San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Founder of San Quentin’s Buddhadharma Sangha remembered

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Seido Eishu Lee
Seido Eishu Lee
Seido and Norman Fischer at Green Gulch
Seido and Norman Fischer at Green Gulch

Responding to a call from inmates interested in starting a Zen group, Seido Eishu Lee founded the Buddhadharma Sangha inside San Quentin State Prison in 1999. He went on to serve as the Sangha’s Head Teacher until his retirement in 2015.

Seido Eishu Lee Lüssen de Barros passed away peacefully on March 6 surrounded by family, friends and Sangha. He is survived by his wife, son, three stepchildren and six grandsons.

Since the day Lee founded it, the San Quentin Sang- ha has met nearly every week, bringing the lineage of Dogen Zenji and Suzuki Roshi behind the prison walls and touching the lives of hundreds of inmates and volunteers.

Lee conferred the Bodhisattva precepts on many Zen students, including more than 30 inmates and several non-inmates lay-ordained inside San Quentin over the course of four Jukai ceremonies between 2002 and 2015.

Lee Lüssen de Barros was ordained a Soto Zen priest in 1989 at Green Gulch Farm by Sojun Mel Weitsman, receiving the Dharma name Seido Eishu, “Clear Path, Constant/Endless Effort.” He received Dharma Transmission at Tassajara in 1998` from Norman Fischer.

Along with his wife, lay Zen teacher Martha de Barros, he lived for more than 10 years at Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara. He filled senior staff roles at Green Gulch and served as Tanto at Tassajara.

Seido Lee de Barros (center) with Zen students and volunteers at a San Quentin Jukai
Seido Lee de Barros (center) with Zen students and volunteers at a San Quentin Jukai

Lee was deeply involved in and much beloved by the Marin County Interfaith community. He was active in the Marin Interfaith Street Chaplaincy, serving as street people see who inmates are turning into and that they’re not the same people they were years ago.

As Norman Fischer de- scribed him, “Lee was a true priest and a good one. He liked to keep things light and modest but underneath that was a fierce and deep spirituality.”

A memorial for Seido Lee de Barros will be held at Green Gulch Farm at 4 p.m. on April 27.

Class action over surrendered Access MP3 players

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The Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) is facing a lawsuit from at least one inmate, and possibly a class action suit involving scores of other inmates, all of whom were forced to surrender their legally purchased MP3 files and media players to FDOC authorities, according to Ben Conark of the Florida Times- Union.

In February, inmate William Demler, age 74, who is incarcerated at the South Florida Reception Center, filed suit in the northern U.S. District Court with the sup- port of the Florida Justice Institute, a non-profit legal firm that has a lengthy record of lawsuits against the FDOC.

“The FDOC’s confiscation of these individuals’ lawfully purchased property—for no reason other than to turn a profit—is simply unconscionable,” said Josh Glickman, attorney for the Social Justice Law Collective, an advocacy group helping support the lawsuit.

Demler is seeking to form a class action with scores of other FDOC inmates who have also been made to illegally surrender their lawfully purchased property, reported Conark.

In his federal complaint, Demler alleges violations of the Takings and Due Process clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

Demler was formerly housed at the Hamilton Correctional Institution in Jasper, Fla., and, according to the Times-Union, over the course of several years he had purchased from Ac- cess, a company then under contract with FDOC, an MP3 player and hundreds of media files costing nearly $700. Demler’s grievance on the issue claims he was encouraged by the FDOC to make such purchases, which carried the program promise “Once music is purchased, you’ll always own it!”

Access was under contract with the FDOC since 2014 to provide MP3 equipment and media files to in- mates. According to the Times-Union, more than 30,000 players and over 6.7 million media files were sold to inmates at a value of over $11 million.

Florida Department of Corrections cancelled its contract with Access, re- placing it in April 2017 with a more profitable JPay deal. As JPay commissions increase and canteen sales soar, the FDOC is expected to take in “more cash than ever,” over $35 million per year, all at inmates’ expense, according to the Times-Union.

Following the new arrangement, all past purchases have been rendered irrelevant, and inmates were required to forfeit to FDOC all equipment and media files they had legally acquired. “An act of fraud,” Demler said.

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