Don't Charge Rick Toledo, Pro-Palestine Grad Student at Cal Poly Tech Humboldt!

We invite all organizations to sign onto the following call, in defense of grad student Rick Toledo, pro-palestine student and member of Students for a Democratic Society, at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt:

We stand with grad student Rick Toledo of Cal Poly Humboldt Students for a Democratic Society against his arrest and targeting by the state of California for protesting on Feb 27 for campus divestment from Israeli apartheid and in support of Palestine.

In the middle of the night, on March 6, CPH university police officers raided the home of Rick Toledo, nearly breaking down his door, and took him into custody without bail. Though he has not been charged at this time, he is facing four counts of serious felony charges: false imprisonment, conspiracy to commit a crime, assault, and battery. These charges carry up to 14 years in state prison combined. The attorney general of California himself has signed off on a civil lawsuit complaint against Toledo, filed by the university. Just days before, Toledo had been suspended and fired from his university teaching job. His first court appearance is scheduled for April 20, 2026.

These rotten attacks and attempts to expel him from school and to throw him into jail stem from a one-day building occupation for Palestine done by students on Feb 27. Aside from calling for the university to divest from Israeli bonds, they also called for sanctuary policies to keep ICE off campus and for striking workers to get raises. Toledo supported this building occupation and the protesting students, and in our eyes, he did nothing wrong. He deserves not only support from students, workers, and faculty all across Cal Poly Humboldt, but from progressives and people of conscience all across the country.

Students at Cal Poly Humboldt have a proud history. In 2024, during the spring encampment movement for Gaza, students took Siemens Hall in the name of divestment and held it for 9 days. Millions across the world watched videos of these students courageously standing up for Gaza, in the face of brutal police repression. Now the university and the state of California have decided they want someone to pay for this heroic moment, and their target of choice is Toledo. In our opinion, this is the real reason underlying the targeting and unleashing of state repression on Toledo, for a simple campus protest.

We condemn this arrest, the university crackdown, and now the threat of these criminal charges. We view this as an attack on the right to speak about Palestine, as well as to protest in the name of Palestine. No matter what you believe about the situation in Palestine, we should be able to agree that students should be able to freely express their view, to protest, and to take a stand.

We call on all organizations to sign onto this letter, release a solidarity statement, and to demand to District Attorney of Humboldt County that no charges be filed against Rick Toledo at Cal Poly Tech Humboldt. We will be mobilizing for his first court appearance, on April 20, 2026. We stand with the students of Humboldt to march for Palestine, on campus and everywhere else, and we will defend that right to the end.

Steps to Take:

Sign Onto the Above Statement Here on behalf of your organization or as an individual, to show support for Rick Toledo.
Release a solidarity statement on behalf of your organization and email it to stopfbi@gmail.com.
Donate to the fund for legal fees and hardship (due to being fired from his university job) at this link here: https://chuffed.org/project/172807-rick-toledo-legal-defense-fund
Look out for our call to action come April 20, 2026, the date of his court appearance, to call into the District Attorney Stacy Eads' office and more.

For more information on his case, check out these news links:
1. https://www.times-standard.com/2026/03/09/cal-poly-humboldt-activist-rick-toledo-out-on-bail-following-protest-related-arrest/
2. https://kymkemp.com/2026/03/09/cal-poly-humboldt-student-activist-rick-toledo-released-on-bail/
3. https://www.redwoodnews.tv/local-news/activist-rick-toledo-arrested-in-connection-with-feb-27th-goodwin-forum-sit-in-released-on/article_9a1d74da-d505-41f2-886d-c51bfe657b59.html
4. pre-arrest, covering the protest aftermath: https://fightbacknews.org/articles/cal-poly-humboldt-students-face-repression-after-sit-in

You can follow his case here on stopfbi.org or on Instagram at csfrstopfbi, as well as the Instagram sds_humboldt, Toledo's student group.