In the 1960s the New Left (beginning with Students for a Democratic Society) tried their hand at community organizing. They were critical of what they conceived of as Alinsky's "dead-end local activism". But the dispiriting reality was that however much they might talk about "transforming the system," "building alternative institutions," and "revolutionary potential", their credibility on the doorstep rested on their ability to secure concessions from, and therefore to develop relations with, the local power structures. Community organizing appeared to trap the radical activists in "a politics of adjustment". By the beginning of the 1970s most of the New Left groups had vacated their store-front offices.