My name is Hamida. I’m NAMA’s new content strategist. As I settle into my role, I can’t help but reflect on the personal journey that led me here — advocating for justice and equity for fishermen, fisherfolk, seafood workers, and communities that lack access to nutritious, wild-caught seafood. So I wanted to share a little about myself.

Fishing, for me, began with a mix of necessity, ingenuity, and fumbling.

I caught my first fish around age 10. Our household shared just two fishing poles among several family members. But in our diverse, working-class Muslim community in Southwestern Connecticut, we were fortunate to have Cambodian friends who taught us the craft of repurposing soda cans as fishing poles. After catching one fish using this brilliant method, I remember a sibling and I standing over the kitchen sink stabbing at the live fish, realizing we hadn’t a clue what we were doing, dorsal fins pricking our hands. I didn’t know it then, but that moment sowed seeds of appreciation in me for the work of catching, cleaning, and preparing just one fish, let alone many.

My connection to water, land, and food deepened after learning more about my family’s agricultural roots in Georgia. My mom’s family had a farm in Meriweather County, then later in Coweta County, where they raised chickens and pigs, and grew corn, tomatoes, watermelon, and other produce. But like so many Black families across the South, they would lose their land — a story of dispossession too common in America. Eventually, they headed for a city in the midwest during the Great Migration. And that disconnection from the land gradually eroded our family’s bond with the soil.

Today, this history mirrors what’s happening to coastal communities as they face dispossession from fishing rights, ocean access, and the surrounding land. Unchecked corporate greed, top-down policies, broken treaties, and ecosystem collapse are stripping them of livelihoods and traditions built over centuries of deep connection to the water. The movement to reclaim these rights and practices is about uplifting seafood with values, such as equity, cultural preservation, and community-based stewardship of ecosystems.

It’s no accident that my entire career has focused on the intersection of justice, storytelling, and strategy. Since my early days as a nonprofit arts marketer, I’ve sought to drive change by challenging dominant narratives. Fifteen years ago, an environmental reporting fellowship at URI’s Metcalf Institute changed my trajectory, giving me the chance to expose how corporate greed devastates U.S. communities through climate, environmental, and food injustices. Years later, in grad school, I connected the dots to how multinational corporations and ‘international development’ agencies collude to strip communities worldwide of resources.

This brings me back to why I’m at NAMA, advocating for people whose livelihoods depend on these resources. As a Black and Armenian, Muslim-raised woman from a working-class family, this work is deeply personal. It ties directly to the struggles for access and opportunity that my ancestors faced and my family continues to face today. This keeps me motivated to contribute to dismantling the seafood system that empowers the few while building ones that empower the many.

Earlier this month, I got to see some of this movement-building work in action at the Slow Fish gathering in Charleston, SC. Fishers, fishmongers, chefs, advocates, and others from across North America converged in an all-hands-on-deck commitment to creating values-based seafood systems. It was a small but mighty group, and hearing powerful firsthand accounts gave proof of how each individual’s efforts ripple out in their communities. If each person can make that much of a difference, collaboratively we can create a tidal wave.   

I’m excited to work alongside so many knowledgeable, passionate people in this ever-expanding movement. So if we haven’t met yet, I look forward to our paths crossing soon!

In solidarity,

Hamida

In This Issue
Giving Tuesday
New Faces
Don’t Cage Our Oceans
World Forum of Fisher People
Slow Fish Charleston
Seafood Mislabeling Webinar
LCN Seafood Accelerator Innovation Lab