I went to my office half an hour earlier because of the protest, and the building was locked and surrounded by tons of police people in riot gear. They weren't very many protestors, but the building security people and the police were not letting anybody through.

My new boss called me and we met and sat in a coffee shop for about 20 minutes, and then tried again to get into our building. By around 9 am, they were letting people in again as long as you showed your badge ID. My new boss took myself and the guy I'm replacing out to lunch, and when we left the building the security was still tight and we weren't sure if they were going to let us out.

By the time we came back from lunch, it looked like all the protestors were gone. When I left work, the police barriers were still up and there were guards and a few police outside of the building just in case anything else happened.

There weren't very many protestors, but I guess enough to spook people out. I saw a bunch of protestors dressed in pink ballerina tutus, but I had no idea what they were doing. There such a feeling of violence in the air, something I've never experienced before in any protest I've ever been in here in San Francisco, back home in Hawaii, and even in Washington, DC. It just felt like people were waiting to hit something, somebody, anything.

When did protestors become so darn angry and violent? I've been in protests with over a quarter of million people in Washington DC, and I never felt the violence I felt on the streets of downtown San Francisco this morning.

At my writing class on Monday during a break, I was expressing some concern about the protests because I knew it would be just my third day at my new job and I didn't want to be late for work since I work hourly and needed the money. One of the women in class, who just assumed I had been in previous anti-war protests, told me lighten up because "didn't I remember how fun the anti-warprotests were last year?"

I just looked at her and didn't say anything. I was like so shocked and deeply offended that she just automatically assumed that all people in San Francisco feel the same way politically about everything, and that of course I would be at the anti-war protests. I would never make that kind of assumption about anyone, especially about political issues in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's such an arrogant San Francisco Bay Area mindset to think that everyone thinks the same way politically. I think people here think that the rest of the country feels exactly the same way we do about political issues, or if they don't they should. It's such a fascist attitude to me to just assume that everyone thinks the same way about everything, and if they don't then they're either stupid or there is definitely something wrong with them.

I never expect anyone to have the same opinions I do, especially political opinions. Politics is so deeply personal, like religion and sex. And since everyone on this planet is unique, it makes perfect sense to me that every single person could have a totally different political opinion than mine.

My assumption, and it's probably a wrong one, is that every single person thinks deeply about politics and has informed opinions that are uniquely their own and no one else's. I think about politics very deeply and try to stay informed. I would never adopt or parrot a political opinion without studying and researching it first, just because my parents, my friend, my family, people I admire, and the media have that certain political opinion.

Politics is way too important to me for me to not think deeply about an issue and to look at an issue from all sides before forming my own individual and unique opinion.