongly supported Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The UAW became strongly anti-communist after it expelled its Communist leaders in the late 1940s following the Taft–Hartley Act, and supported the Vietnam war and opposed the antiwar Democratic candidates. According to Williams (2005) the UAW used the rhetoric of civic or liberal nationalism to fight for the rights of Black workers and other workers of color between the 1930s and 1970s. At the same time, it used this rhetoric to simultaneously rebuff the demands and limit the organizing efforts of Black workers seeking to overcome institutional racial hierarchies in the workplace, housing, and the UAW. The UAW leadership denounced these demands and efforts as antidemocratic and anti-American. Three examples, William argues, show how the UAW's use of working class nationalism functioned as a counter subversive tradition within American liberalism: the UAW campaign at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, in the late 1930s, the 1942 conflict in Detroit over the black occupancy of the Sojourner Truth housing project, and the responses of the UAW under the conservative leadership of Reuther to the demands of Black workers for representation in UAW leadership between the mid-1940s and the 1960s. See also League of Revolutionary Black Workers and Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement for the history of Black workers who questioned the corrupt leadership of the UAW in the 1960s and the 1970s. 1970s The UAW was the most instrumental outside financial and operational supporter of the first Earth Day in 1970. According to Denis Hayes, Earth Day’s first national coordinator, "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" With the 1973 oil embargo, rising fuel prices caused the U.S. auto makers to lose market share to foreign manufacturers who placed more emphasis on fuel efficiency. This started years of layoffs and wage reductions, and the UAW found itself in the position of giving up many of the benefits it had won for workers over