Art Is My Protest- Protest Jewelry as Resistance

Zette Stapp
Sep 24
2 min read

Updated: Oct 5

Written by - Zette

Photography by- Lynda Marrokal

People think protest has to be loud—that it requires a chant, a crowd, a sign held high in the street, and that is absolutely necessary for change, however...

My protest looks different.

It has to.

My body won’t let me march. The noise, the crowd, the sheer physical demand of it—my autistic and chronically ill self just can’t. And as a full-time caregiver, my time isn’t always my own.

But the fury is. It burns constant and low, because I have a trans kid. Because I’m a non-binary, queer Puerto Rican Jew. Because I’m watching the world tighten its grip on the people I love most.

So I take that fury to my bench.

I pick up a hammer and a piece of copper, and I pound. All the fear for my child, the grief for our community, the sheer, defiant love—I hammer it into the metal. I shape it into something that can be worn.

It’s not a new idea. I’m standing on the shoulders of giants.

The suffragettes are my bedrock. I think about them all the time. They wore their resistance in jewel-toned code: purple for dignity, white for purity, green for hope. They wore brooches shaped like prison gates—a badge of honor for those jailed for demanding the vote. Their lockets held secret messages.

This wasn’t just fashion. It was war waged quietly on the body.

And that thread runs through history.

• In the ’80s, it was the stark pink triangle and the Silence = Death pin.

• It’s in generations of political stories told through Indigenous beadwork.

• It’s in the Palestinian thobe, where embroidery kept a culture’s identity alive.

• It’s in the headwraps, cowrie shells, and raised fists of Black pride.

My nervous system, my autism—they demand I make in this way. I have to turn the overwhelm into something solid. Something you can hold in your hand. A modern talisman of defiance.

Because sometimes the most powerful statement is the one you don’t have to shout. It’s the piece of jewelry that catches another person’s eye and says: I see you. We belong to the same hope.

Wearing this kind of jewelry isn’t about accessorizing an outfit. It’s about aligning your body with a lineage of defiance. It’s stepping into an unbroken line of people who refused to disappear.

This work is for my kid.

For trans lives hanging in the balance.

For my disabled kin.

For a queer future.

For immigrants—whose survival runs through my own Puerto Rican and Jewish blood.

For all of us who refuse to vanish quietly.