The American public, not President Obama, is the force that can have the most impact on how Washington pulls out of its current acrimony, former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein told RT on Wednesday.

“I think it’s really the American people who need to kick in here… we need to kick in to say, ‘Let’s stop this government-by-extortion,’” Stein, the most successful female presidential candidate in US history, said.

Of a government shutdown that is already having impacts on vital federal programs, Stein said it is “the extension of a process that’s been taking place for the last decade, or two, or three if you trace it back, whereby money and power have been concentrated in the hands of an economic and political elite.”

Stein believes a unified response is needed now more than ever in the face of the “unhinged one percent” that dominates American politics.

“That’s where an independent party like the Green Party comes in, in that we offer a place to rally, to unify the principled opposition, because it’s only together that we can change course,” she said about seeking solutions to concerns that her party has with the way America is governed.

RT: The country’s in deadlock now after the Democrats and the Republicans have clashed over this. So where does your party fit into all of this?

Jill Stein: Where the Green Party fits in is where the American people fit in, who have also been locked out of a voice and a way forward by this real betrayal of the public trust and the public interest. What Congress is doing really serves no one, certainly not ordinary people who are really taking it on the chin. And the pain and the impacts of the shutdown are really compounding the policies of the past 10 or 15 years, which in turn have been intensified by austerity with the skyrocketing Wall Street bailouts – we’re still bailing out Wall Street to the tune of $85 billion a month; our incredible military budget and the expanding front of our endless wars, which are everywhere; the attack on our civil liberties. One out of every two Americans is now in poverty or [is] low-income according to the Census Bureau. Thirty-nine million students are in debt. And I have to mention just one more figure here, which is what the Department of Labor predicts, and that is that nine out of 10 jobs being created in the American economy over the next 10 years [will be] low-wage and insecure jobs, half of them not even requiring a high school degree or paying high-school wages. So what we’ve seen most recently with the move of the Tea Party, supported by the Republicans, is really the complete unhinging of our democracy and the extension of a process that’s been taking place for the last decade, or two, or three if you trace it back, whereby money and power have been concentrated in the hands of an economic and political elite. And a unified response, to answer your question, a unified response is really, critically important. That’s where an independent party like the Green Party comes in, in that we offer a place to rally, to unify the principled opposition, because it’s only together that we can change course. But we just did that in stopping the expanding war in Syria. So amazing things have happened. The power of democracy and justice is sweeping across the planet. We do have the power to change course. It will take substantial work in organizing and I urge the people to get involved with your state Green Party or national Green Party.

Source: RT