With his khaki slacks, black button-up, and white tennis shoes, Phil Brinkman, a 54-year-old nurse and former Nixon supporter, is not your typical protestor.

Yet Brinkman, who lives in the middle-class suburb of Miami Springs, said he has watched his purchasing power plummet while his credit card interest rates spiral out of control.

“I just can’t afford things the way I used to,” Brinkman said.

So when he heard about Occupy Wall Street, an ongoing series of demonstrations in a New York City park, Brinkman scoured the web to find its Miami equivalent. Since it began on Sept. 17, protests have sprouted from Boston to Los Angeles and Detroit. In Miami, it has been slow to start, but participants expect at least 500 to descend Saturday for a rally at the Torch of Friendship on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami. In Fort Lauderdale, a similar group will start at the federal courthouse on Broward Boulevard at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Across the globe, similar protests are planned from London to Frankfurt.

The protestors, who have no official leaders, have a broad list of grievances — from ending wars in the Middle East to skyrocketing student debt and what they say are egregious bonuses given to Wall Street executives.

In Miami, Brinkman acknowledges he’s a bit of an outlier in the group, which has 8,936 “likes” on its Facebook page and is mostly composed of students and 20- and 30-year-olds.. Still, participants say the group is not only growing but as diverse as its concerns. That characteristic of the nationwide movement at times makes it seem a like a free-for-all of complaints with no solutions offered.

That’s made it rife for criticism, with CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow, for one, suggesting it is “just your basic green, anti-capitalist, anti-bank, anti-Wall Street, anti-American demonstration.”

Protestors say they are tied by two common themes: discontent with the power of corporations and widespread alarm about the dismal economic outlook.

Muhammed Malik, 29, is a former researcher with Florida’s American Civil Liberties Union who said he was laid off several months ago. Malik and his wife, who works at the University of Miami, support her parents and his ongoing unemployment means they are eking it out pay check to pay check.

Malik, who has a graduate degree, said he has widened his search to jobs for which he is over-qualified.

The same goes for Kotu Bajaj, a 24-year-old New College of Florida graduate. The two, who are friends, recently applied for the same research assistant job at Florida International University, requiring only a high school diploma. They never heard back.

Bajaj said he has even applied for janitorial positions. For a time, the sociology major who planned to pursue social work considered an alternate career as a hairdresser. But he said the 56-week-long certification program at Aveda costs more than $17,000, practically doubling his $20,000 student debt.

Frustrated, Bajaj attended one of the first Occupy Miami rallies weeks ago, expecting it to be “college students, face painters, jugglers and yoga instructors.” Instead, one of the first people he saw was an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

“That’s when I realized this wasn’t just me and my friends trying to find jobs,” Bajaj said. “This is everyone.”