Description
We invite you Thursday, July 16th to celebrate our new book, Plants to the People: Political Education Through Plants. This book is a celebration of the past four years of offering Plants to the People around NYC. The book includes photographs and stories from the community that attends these gatherings.
Join us for two hours at Creative Time.
6 - 7pm plants to the people distribution
7 - 8pm book reading and documentary
Readers
Antonia Estela Pérezis a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, and educator based in New York. Their work bridges herbal medicine, land stewardship, and food justice, drawing on over a decade of study in environmental and urban studies, clinical herbalism, and learning alongside herbalists and elders throughout Latin America and beyond. As the founder of Herban Cura, Pérez facilitates workshops rooted in collective care, land connection, and accessible herbal practice.
Sebastián Pérez the co-founder of Plants to the People, is an interdisciplinary bodywork/movement therapist and mathematics professor. Sebastián combines experience as a traditional hatha yoga teacher, licensed massage therapist, certified personal trainer, qi gong practitioner, and lifelong musician, singer, athlete, dancer.
Cinthya Santos Briones is an interdisciplinary artist, visual researcher, and educator of Nahua Indigenous heritage based in New York. Her practice explores migration, memory, spirituality, and resistance from a decolonial feminist perspective, using photography, archival research, text, and community-based textile practices.
Moderator
Kate Weineris the Co-Editor of Loam, the publishing branch of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education, as well as the Founder of Loam Library, a mobile library that seeks to bring the power of print to the people. Alongside Kailea Loften, she is the co-author of Compassion in Crisis, an immersive and intersectional field guide to navigating climate disaster (Heyday 2026).
Documentary
Victoria Barbarito is a documentary director, editor, and videographer. She tells stories of kinship across human, animal, and more-than-human worlds, exploring themes of transformation, liminality, and belonging in nature. As Marketing Director with Herban Cura, her work documents stories of remembrance and returning to source.
Acupuncture and Care
Walter Bosque del Rio is a licensed acupuncturist. He entered this work as a member of the acupuncture collective at the Lincoln Hospital Detox Center. He was one of the first American students to graduate from the Quebec Institute of Acupuncture in 1977, and the first Puerto Rican to be licensed to practice acupuncture in the state of California in 1979.
Kaila Paulino is a long-time community activist in the South Bronx and beyond. She is a singer, drummer, songwriter, and poet. As a holistic health practitioner, Kaila serves community healing through connection to land and waters, auricular acupuncture, herbalism, sound therapy, Reiki, and massage.
Laura Escalante is the founder of Casa Siento, a sanctuary for healing, ceremony, and soulful living. Laura is a Brooklyn based Dominican Taíno ceremonialist, curandera, moon dancer, vision quester, and intuitive space healer devoted to helping others reconnect with their innate wisdom and wholeness.
Tayna González Rivera is a queer and indigenous multidisciplinary artist and healing practitioner. Their focus is rooted embodiment, grounding, and right relationship with human and non-human kin. They explore liberatory practice through body movement, reiki, somatic meditations, ear seeds, and ear acupuncture in the tradition of the Young Lords and Black Panthers. They express deep gratitude and reverence to all of their past and future teachers.
Plant Distribution and Support
Esperanza Martell / Bibi Esperanza is an Afro-Boricua/Puerto Rican human rights educator, organizer, healer, coach, mother, and poet/artist. Since the late 1960s, she has dedicated her life to advancing Puerto Rican independence, peace, racial and gender justice, housing, education, health, and an end to state and gender-based violence.
Josefina Prudente Castañeda is a co-founder of Voces de los Pueblos Originarios and the Indigenous interpreters' collective COLÍBRI in New York State, where she advocates for the rights of Indigenous peoples and the preservation of Indigenous languages, cultures, and traditional textiles. She also facilitates embroidery workshops that foster community healing, cultural connection, and emotional well-being.
mariam osman is a Somali-American cultural worker, seedkeeper, storyteller, aspiring botanist and beekeeper, and lifelong student of the living world. Drawn to the wisdom held in plants, rivers, and communities, they are guided by questions of how we learn to live well with one another in times marked by displacement, ecological loss, and violence.
Mari Nakano is a second-generation Japanese-American systems practitioner, weaver, and student of the land who explores the intersections of food heritage, ecological stewardship, and collective healing. A continuous permaculture practitioner, urban gardener, and dedicated assistant and student with Herban Cura, she takes a hands-on approach that spans the regional food network.
Additional thank you to Alex Berger, Chris Rogers, Nora Almeida, wonhee yun
Plant Vases
Rosemary Reyes is a visual artist and shamanic practitioner that employs animation, collage, drawing, and ceramics as sacred practices to center her afro-indigenous lineage and communicate with her ancestors and spirit guides.
신솔아 (Sola Shin) My practice is rooted in deep listening- to the land, spirit and body. I create intuitively- my hands acting as channel between the tangible present and the stories laying underneath/within.
Food
Onigiri handmade by Mari Nakano
Cheese: Chaseholm Farm, Pine Plains, NY
Blueberries: Whistle Down Farm, Hudson, NY
Kombucha: Yesfolk Tonics, Troy, NY
Bread: Mels Bakery, Hudson, NY
Design
Nany Chen is the Digital Experience & Design Lead at Herban Cura and the designer of the Plants to the People: Political Education Through Plants book. Based in New York, she works across visual design and design research, with a focus on culture, mental health, and legal equality.