Antonio Oesby felt powerless. After spending about two decades in high- and medium-security federal prisons, he was transferred to a low-security institution in 2020, where he had fewer restrictions and more access to educational programs.

But from the moment he arrived at FCI Danbury in Connecticut, Oesby says, he was punished without justification and was made to follow extra restrictive rules that other people incarcerated at the facility were not subject to—all due to his life sentence. 

“One officer came to me and said, ‘I’m gonna be honest with you, you have a lot of staff here who are scared of you. It’s not just one life sentence, it’s multiple,’” Oesby says. “From what they’ve heard of people serving life sentences … they’re loud and uncontained, and so they put me in that box. So I’m like, ‘No, how are you gonna lock me up like this? I didn’t do anything.’”

Oesby says he worked hard for more than 20 years to transform himself from a young man who dealt with anger issues and depression to reduce his “security level” to the point where he qualified for a transfer to a low-security institution. With the help of a prison counselor, for example, Oesby developed the Mentality Adjustment Now program while at FCI Hazelton, a medium-security prison in West Virginia. The program “focuses on developing a healthy and cohesive sense of self by encouraging inmates to share personal stories to increase their own awareness of emotions and thoughts,” according to a 2016 report from the Bureau of Prisons.

Still, employees and guards at Danbury saw him only as a lifer (he says he is innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted) and, as he explains it, worked to have him transferred back to a medium-security institution after he was denied parole in 2021. He had no confidence in the BOP’s grievance system, so Oesby resorted to what he saw as the only available option to draw attention to this unfair treatment: hunger strikes.

Oesby completed two hunger strikes lasting 24 days and 34 days, respectively—the second he started two weeks after he left the hospital for the first strike. Even though he’s now dealing with what could be permanent damage to his body, he says he doesn’t regret anything.

“I did what I did because I felt it needed to be done to gain attention to what was happening to me,” he says. “Even if it cost me my life, I was willing to sacrifice that because it’s so unfair. I sometimes feel like … I probably would have been alright if that hunger strike did kill me.”

I recently spoke with Oesby over the course of several phone calls (calls from federal prisons are disconnected after just 15 minutes). In a raspy voice that registers just above a whisper, a side effect of his hunger strikes, he told me his story:

Oesby arrived at FCI Danbury in 2020. He had finally reduced his “security level” enough to qualify for transfer to a low-security institution. But as soon as he arrived, he says, he was sent to the hole (formally known as the special housing unit, or SHU—another name for solitary confinement). But it wasn’t due to any misbehavior. He says some guards and staff were frightened of him due to his life sentence. They weren’t used to working with lifers.

Eventually, though, Oesby was released from the hole and allowed to live in the normal housing unit. While he was there, Oesby says the captain made a big deal of the fact that he was serving a life sentence.

He was given a yellow card to carry around that said “high accountability” and was required to check in every 30 minutes to an hour with a staff member.

“I have never had to do that,” he says. “Not in the pen, or in the medium. Now I come to a low, and they told me the only way I can be on that compound was to do that—or else go back to the hole. It was a humiliating experience. I’m the only person there subjected to that because I’m serving life.”

Then, in July 2021, after Oesby was denied parole, he found out that his security level had been raised, and he was scheduled to return to Hazelton, a particularly violent medium-security institution where two officers were charged just this year with assaulting a person in their custody.

He says his attempts to speak with the warden went nowhere, and with little faith in the grievance process, Oesby decided to start his first hunger strike in July 2021.

For the first 12 days he only drank water, but then stopped consuming fluids altogether. On day 20, Oesby says, he was taken to an outside hospital. He officially ended the strike after 24 days. He spent a week in the hospital and was released back to Danbury.

When he returned, he started filing administrative grievances. But, he says, prison officials never considered the merits of his complaints and dismissed his grievances because, they claimed, he had missed strict filing deadlines.

So two weeks after he was released from the hospital, he started his second hunger strike. This one also involved a trip to the hospital and lasted for 34 days. But before that, Oesby says, a group of officers at Danbury tried to force fluids into him.

He describes it like this:

I was laying on my stomach and they came into the room and roughed me up—the team that they had was wearing riot gear. They had a team come in, and they jump on me, pull me to the ground. I wasn’t struggling or anything, but they were being all rough and trying to handcuff me behind my back. I only had on a pair of boxers, and they were dragging me as I was in pain from the cuffs and being in the position I was in. I asked why they’re doing this.

Then they put me in a wheelchair and took me around the corner because nobody was there. They moved me to a chair, strapped me in, and grabbed my head and pushed my neck down and strapped me down so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. Finally the lieutenant gave the order to let up off my neck.

They were putting the saline and stuff in the fluid bottle … but I was able to grab hold of the chord and bend it to stop it. They grabbed my hand and made me let go. One of the guards came behind me and grabbed my thumb and bent it so far back. I still deal with problems with it. I thought it was broke. 

Throughout his strike, Oesby says the guy in the cell next to him called to him every day, and pleaded with him to end it.

“When I would come back, and the police would leave, he would say to me, ‘Antonio, man, I don’t like seeing you like this. Go ahead and eat something, man. Just trust God,’” Oesby says.

And so on the 34th day, Oesby ended his second strike.

He was quickly transferred back to Hazelton in October 2021, he says. By December, fluid had built up in his body and his heart was enlarged, Oesby says. He prison’s medical staff initially cleared him, until, after several days of visiting the medical unit, doctors took an X-ray of his chest that showed fluid in his lungs. 

He was rushed to the hospital and spent 10 days there, he says. Doctors got the fluid to come down, prescribed him medication, and sent him back to prison but recommended a transfer to a medical facility. Oesby says the BOP’s regional medical director denied the transfer and instead prescribed physical therapy.

“The physical therapy doctor said much of my muscles will not grow back because my body started to attack itself,” Oesby says, adding that he gets winded doing simple personal tasks like showering and brushing his teeth. Finally, his transfer to Rochester FMC was approved, and that’s where he remains today.

“I’m still in a wheelchair, unable to stand up and walk,” Oesby says. “I’m dealing with neuropathy issues. My left leg can’t extend all the way out because of nerve damage, and if I try to [extend it], the pain is excruciating.”

He says fluid is still building up in his body, especially his legs and feet, and he’s developed blood clots in his lungs and legs. Nurses have to help him put on compression socks.

He continues to receive medical care in Rochester, but he says the overall treatment from the staff is vastly different from the other institutions where he’s been incarcerated. In penitentiaries, he says, the only thing you can see is the sky. “You don’t see anything that resembles life or humanity on the outside,” he says.

“On the compound, we have so many pretty trees, flowers, squirrels, rabbits. You’ll see some. It doesn’t look like a prison, to be honest. It looks like a college campus or something like that. It looks like something in society,” he says. “For me it’s helpful. It helps me to feel alive, normal, human.”

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

This article has been updated.