Occupy Wall Street protest coming to Shreveport

Tired of the gridlock in Washington, D.C.?

Mad because the federal government bailed out the Wall Street fat cats?

You can speak out this coming weekend when the spreading Occupy Wall Street protests come to Shreveport.

A rally is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday outside the downtown Caddo Parish Courthouse.

The Occupy Wall Street protests started last month in New York City's Financial District, speaking out against Wall Street companies and denouncing corporate greed and the gap between the rich and the poor. They have spread to cities across the country and have become a political issue.

The Shreveport protest is being organized by a group of locals from varying lifestyles and incomes.

"The intent of this page is to coordinate actions in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Together movements across the nation," the local protesters said on their Facebook page. "Occupy Shreveport is a peaceable group of individuals exercising their rights to work together toward a common good. Those individuals with goals of violence, disturbing the peace or to agitate the cause of Occupy Shreveport are working independently and will not be tolerated . Such attitudes should be taken elsewhere."

The Occupy Wall Street protests tap into a deep vein of public animosity toward the country's major financial institutions and distrust of the federal government, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows.

In that poll, more than two-thirds of Americans said they view Washington unfavorably, including nearly half who hold "strongly" unfavorable impressions. These sentiments spike higher among Republicans.

There is just as much negative feeling toward Wall Street financial institutions: 70 percent of those polled view such firms unfavorably, with strongly unfavorable mentions outnumbering strongly favorable ones by 8 to 1.