Jordanian youth organize strike through Facebook social-network site

By JPOST.COM STAFF
An organization of young Jordanians is calling on the public to participate in a strike on May 4 to protest high food prices and attacks on free speech. The invitation to the strike, sent through the popular social-networking website Facebook, said, "A general strike will take place on May 4, 2008. We won't work and we won't leave our houses. The protest is apolitical and non-partisan, but grassroots, grassroots, grassroots!" Response to the invitation was quick. In just one day over 6,000 Jordanian youths had responded with their intention to participate. The invitation characterized the strike as an attempt to bring change to the Middle-East. "We are not calling for demonstrations, but for a quiet, cultured protest that will express the oppression four million Jordanians experience in their lives." The young Jordanians have four demands, reported London's Al-Kuds Al-Arabi newspaper: "The government must make efforts to control rising prices, stabilize the costs of fuel and electricity, stop selling the nation's resources, and grant impartial treatement to private-sector workers."