Punk culture for a lot of young people in Salem is about the music and unique fashion. But for teens like Jade Furnish, 18, and Ashlyn Burnett, 18, it is also about creating community and “sticking it to the man.”
“Like a form of almost anarchy in a way. People helping people,” Furnish said.
Furnish and Burnett came to Marion Square Park on Saturday for the Punx in the Park. The friends wanted to take in the scene, but said they also appreciated the concentration of community resources tailored for Salem’s at-risk and struggling youth.
“There’s a lot of resources here and I enjoy it. And everybody here is super chill and they are all super helpful,” Furnish said about Punx in the Park.
Thousands of people, including over 500 local youth, gathered at the park on Sept. 14 for the Punx in the Park event. It’s the third year nonprofit Punx with Purpose has turned the park into a nerve center of community resources for youth, combined with a lineup of punk rock to draw people in.
Youth accessed services including free haircuts, meals and clothing, to help getting food assistance, health insurance and free bus passes. All the while several punk rock bands, both local and regional, played from the main stage as people enjoyed from afar or braved the mosh pits.
Jay Greenfield, the fundraising director for Punx With Purpose, said the original Punx in the Park event in 2022 was expected to be a small gathering of community organizations and youth, but turned out to be a much bigger deal.
It takes place at Marion Square Park, where many of the “elder punks” attending once spent time as youth on the streets of Salem. The park’s storied past and reputation as a gathering place for Salem’s homeless residents is a place where many troubled youth lived and grew up and experienced events and traumas.
“Bringing it to this park is our way of saying, ‘See, you can come out of that situation on the other end,” Greenfield said. “There are a lot of youth who are in situations that can’t or won’t go to a traditional resource fair. If you are living in a bad home situation, you can’t really tell somebody you are going to a resource fair, but what you can say is you are going to Punx in the Park. So the punk rock music is what covers the resource fair. It is what gets them in the door.”
Ashley Gutfreund, 40, was at the park on Saturday. She experienced street life as a teenager in Salem.
“If you are on the street, it means you are not being supported at home, or in your own little community. So something like this would have changed my life completely,” said Gutfreund, who is now working toward her law degree to represent struggling youth caught up in the system. “It’s incredible I’m even alive after even just a couple of the places that I ended up at 14.”
Gutfreund said she spent several years bouncing around on the streets of Salem due to a difficult home life where she experienced abuse.
The people who took her in as a kid likely saved her life. That kind of community and support is embodied in the punk culture, she said.
Daniel Smith, 44 is a member of the Portland punk band 1876, which performed Saturday. He also struggled as a teen in Salem.
“If this was around when I was a street kid, I would have had a completely different life,” Smith said of Punx in the Park.
For Smith, it was punk rock that saved him and taught him to stand up for his rights and fight back against a system he found was often against him. He recalled being the kid on the street with a mohawk who would recite Oregon statutes to keep harassing cops at bay.
“That is how I got out of the streets was joining punk bands and finding that family and finding that community,” Smith said.
Erron Harris, the program manager for the Salem Drop, was at the park representing his organization on Saturday. The drop-in center on 246 State Street is run by nonprofit Youth Era, and is focused on youth empowerment and support.
Harris said he struggled as a youth and as an adult has found purpose working for an organization where he could give back. He said his work involves helping young people navigate a system they perhaps lost trust in.
“I think oftentimes our youth are dealing with systems and they feel like they’ve been burnt by systems. Or made a connection but lost that connection,” Harris said. “We help them get replugged in and reconnected and we walk with them through that process so they don’t get lost or buried in that system.”
Harris said empowerment is a big part of what his organization does. He said his own tumultuous youth and the loss of his father at a young age were formative struggles that inform his work.
“One of the biggest things that has kept me here is this idea of youth involvement and youth empowerment. When I was a young 16, 17-year-old Black kid, living in south Los Angeles, there weren’t a lot of people saying, ‘You can be something. Your voice matters. Not in the future, but right now,’” Harris said.
Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790.
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Joe Siess is a reporter for Salem Reporter. Joe joined Salem Reporter in 2024 and primarily covers city and county government but loves surprises. Joe previously reported for the Redmond Spokesman, the Bulletin in Bend, Klamath Falls Herald and News and the Malheur Enterprise. He was born in Independence, MO, where the Oregon Trail officially starts, and grew up in the Kansas City area.
