Rastafari Movement in The United States - Rastafarian Community Building

Rastafarian Community Building

With Rastafarians unable to bring themselves to Zion until the day of repatriation, they decided to bring Zion to their home, which for more and more Rastafarians was Babylon (the United States). As Jamaican Rastafarians began to immigrate to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, small, localized, and homogeneous Rastafarian communities began to spring up across the country. Such communities appeared in Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, Miami, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, and most notably New York. Specifically in New York City, six different Rastafarian communities exist in five different boroughs. Most influential of these communities are Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.

Generally, the building of localized Rastafarian communities occurs through the establishment of Rastafarian Community centers, schools, tabernacles, as well as Rasta Culture Stores.