TML Daily condemns the Harris government in Ontario for threatening the teachers with a court injunction in its attempt to portray their political strike as a "law and order" issue. The government keeps repeating that it is an "illegal strike." Media reports have been rife with speculation about whether the government will get a court injunction to force teachers back to work, recall the legislature to pass back-to-work legislation or resort to some other means to suppress them, such as a ruling of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Harris has now announced his government will seek an injunction. According to media reports, the facts are that "126,000 teachers are covered by one of 287 collective agreements between unions and 129 school boards in the province. In the few cases where contracts have expired, the unions have not gone through the legal processes required under labour law before workers can legally walk off the job." In other words, the case is open and shut - the teachers strike is illegal. The government is therefore presumably justified in turning the teachers political struggle into a law and order matter and using the state, including the courts, to suppress them. Both the government and the media are self-servingly keeping silent about the main facts of the case. Bill 160 is itself the biggest breach of contract between the government and the citizens of Ontario as concerns the responsibility of government to make sure the claims of the members of the polity are respected for the highest quality education, and of teachers to working conditions acceptable to themselves, commensurate with the work they do. The fact that the government does so "legally" hardly makes it right. The teachers have a political opinion which the unrepresentative democratic process avails them of no means to express or enforce. The Ontario government is criminalizing political opinion which makes it no different from any other tin-can dictatorship. This attempt to criminalize the teachers' political struggle is also accompanied by an attempt to suggest that it is the resistance of the people which gives rise to repression. This is also false. It is the state which gives rise to repression. If the state is acting against the interests of the people, it must be condemned, as in the case of the struggle of the Ontario teachers. Might is Not a Right, and never will be. It can always be replaced by a greater Might. But the Right to Education and the Right of the members of the polity to have a say in governing their polity are Rights. TML Daily is certain that by fighting for these rights the people of Ontario will prevail in both the short and the long term. TML DAILY, 10/97 Shawgi Tell Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo [EMAIL PROTECTED]